I have a single setup, and at the moment have no toolbars whatsoever onscreen thanks to BindPad. It is very hard adjusting to watching cooldown timers instead of buttons, though, so I might end up switching back. MoveAnything kills my main hotbar. I haven't quite decided on a raid UI yet but it'll probably be Grid.

Large Chatboxes
Obvious cooldown timers/bars
Health/Mana/Target display near the center or bottom-center of the screen
SCT
Compact and minimal Unitframes/Raid frames

Player frame/HUD goes near the center or bottom center of the screen, Bars(if there) in the bottom left hand corner, auxillary buttons in the top right, party frame in the top left. I don't deviate much from Blizzard's layout other than the player frame, really.

Player/Party Unitframes that give you stuff like Rank, Level, etc., most raid frames, and people who have buttons for every single item they carry. Who needs a hotkey for Flask of the Titans?

Gamplay role (based on class) will obviously play a big role during UI setup, but raiding role has just as big of an impact. There are people that just want to play their class. That's fine. For these people, a clean UI with only the relevent information will make them more efficient in their gameplay role. However, as was touched on by a previous post, your raiding role has a huge impact on what you need from you UI. When learning new content, the goal is always to extract as much information from every attempt. Not everyone in the raid will do this, but I have always prefered raiding with people that do, so long as it doesn't hinder their performance.

I have done a lot of raid leading, so I'm in the "the more information without wasting space" mindset. I've always tried to make the raids go smoother, even when I'm not the one leading. Here are a few examples of questions answered based on UI mods:

- Who should I whisper for a buff? Check my raid bars which have the mana displayed.
- Does anyone still need a summon to Heigan? Check XRS to see if anyone is further than 30 yards.
- Are we done buffing? Check XRS.
- Why is <so-and-so> always dieing? Set up a seperate chat frame to watch a specific person. (SimpleCombatLog, Nurfed, etc.)
- etc.

I've encouraged people to be proactive, as it makes leading that much easier. Communication during a raid is very important. In my mind, if an addon can keep vent cleaner, it's worth having.

The mindset of "What went wrong, and how can we fix it?" is something that I have used addons to answer for some time now. As such, a time-stamped combat log is a must for everyone in the raid. Whether they display it during a fight or not doesn't matter, you should always be able to answer the question "How did you die?" with a more intellegent response than: "Those adds just owned me", "I took a big spike", "I don't know", etc.

I think one of the basic divisions among people using UI's is whether they hit hotkeys or whether they mouse click skills. I am in the former camp, having remapped most of my keys to get 19 hotkeys on a single button press. I don't use combination hotkeys (eg alt-1) because I find I mistype combos and wind up having to look at the keyboard. Looking at the keyboard means I am not looking at the game and my effectiveness is reduced. So it is single press or no hotkey for me. I am NOT using W-A-S-D for movement so movement is on my mouse, but that works out fine for me.

Hotkey people because they have memorized keypresses, can avoid having button clutter mid screen. For a clicker to function well they need action buttons close to the center of the screen so they do not have to deviate their attention far from the action. So an ideal clicker interface is going to be big buttons radially around center, visible when they are available, and greyed with cooldown when they are gone. The ideal hotkey interface only needs display in the center with buttons around the edge.

Urgency of information is highest in center, and diminishes on the edges. I want to minimize the time I am not looking in the game window, so infrequent stuff is on the edges. But stuff I have to look at all the time should be in the middle.

For me, along the very edges is FuBar. FuBar is lots of information on demand, normally hidden. What is nice is there is a minimal footprint full time display of the most relevant information (eg 79/81 bags), and if you click on the FuBar icon you can expand more information. What this accomplishes is display on that which you need when you need it and in a depth of detail at which you need it. This is a pretty basic idea...display only what you need when you need it...it is an ideal towards which we move and never really reach.

I still use button bars. Even though I have most of my hotkeys memorized, I play many alts and there is a certain readjustment period between alts. Also my cooldowns are displayed on the bars. Pre 2.0 I had a nice mod which had a radial cooldown display, but I have yet to find something satisfactory since. So I am coping. On the other bars are those seldom used abilities not worthy of a hotkey.
Again these buttons are peripheral, since it is not crucial I see them all the time.

At the center is the HUD (Icehud) which compresses a lot of combat critical information in the center of the field of view. As a mage it is not so crucial to babysit life bars, and Grid is sufficient to display who needs decursing, and basics such as what group number I am in. So here the most important info is in the middle.

As far as my field of view goes, having peripheral vision is important, which drives me to put as little as I can wide. The least critical view is below character and therefore the bulk of my UI goes there. If I had a more compressed version of buff display (most models seem to use a bar panel with a big footprint), then I would probably remove all of the stuff off the top except FuBar, since azimuth is important for me.

My philosophy is if a button is covering it up full time, I should not render it, so I viewport down the game area to only display the area that is not cluttered with static bars etc. This puts less stress on my video card, and ups the contrast for the bars since outside the viewport is black.

I like button compression, where for instance you can set a macro such that a left click will do X, and a right click will do Y. Fewer buttons mean less clutter at the same functionality. Also I like to compress functions on my hotkeys to hotkey more of my actions.

To answer your specific questions

1. I try to standardize my UI for use across alts and game content, although some adjustments must be made to operate in a raid (Grid). The reason here is a common UI means I can more rapidly find the things I need to use. It minimizes readjustment.

2. For now the bare minimum is HUD, Grid, party bars, fubars, and hotkeys with cooldowns or bars with mouse clickable functions. I want information to pop up when I need it and go away when I don't, which is why FuBar is so awesome.

3. Priority order for static stuff, non HUD is : bottom, top, left/right, middle. For important critical real time information I like it: center, top, left/right, bottom.

4. The acid test for too much information is not being able to react tactically to a changing visual field or do basic things like move due to clutter.

I have seen a lot of comments on too much information on the screen and keep things centralized. But I have seen no mention of using viewport(although I just might have missed it).

This allows you to display information you may want to see, but keeps it off of the playing screen. This may be more problematic with smaller and none widescreen monitors, but upgrading to those (as mentioned before) helps with the UI clutter.

I have seen a lot of people with their chat logs, combat logs, minimap and action bars at the bottom of their screen and they usually have some sort of background. If they would use viewport, they wouldn't have to create a background. (The black makes a very nice background in itself). They also would be able to see that bottom portion of the screen again, which I have found out helps immensely.

This also makes more room on the playing screen to add something else, or place something more effeciently on the playing screen without having to move a lot of other items or cluttering the space.

What are others' thoughts on this?

1)I have multiple UI's to create a single look. I'm a raider who only pvp's when bored and solo's allot with trade skills generally lately. Using bongos, perl ui and ctmod I have 5 bars showing. 2 are for my spells that are hotkeyd and the first bar changes depending on what form I'm in or if i"m stealthed. The other 3 bars are trade skills, macros I need in any form, and consumables and buffs. Because of bars changing on rotation I'm hiding I'm hiding 4 bars of hotkeys I only see in that form(cat, cat stealthed, bear, and tree)

My reasoning is I I like everything I might need right there to click with out moving anything and I don't want to see abilities I can't use at all and when i can use them I want them at instant access of a hot key.

2) For healing in a raid I have to have a mod that displays peoples health in a very small amount of space for entire raid as well as if they have my classes hots on or debuffs.(ctra does this wonderfully)
I have to have a very visible buff bar so that I can see my debuff and remove them quickly in 5 man or raid or solo.
Useful but not required is druid caster bar which shows my mana in forms. I can play without it but the information of knowing my mana when I'm shifted I find very useful on planning my next actions.

I'm not sure if I could do a bare minimum at all I'm very picky about my ui setup being minimalistic looking with lots of my hotkeys and buttons easily clickable as well as all the healing information I need and still giving me a large chunk of screen space to watch the action.

3) All my health windows I place above my chat window on left and combat window on right. I place my casting bar as well as timer bars between these two window, and all of my skills go below those bars on the bottom of the screen.
My buff bar is on the side so that I can easily see a debuff or check but it isn't blocking anything.
I don't actually put anything AROUND my character everything is on sides of the screen nothing in the middle.


4) When more screen space is taken up by said information then is actually visible to actually see whats going on in the game around you.

Quite a few Ace2 UI's are running Skinner, which allows you a lot of viewport options. I personally take a 2inch pane alone the bottom of my 19inch monitor, it allows a clearer contrast with logs and bars (which make up 70% of my total UI clutter), and I find having the playing area itself less cluttered to be a benefit.

I've never understood limiting the viewport.

After posting on my guild forum about this I was persuaded to try it- but still came away nonplussed.

If you put black along the bottom, it's true, you DONT lose anything from the bottom of the screen, the bottom moves up to a new position. But you DO lose stuff from the top of the screen, I found. As a rogue who keybinds everything I don't have much space taken up by buttons, and the chat window is semi transparent anyway, as is my combat log (I use eavesdrop- invisible out of combat).

Why limit your viewport at all? The top of the screen you lose is effectively 'the distance' - so it's theoretically space that threats could be hiding in, flags being capped, people in PvP, etc..

Do you understand that when people are talking about "viewport" they mean actually changing the size/shape of the rendered area? A topframe/bottomframe that just masks out black space does indeed cover potentially useful info. However, what viewport/skinner/etc. do is change the shape of the screen for rendering purposes, so that when I have a viewport bottomframe covering the bottom 1/4 of my screen, I'm actually seeing 100% of the game world from my POV rendered, except it's shaped to fit the top 3/4 of my screen. Thus, if anything, I actually gain vision of elements that might otherwise have been buried beneath my action bars or other frames.

I'm not sure which add-on you're using, but for both CT_Viewport and Aperture just "squish" the screen; you don't lose anything. The rendered gamplay frame is simply made to use up less of the screen allowing for UI elements to be beyond the edges of your regular vision. I haven't used Skinner, so I can't comment on that one.

Edit: Gurg beat me to it.

1) Do you have multiple UI profiles setted up so you can reload a UI design based on if you are PvPing, Raiding, or 5 Manning. -or- Do you Have 1 and only UI that does it all with hiding frames and rotation on bar pages, or just have ALL your buttons showing?

One UI, hide/show windows depending on raid/5 man (I think PVP falls under raid). Keep the location of elements consistent between uses.

2) What do you consider the most important stuff to have in a UI, what you consider usefull but not required. What's the bare minimum you would be comfortable with?

Most useful.. at a glance HP, Target, ToT, Mana/Rage/Energy, cooldowns within easy view, combat text, raid status (XRS/Raid Frames). Useful but not required.. DamageMeters, combat log, minimap.

3) The important stuff identified in 2) where do you place it and why? (around your character? sides for peripheral vision? top, bottom?)

Unitframes - below my character. As a melee class, most information will be coming from the actual screen and not peripheral applications (grid, HP bar monitoring, etc). Having my Energy/Rage/CP/Health/Enemy Health visible without shifting my eyesight is key. That goes for combat text too. Information that's not needed immediately goes below, FuBar on top mostly because I come from a Mac background and it feels natural :P

4) At what point do you consider you have too much info displayed?
Depends on your role in the raid, but basically it's displaying information that's not needed for the role. In other words, if you're raid leader, your interface has a lot more leeway before being considered cluttered than mine, whose role is limited to hacking and poking.

While we're on the subject, here are some ideas.

Basic functions need to retain some semblance of consistency, in a very base level, for example, the shortcut keys (ie, interpretation of user behaviors). This also applies to mods who react differently to right/left clicking, configuring, moving the minimap icon, et al... In fact, one of the better reasons for using Ace2 mods is that by using the same libraries, they maintain that fundamental consistency between mods.

Mods that perform different functions should avoid uniformity. The goal of an efficient UI is to minimize downtime (we're talking in magnitudes of fractions of a second). Clear distinction is key - be it through static positioning, colors, size, etc. Moving around windows during raids or constantly changing the look & feel of your UI is counterproductive.

Fitt's Law
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. Basically the reason why the Macintosh pull down menu is many times more efficient than the Windows per-window implementation. I think this is a big draw of FuBar/Titan type mods - according to Fitt's Law, the largest possible targets are on the four corners of the screen, followed by the edges. Being able to quickly throw your cursor to the top/bottom is the fastest way to click.

Likewise, either corner of your FuBar should contain your most used FuMods (for me, WhisperFu and a Clock). Another teaching of this law is that big buttons are better, and having buttons is better than not having any (and of course, having them near the corners/edges is more effective for clicking).

A WoW UI is a bit more complicated when you throw in keybindings - it starts moving into the realm of Jef Raskin interface design (who preaches non-redundancy in visual elements, keybindings galore - ie, if the same set of actions is repeated over time, it becomes automatized thus the goal is habit formation.)

Latency Reduction
Pretty self explanatory, mods & the UI should feel zippy, and UI element that takes a noticeable amount of time to react aren't worth the time to bother with.

Other than that, I think it's what *feels* right when given comparable choices... kinda hard to go into that, user preference?

1) Do you have multiple UI profiles setted up so you can reload a UI design based on if you are PvPing, Raiding, or 5 Manning. -or- Do you Have 1 and only UI that does it all with hiding frames and rotation on bar pages, or just have ALL your buttons showing? And what is the reason for such a choice?
Single profile, and I generally have all my buttons showing, my keybind setup is such that it's not really difficult to switch between raiding and PvP, and really the bars don't matter as much as your comfort with binds. For example - it's important for me (as now a warrior, once a rogue) to have my various stances match up with hotkeys. E is generally my favorite key to press, so on each bar that corresponds (ambush/backstab for a rogue, mortal strike / taunt for a warrior)

2) What do you consider the most important stuff to have in a UI, what you consider usefull but not required. What's the bare minimum you would be comfortable with?
I rarely play with raid frames, first of all because I don't like a lot of clutter, I just kept a raid status window mostly. Utterly necessary (to the point I can't stand playing without it) are the combat log, unit frames with % HP / Mana, and spellalert. SCT is nice but I can live without it. Combat log is really essential for me, I tend to read it while playing quite a bit (I guess I read quickly? some people have told me this is odd).

3) The important stuff identified in 2) where do you place it and why? (around your character? sides for peripheral vision? top, bottom?)
Pretty standard layout, honestly, the default GUI is pretty good. Only major change would be bars right under my character and spell alert right above his head. Unit frames in the top left (with target twice as big as normal frames, and target of target), combat log on the right, chat frame left.

4) At what point do you consider you have too much info displayed?
Personally haven't gotten to that point, but I am a bit of a UI minimalist in terms of displays, as I generally don't even turn on raid frames as a non-healer.