Teenee

Aye, I've been using a portrait on the Focus for that alone. I also filter the buffs, so it's only my own that shows (not likely that the mob will have other stuff, but you never know). The sheep is a very good visual indication.

I've since changed to my priest more, where I find it to be less useful, but still portraits provide a good visual feedback on the person you're selecting (their race, class, etc). If you raid with the same people, you also know how they look to a certain degree as well.

 

Zygar

I enjoyed reading people's responses to this thread, and I feel that it still has a lot of potential to be useful to people, with the changing trends in interface design (particularly towards minimalist interfaces), so I'm going to throw this a quick bump to keep it out of the archives. Hope this isn't against the rules!

So this post isn't totally useless, I very recently came across an interesting macro for Warriors. I'm sure it's by no means new, and a lot of Warriors may already have a macro like this, but it was new and useful to me!

#show Sunder Armor
/cast [target=mouseover, exists, harm, nodead] Sunder Armor; [harm] Sunder Armor

What this does, is check to see if your mouseover target is Sunder-able. If it is, it will sunder this target. Otherwise, it will Sunder your current target. Useless? No sir. Sunder Armor doesn't deal damage, and this lets you throw a few sunders on a CCed mob! Normally, sundering a mob would result in an autoattack that breaks the CC, however this method lets you sunder another target without losing your current target.

 

◊ Gearman

As a professional user interface designer I'm very intrigued by this thread. There are some really interesting ideas and designs floating around, and in the interest of keeping this going and furthering this discussion I figured I'd post a few questions / comments below.

- As a program where the user's needs change regularly, due to different classes, and different gameplay types (pvp, solo, raid, etc.), what information is the most crucial to have readily available at all times?

- As gamers, do we have preconceived notions of where certain types of information should be displayed? I.E. the minimap should always be in the top right, and the chat in the bottom left. If yes, where do you think these notions could have come from?

- When customizing your UI, how important is it to you to have items of similar information (damage meter, and threat meter) close to each other in your UI? Are these always visible, or do you hide them when they aren't necessary (when soloing of PVP'ing for example)?

- As a UI designed for an incredibly wide range of users and a wide range of needs (based on class, and gametype), how successful is Blizzard's UI at displaying necessary information in appropriate locations? Is there anything that really sticks out when looking at the Blizzard UI that just doesn't feel right, or fit well with the rest of the UI?

- As a stock UI, does the WoW interface do a good job at displaying pertinent player information without obscuring too much of the viewable playing area?

Bad grammar makes me [sic].

 

Lanth

Aside from class/gameplay specifics (mages and rogues need cooldown timers), I think the most important information you need to know is what's on the unitframes (health, mana/energy/rage). You always need to know your health and your targets health (be it friend or foe), no matter what situation. This is where HUDs come in useful, because they put that information around your character, where you can watch it out of the corner of your eye. This is also where Blizzard's default UI fails, because they put unitframes up in the top-left corner, away from all the action.

Yeah, most games are similar in placement of information. Most games I can think of put minimap top-right and chat-bottom left. Other conventions also occur, like ammo/health/weapons in the bottom for FPSs. No one knows exactly where these came from; someone at some point decided "For this game, I think I'll put the minimap in the top-right corner". Then other games decided to put it there, and it just became a tradition.
When games have lots of customisability, like WoW, they develop their own conventions, like how the minimap position for UI-modders is now center bottom.

Generally, I've seen information grouping come in three forms: Grouped, Symmetrical and Random. Grouped is when items of similar purpose (threat/damage meters, unitframes) are stuck together. Symmetrical is when items of similar purpose are placed on the opposite side of the screen (chat bottom left, combat bottom right). Random is when the items are placed around the screen in no particular arrangement.
I don't think any of these are better than each other in terms of functionality (though in terms of asthetics, I think it goes symmetrical/grouped, depending on your personal preference, then random). As long as they are placed in terms of importance (no point in having unitframes in a random corner with your buffs in the center of the screen), and you know where they all are, there is no wrong arrangement.

(I'm assuming you're talking about Blizzard's default UI)
Blizzards UI isn't designed with functionality as it's highest priority. The main goal behind the default UI is ease-of-use, for when people play for the first time, that is what they will have to use. If these new players find the controls too hard, they won't enjoy the game and stop playing. This is why the default keybinds for abilities is 1-0, because people can remember it easily. Eventually, as the player gets further into the game, they will discover addons, and will discard the default UI for better things.
That said, the default UI is bad for functionality. Having the unitframes in the top left corner is bad when fighting a mob in the center of your screen. However, new players won't realise how bad it is, and they'll just keep on playing like that.

That's what the default UI is designed for: to give you sufficient information, leaving the rest of the screen area for playing area. Most new players aren't interested in how long until their Frost Nova has cooled down, or how long their Corruption will last. They just want to kill the mob quickly, and watch it happen.

 

feiyin

Well, I think initially there is enough screenspace, however as you get higher in levels, acquire more skills, and eventually even start raiding, if you use the default ui you'll find your screen will have been taken over by rows of action bars, your party and raid frames, and your chat logs.

 

Camora

Ok, I didn't really know where to ask this, but I think this is the best place.

Is there a way to adjust the length of a Fubar? I am trying to put one under my actionbars, and only there, but I have not found a way to do so. Can anyone help me out with this?

 

Hearthly

Yep, when you move your mouse over to each end of a Fubar panel(make sure you unlock your Fubar first!), the mouse pointer will change to a sword and then you can drag it left and right to resize it.

 

Camora

Ah, many thanks! Can't believe I didn't think of that!

 

Hearthly

no prob

 

Leana

I'm looking to clean up my UI and make it more intuitive to use, but I've run into brick walls while trying to come up with redesigns. After shifting objects around I find myself uncomfortable with the new layout and unable to function, even after adjustmenet time.

Here's a sample of what I'm working with, in combat: http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/5416/sampleuifs5.jpg

Important information includes Omen, Deadly Boss Mods (not currently shown, usually placed next to Omen or at the top-center of my screen), SCT, unit frames (personal, target, ToT, pet, and focus), and Dotimer/cooldown timers.

I've been trying to get accustomed to playing with my action bars hidden, but not all of my random utility spells are keybound or easily accessible. Necrosis is a fallback addon that allows me to access a menu of occasionally-used, but not vital, spells like detect invisibility and underwater breathing (buffing in arenas) or eye of kilrogg. My goal is to completely eliminate Necrosis from my UI -- it already overlaps with functions that simpler mods like SoulStoneFu perform.

I use alt/control/shift modifiers for some spell binding, particularly curses (8 - CoS, alt+8 - CoE), but I'd like to condense them more. On other characters, I'm able to access all of my raiding spells with my left hand while moving with a mouse. I'd need a third arm growing out of my chest to have the same mobility on my warlock.

All of my previous raiding experience has been on healing classes, so I'm an obsessive information junkie. I recently weaned myself off of XRS, which I had set to show all missing buffs, cumulative mana of all classes, and individual tank's health. Some of my Big Brother tendencies are still manifested by Grid stalking, but Grid is smaller and demands less UI realestate.

FuBar is my oversized matronly babybag of addon control. I use it to display any information the rest of my UI lacks or access everyday mods.

Tips? Help? Martha Stewart party?

 

shieldb

So I've got a few thoughts on this in no particular order - hopefully you'll find some of this helpful.

It sounds as if you've already got it set up this way, but you can configure Bartender3 to page bars based on holding down modifier keys. I've got all my abilities that I need quick access to in combat bound to 1-6, ctrl 1-6, shift 1-6, and alt 1-6, but with only one action bar displaying. Holding down one of those modifier keys switches the bar to a different page. Condensing bindings like this can let you cram a lot more actions into the same space once you get comfortable with the switching.

Along the same lines, you could probably set that group of buttons on the right side to fade out in Bartender3. They'll still be right there, but they will only show up when you get the mouse over the top of them.

I would argue that you could condense FuBar into just one line. Unless you're setting up your UI, you shouldn't need ClearFont, Bartender3, or Grid showing. You've got one FuBar plugin top center showing your bag usage (BagFu?) and then a little to the right of that you have GarbageFu also displaying your bag usage - you can probably get rid of the BagFu one and just change how GarbageFu displays slots if you like to see that. Depending on how you like to interact with it, you may also be able to remove Omen from FuBar. Picking up DeuceCommander, Niagara, or using the Rock config button (you can hide that in the Rock options if you've updated any time recently) can probably get you access to those addon's settings in the event that you do need them.

You've got a single backpack button right under your minimap - to me that implies you're running some sort of "one bag" mod. Would binding B or some other key to opening all your bags and then hiding the backpack button work for you?

If you aren't running Parrot or MSBT (both are scrolling combat text mods) you might look into one of those and turn on event merging. They can merge events like the +10 mana being on there several times to something like "+50 Mana (5 ticks)" so it doesn't look so spammy - this is especially helpful with a lot of dots rolling on different targets or during AOE.

It may just be me, but I like to have any sort of damage meters hidden during combat and I can glance at them afterwards - I don't find that seeing a real time DPS list is particularly helpful. I'll usually unhide it and give it a glance outside of combat to see if I need to harass anyone about being a slacker, but during a boss encounter is frequently a less than ideal time to discuss someone's damage output.

Depending on if you like to spam keys or not, you might download ErrorMonster and set it to hide some of the more frequently seen errors like that string of "Spell is not ready yet." that you've got up top.

If you're running SimpleMinimap you can set it to hide the coordinate display inside of instances, which looks a little cleaner to me without the 0.0, 0.0 displaying all the time.

Based on how large the rest of your interface is I would argue that you should be able to shrink down your buff list a ton.

I would personally:
- Move your pet frame / pet action buttons over to the left more.
- Shrink down grid a bit, remove that padding around the outside, and move it into the lower right corner.
- Shrink down your buff display a ton, and set that up to stack upwards starting from right on top of grid in the lower right corner.
- Move the cooldown monitor (I think that's a cooldown monitor anyways, where it's displaying Hearthstone 1m) over to the left to make room for the buffs if a lot stack up.
- Move the MT display over against the left edge in the space created by moving grid.

Additionally, you might look around at the Post your WoW 2.1 Interface and Post your 2.2 WoW Interface threads to see if you can find some setups that you really like for ideas to try with your own interface.

 

Bohemienne

As a healer I find myself getting increasingly frustrated with the current UI designs, as I feel a lot of stuff designers do to be superfluous, and others just not conducive to quick-response healing styles. First off, I find the need of everyone to keep their combat logs open all the time ridiculous. If you're getting your important information from combat logs, you're probably not utilizing the other tools you have in front of you as much as you should. It's much easier for me to watch my tank's healthbar, actually see the mob swing at him or her, see the damage pop up over his or her portrait, and see other healers' heals land in green over the portrait. But I suppose this is just a matter of preference.

I've only just broken myself of having my unit frames along the top of my screen in the default position. I do have a large block of data along the bottom of screen, with a Skinner backdrop behind it, that's a block of Chat Window -> Action Bars -> SWStats -> Omen -> Bags/Potions/etc. now I have my unit frames in a horizontal row above all of that, and I like it much better--my target's unit frame is directly above my castbar, so stepping out of heals is a lot quicker response, and I've got the Quartz data right there on the castbar. However, now I have a lot of blank space at the top of my screen (aside from Titan bar) that I'm not sure what to do with.

Maybe it's because I play with a laptop that's actually on my lap, but I never had trouble reading data that was at the top of my screen, because that was actually closer to eye-level for me. I am however a lot happier to now have my unit frames about a third of the way up the screen simply because all my other info is concentrated there. It has taken some getting used to though, and when I've tried to do it in the past I ended up going back to having the UFs at the top. I think I can stick with it now though. Grid is against the left side of the screen, though nearly ever other UI I've seen has it in line with the bottom bar of info. It just doesn't seem to pop out at me enough, and I like to have it very large.

I guess this is all to say that my biggest frustration as a healer is that I need so, so, so much information available to me, and I all need it concentrated in one spot, but obviously cramming data into the center of the screen isn't smart because, duh, I can't see anything else!!! Other healers' solutions that I've seen in UI screenshots don't really appeal to me, so I'm unsure what more I can do.

On a faintly related note, so this post isn't just self-important blather--is there any sort of mod that gives you a swing timer bar, kind of like the one Quartz has, only it's for target of target's swing timer? This would be infinitely useful for hard-hitting bossfights.

 

cerement

A large amount of interface design is (generally) influenced by a few very talented artists out there (and the artists in turn are influenced by what addons are available at the time).

CT_Viewport (and 4:3 ratio monitors) gave rise to the "huge black bar" across the bottom of the screen, usually framed out with really fancy and detailed Discord Art frames of stone and ivy and bones and what have you. HUDs became all the rage including full circular variations. This was the generation of Lozareth and Discord.

eePanels has allowed designers to open up the game's viewport, but in turn it lends itself much more to geometric artwork and frames. Widescreen monitors have allowed people to compress and spread out their UI to obscure less screen real estate (3 rows of 12 buttons becomes 2 rows of 18 buttons). Many have dropped HUDs for unitframes because of the wealth of information they provide. This is the generation of Ryas and Caith (and many more!)

Our next generation of design seems to be focused on a true sense of minimalism, taking advantage of keybinds and autohiding and modifying addons. rdji's CML puts a clock on your screen allowing you to autohide FuBar. Moving the unitframes up next to the sides of your character and (auto)hiding the action bars opens up much more of the game view. Modifying PitBull to show 2 or 3 pixel high health and mana bars. This is the generation of rdji, Led++, and Lyn.

[One trend I'm not a fan of is the use of Avant Garde font, from a graphic design point of view, it's one of the ugliest sans-serifs in existence! (But still nicer than those damn cartoon fonts leftover from Discord days.)]

Overall though, there are basic trends:
1) Minimap top right (default) or bottom center, personal choice and aesthetics.
2) Chat bottom left (default) -- using default fadeout or MiniChat, personal choice.
3) Combat log, DPS tracker, threat tracker (if used) bottom right (visually balance chat)
4) Unitframes bottom center (just above action bars) - puts necessary information down in field of view, less eye movement
5) Action bars bottom center, one block if minimap top right, two balanced blocks if minimap bottom center - keeps in field of view and (if you're a clicker) minimizes mouse pointer travel

 

Illundai

After my recent switch from healing to melee, I tried adapting my UI towards that goal, but I found that I was in the whole very ineffective. There is something about melee that makes me phase out sometimes whilst I look for the information I need.
It's not a rare occasion I don't notice that the mob in question ran out of range and I'm not actually hitting the stupid thing anymore.
I'm basically looking for some hints towards an UI design that will give me the edge that I need and that I'm missing right now. Sometimes, I even forget to hit a cooldown as soon as it's up (which is quite annoying as an Enhancement Shaman as you can imagine, especially since hitting cooldowns is the only thing you are supposed to do.

What do I want is very clear unitframes. I need to know what % the mob is on, I need to know how fast it's going down and most importantly, I need to know if its being tanked while also knowing straight away when a mob is casting something, so I know to either gtfo or be ready to interrupt. Next to that, I need to see in the same manner my own health and manabar and be able to react accordingly. Preferably all of this should be in the same area and I should be able to see it in a blink of an eye. I need the information to be there and be very clear. Next, I need to be made aware of when a cooldown is gone. I tried to achieve this by putting my bar with cooldowns near the position of my and my targets unitframe, but that didn't really achieve it's optimal result. Secondly, I need to have a clean UI. Screen clutter is not what I'm looking for, I want it to be sleek and informative, without too much crap on my screen. I also need a clear position for Totem and Bigwigs timers, so I know when to gtfo or refresh my totems, e.g.

Basically I can summarize it, if anyone has any tips or suggestions in making a clean and sleek melee-friendly interface, please do post or PM me. I'll be making another attempt at a UI that is low on mb, that is clean and sleek, but I'd appreciate if some people had suggestions for addons that can help me achieve what I'm looking for.

 

Duncan

My personal impression on damage dealing classes is that it needs a lot of keybindings, clear unit frames, with good debuff display.

If you place your unit frames right above your action bar and use a scrolling combat text like Parrot and configure it to !ONLY! show Buff/Debuff gains and ready cooldowns in a large readable font you should have what you need.

I think it's a fault to have all that "spam" on your screen a combat text addons generates on it's default setting. You don't need to know every single damage you do, if you want to see how fast the damn thing goes down, make clear unitframes, use mobhealth and a nice big "percent" display for your targets health, easily done with pitbull for example.

Also placing your targets castingbar is very important, especially as a shaman to interrupt spells you don't want.

Hide everything you don't need to know about (portraits, pvp icon and whatnot ....). I even hide my minimap 95% of the time.

So basically it's all about having a good setup of keybindings, something that works for almost all classes without breaking your fingers are buttons 1-5, strg + 1-5, alt 1-5 and shift 1-5.
That's 20 shortcuts wich you can even put easily on one single bar if you let the bar page on alt, shift, strg.

 

Lanth

For your cooldowns, it sounds like you're looking for the kind of thing in this video: Mage PvP/Arena Video Guide with a funny twist! | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com

Basically, when the cooldown is up, a big, semi-transparent image of the spell appears in the lower section of the screen. Pretty obvious, and hard to miss. I have no idea what the addon is called, but poke around to try and find it.

Also, if you want health/mana/enemy health/ECB all in the same place, you might want to look at a HUD. They center the information around your character, and you can get ones with ECB built in.

 

Howard Roark

I downloaded dash and immediately thought it would be my favorite mod. I put pretty much everything on the dashboard and was happy with how it was looking... I bound the dash button to middle mouse to quickly go in and out so I could even do important stuff on the fly.

Then... I went into combat. What the crap? You can't open it during combat? Please just tell me I'm bugged or something.

edit: Nevermind it was something wrong on my part. I turned off every mod except dashboard and it is working now. Time to re-enable a few of them at a time I guess to see what it's conflicting with.

edit2: It's conflicting with bartender.

edit3: Not bartender really, it just doesn't work when you have some action bars on the dash and some off it

 

Furion

Yes don't try to hide bartender frames with dash. Just hide them completely or make them appear on mouseover. Apart from that I find dash awesome.
It's just very convenient to have things like Combat log, Fubar, Bags and Damagemeter hidden unless you press the magic button since you don't really need these infos all the time.

And Illundai I think you will want WoWInterface Downloads : JIM's Cooldown Pulse for the cooldowns and maybe http://files.wowace.com/Hitman/Hitman-r47909.10.zip to make sure you are actually attacking your target. I think these two mods are great for every Melee dps.

 

Furion

Sorry for consecutive posting but I'd like to discuss something completely unrelated and don't want to edit my other post this late to not cause confusion.

Looking at many UI shots I wonder why people set up their Health bars the way they do. They often look beautiful and unintrusive, situated near the bottom... but I don't think that's a good thing.
When I set up my UI I used to have my own (rather big) health bar in the center and have it display my health with a big short number (something like "5k"; percent might work as well) in the middle and made sure the color of the healthbar itself was very different from the health deficit (for example green -> red).
Being used to tank I want to know my current health at a foolproof, *quick* glance so I know exactly when to use my "oh shit buttons" as missing that moment could spell death for the entire raid.

As I want to make a comeback to WoW next month (2.3 is a great opportunity!) I'm looking for a Unitframe that lets me do something simple like


(I quickly did this with Pitbull on PTR to illustrate my idea) without all the bloated extra modules of pitbull (which I just disable otherwise). Being a perfectionist I hate having to use one of the biggest and most complex Unitframes when I actually want to do something very basic. I am going to use grid for groups so I guess I will only need playerframe, targetframe, ToT and focus frame.

 

Duncan

Pitbull is a bunch of modules you can even DELETE in your addons folder seperatly. This way you don't have to configurate it that much.