I stole Hals textures because everything else just looked awful after a few months. The layout isn't very original but it's surprisingly functional. (Omen is next to recount, but hidden till you get into combat)
I love messing around with interfaces, Making random stuff. I have a new Interface every few weeks!
I just love making them.
I thought it would be fun for this one to use some custom art and stuff, and this is the result:
Just a fun UI, not really super practical, but i think its very enjoyable
Weight:
I'm down to about 24 MB atm - recount can eat up your memory pretty fast, but for me as a co-raid-leader it's important to track who is damaging whom etc. Carbonite is activated in this screenshot; during raids i deactivate it to save 7 MB of memory.
Explanation:
There's a 5 Button Bar visible for cooldown- and mana-tracking of top-priority skills. Below i put a 5 button TMW-bar to monitor SS-Uptime, ES-Dot, and various important stuff.
It's the first time in 4 years of ui-customization i moved the Unit-Frames "below" my character - avoiding tunnel vision requires lots of practice.. =)
What addons are you all using to move the buff/debuff anchor? I see that Tuxy and majellah both have moved their mini-maps and, as such, have moved their buffs/debuffs over to the far upper right hand corner.
I personally use SexyMap for my minimap and Satrina Buff Frames for my buffs.
I used to use Chinchilla for my minimap, but every time I logged in it was in a different place and it never stayed locked. So SexyMap it is.
this is my UI and a list of all the mods i currently have. now, not everything on the list i have active on my hunter, but a good majority of them i do.
The only thing of particular interest might be the way I've configured PowerAuras to monitor my shot cooldowns and debuff durations. Each of the little symbols down the center below my character represents a shot or debuff needing to be fired with its cooldown or duration directly below, with a priority of top to bottom. For the debuffs, it's two auras for each one monitored; one to indicate the debuff is missing, and another to display its duration when it's up.
I found out I didn't play very well with bars of any kind (timer bars, buff bars..), I always kept looking at my buttons for cooldowns, and at the target frame for debuffs. So I tried to build a UI around that behaviour, as minimalistic as possible with very centralized information. That's what I came up with:
Perhaps the three most important addons used are oUF_caellian, which for me combines the unit frame, cast bar and buff display, Dominos for moving the action bars where I need them, and Inline Aura for displaying debuff/buff durations inside the corresponding action button (really fantastic addon for players like me ).
Full addon list:
BigRed
ButtonFacade + ButtonFacade_LiteStep
Cellular
ChatIcons
Chatter
Combuctor
CreatureComforts
Deadly Boss Mods
DockingStation + assorted LDB modules
Dominos
InlineAura
Livestock
Ludwig
MikScrollingBattleText
Nameplates
OmniCC
oUF + oUF_caellian
pMinimap
Postal
RatingBuster
SellFish
Skada
TipTac
I dont get how you guys can play with such a tiny/cleaned up UI
Im trying to optimize my UI constantly and i would love to have more space and a cleaner UI but i cant figure out how
Somehow i need all of those things / buttons I have
Here's my UI, maybe someone got an idea on how to make it more neat
Making a minimalist UI is about learning what you NEED to have and eliminating/hiding everything else. When I redid my UI, I took special attention to keep track of which buttons I needed to click in combat/out of combat, which ones I used a lot/ a little, etc. You have 50 buttons on your main bars, but I am willing to bet you don't click cast many of them, so why show them? Use macros to combine buttons, like the all-in-one trap macro using modifiers, or the pet revive/call/feed/dismiss macro. Take all of the buttons that you still have to have, but don't use in combat and hide them off on the right side of the screen, making them only appear on mouseover.
You might want to switch out your detailed party frame for a simple raid frame showing small health bars, or "grid" style boxes if you like that. Individual buffs/details on other raid members are unnecessary details for a hunter. You might change your buffs to the more classic icon with a small timer, which takes up a lot less space than a bunch of timer bars, which don't really gain you anything while in combat. Your recount and omen windows are much bigger/opaque than they need to be to display the same amount of information.
Not everyone prefers to play these games. It is guaranteed that doing so requires you to maximize the use of key binds, macros, and the ability to use all of them without having to click buttons (which is a good goal to work towards anyway. Really though, go with whatever is the most comfortable for you. Good luck!
You may also consider to combine damage- and threat-meters via the RecountThreat Plugin or Skada (see here). Damage Output is of questionable interest in combat, as is threat out of combat.
Bobmarley did a great job in summarizing the problem of how to redesign your UI. There's a lot of information that is available to us via the default UI and various addons, but most of the time it's not important.
Unitframes: I don't care what buffs/debuffs are on my fellow raiders. I can't remove debuffs and I trust them to know if they're missing important buffs, so I don't see any of them. Portraits don't help me and only take up space. Mostly I just care if people are alive or dead, so I have very minimalist unit frames. You can also probably reduce the size of your own bars, as well as your target's bar. It's information you care about, but it's not usually the highest priority.
Bars: I see you have all of your aspect on your bars. The only important ones in a raid are Viper and Dragonhawk. Put them on a macro that switches between them and assign it to a button. Then you can just switch between them during combat as needed. I also see all of your melee abilities and traps there. How often do you use them? Granted, I don't PvP much, but I removed all of my melee abilities and reduced the traps down to the 3 I actually use in a raid (frost, arrow, freezing). During combat, the only pet things I care about are Mend Pet and Kill Command. Macro Kill Command and assign Mend Pet to a button. The rest are special case and can be moved somewhere else.
One of the things I did was install OPie. Aspects, pet spells, traps, and healing/mana pots are all assigned to OPie rings. That gets a lot of stuff out of the way while still making them very accessible.
Getting rid of a bunch of stuff allows you a better view of all that's going on and reduces the amount of information your brain is trying to process so you can focus on what's important.
And here's another where it's about as busy as it gets.
Pretty basic list of mods:
Pitbull Unit Frames
Quartz Casting bar
Bartender 4
Power Auras (<3)
Chatter
Grid
oRA2
Satrina's Buff Frames
ButtonFacade
I configured my Power Aura to be a sort of "go-away" system. If I see the green thing I know my serpent fell off, if I see the red thing I know its time for a KS, orange bloby thing I know I have Lock n' Load on and my goal is to make it all go away.
Hey Hellifiknow, as wondering if got around to it packaging your UI?
In response to this and a couple of PMs I have received, yes my UI is currently in the process of being uploaded to WoWinterface, and will be available soon (hopefully), under the name Hellifiknow's UI. Clever name I know. I'll post a link when it's fully uploaded and updated. Thanks for the interest!