It is about time now That I upload the latest and probably last version of my User Interface. Some of you already know and and some of you do not. Since this thread is about assisting other hunters as well I'll talk about some of the tidbits I've added as icing on the cake in my UI as well as how and why it is constructed the way it is. I'm betting my post will get reported however, the OP asked for writing about why.
First and foremost In designing my UI i had to first analyze what I didn't like about default UI. Default UI has information splayed all around the screen, pretty much in every corner in addition to he bottom row. This is is fine on a small screen where the eye doesn't really have to pan too far in order for the player to see what they need to. And lets be honest, wow has been around for a long time. However there is a large volume of players who now play on much larger screen spaces and to use default UI on my own monitor for example is to condemn myself to panning all the way cross my screen to see important information like cool down usage and the bottom from player/target frames at the top. It just didn't work.
I set out to rectify the main issues I had.
- The elements of the UI I cared about were simply too far apart to view at one time with ease.
- The UI itself didn’t really compliment its individual parts; even though each part of the UI performed its function, the way it displayed information on the screen it worked against itself.
- The UI took up far too much screen space.
To address these problems I came up with the idea of aligning all the information I really needed into a single vertical column of information. Displaying information this way really does two things. 1. It defines a space within which to build content. 2. Because of the nature of the space defined it allows you to easily set up a hierarchy of content.
I wont go into a huge amount of nitty gritty detail about how my UI is set up farther than what I've already discussed but onto the tidbits I added to really customize this UI specifically for my hunter. I've custom coded Eventhorizon for survival and marksmanship, if you don't know the addon its used to display rotations in a bar format. The current setup for survival is Black Arrow, Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Steady Shot. For Marksman, Black Arrow disappears, explosive is replaced by Chimera, and Arcane shot is added below Aimed. (Their rotations respectively). Additionally for survival I have added some custom dogtags for lock and load. To the left of the player frame Text will appare within parenthesis, first in yellow, then in orange, and fianlly red coutnign down the uptime of loack and load. I did this simply because I didn't feel an addon like NeedToKnow or PowerAuras was really necessary for something so simple.
For more information or to download the UI simply click the image.
Primary Addons Used:
Pitbull4
Kgpanels
Eventhorizon
Prat
Sexymap
DBM
SLDataText