Reader UI of the Week: Three UIs for your consideration
by Elizabeth Harper 
Feb 9th 2009 at 11:00AM
Our Reader UI of the Week feature has been on ice for a while now, but is back by popular demand. To make up for lost time, today we're going to feature three, count 'em, three different UIs followers of our Twitter feed sent in. Though there's plenty we might say about each UI, we're just going to toss out the raw data for your consideration. Is there more to say? Let us know in the comments! We'll get started with the above from Byron, who tells us, "This is a modified and customized version of DaedhirUI, which you featured a couple months ago. The main addons I use are Dominos, Pitbull, and Healbot." He's using Ampere, Atlas, AtlasLoot, Buffalo, Chatter, Class Timer, CowTip 3.0, Deadly Boss Mods, Decursive, Dominos, eePanels2, EnhTooltip, Fubar 3.5, Good Damage Font 2.0, Healbot, Informant, Omen3, OmniCC, Pitbull 3.0, Portfolio, Postal, Quartz, Rating Buster, Red Range, Scrolling Combat Text, Sexy Map, and Stubby.
Two more UIs -- and your comments -- are still to come, so read on!
Above we have the interface of Daninkai of Illidan (Alliance). He tells us, "I've tried to incorporate the functionality and informative aspects of my addons in as neat a presentation as possible. One of the things I dislike about a lot of UI's that I've seen is that there are bars and windows in places that hamper vision, and in Wrath raiding, where situational awareness is everything, visibility is one of my top priorities. I also like things to look uniform, so I tried to balance the placement of my addons according to traditional design principles because I find it to be less distracting. I've also placed things in places where I'm likely to find them quickly."
Daninkal is using Bartender, ButtonFacade with Caith skin, Chatter, CowTip, DBM, Decursive, eePanels2, ElkBuffBars, FuBar, FuBar_ClockFu, FuBar_InstanceInfoFu, FuBar_MoneyFu, FuBar_PortalFu, FuBar_SimpleDurabilityFu, Grid with GridManaBars, ItemRack, MikScrollingBattleText, Minimalist, Omen, OmniCC, PitBull, Quartz, Recount, and SexyMap.
Have your own UI that you'd like to show off? We're specifically looking for some interesting Death Knight Uis to feature next week -- so if you're a Death Knight with a custom user interface, send us your screenshots! E-mail readerui@gmail.com with a screenshot (or screenshots!), a list of the addons you're using, and anything else you have to say about your interface. You may find yourself featured here next week!
Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Warwench Feb 9th 2009 11:08AM
Nice to see :)
if your a tank, looking for great tank ui's.
some of the best right here -->
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f211/
Josh Feb 9th 2009 11:17AM
Listen guys, I think this is a really great idea, and it would be awesome to see this feature every week or even bi-weekly...But you're missing some vital info.
It's great that you're featuring one or two screenshots of each UI, and it goes without saying that including the NAMES of all addons in each UI is a MUST. But just listing them off in a wall of text leaves a lot of guesswork and vagueness to readers.
Please, please, PLEASE do one of two things:
1) Feature a second, cloned screenshot with your own markups and arrows that identify and label each addon (this could even be done with MS Paint!).
or
2) Go into a little greater detail when listing off the addons in each screenshot. Maybe a bullet list? ( example: *Dominoes - Action Bar replacement) Or, if that would take up too much page space, perhaps just add a few words after you name each addon that describe what it does.
And as a staple, you might wanna insert links to the two major WoW addon sites at the end of each post, so users can go search for them and you won't get a ton of people asking "Where can I get that?" -- i.e. curse.com and wowui.worldofwar.net
Otherwise I think this is an AWESOME ongoing column and I can't wait to see each installment. But please differentiate all those addons somehow!
Josh Feb 9th 2009 11:20AM
By the way, I'm mainly referring to the first two screenshots and descriptions. The third one was a little more on par, but even that will leave a lot of people clueless unless they are addon junkies.
Thanks
SunwellVialist Feb 9th 2009 11:37AM
I agree with Josh.
Awesome feature, but, especially to people new to WoW and trying to get properly set up, more information would be helpful.
Yeng Feb 9th 2009 11:38AM
In the past they've been a lot more in-depth. I'll assume they will go back to that format and that this one just didn't have the level of detail because it was a 3-in-1.
Will Feb 9th 2009 11:24AM
One of the best things you can do with any interface is to go into the options menu and "Scale down" the default UI, it makes everything scale down smaller increasing visibility, also setting the max camera distance farther.
Bartender is my favourite UI addon, letting you move button bars anywhere, any number of buttons horizontal/verticle and "key bindings" so that you can just hover your mouse over a button and press the key you'd like it to be bound to (even modifiers like Shift+E etc..)
http://www.wowconfidential.com
Josh Feb 9th 2009 11:33AM
Good tip about global rescaling. I've used that a few times myself to clean up the interface; even make tooltips less obtrusive when you're using monsters like Auc-Informant.
Bartender though? Really? I've used Bartender, and I found Dominoes (formerly Bongos) to be the best one out there. The memory footprint is sooooo small compared to other action bar addons, and it does almost everything that even the bloated ones do. I highly suggest it to anyone who wants a powerful, yet simple and light action bar mod.
Josh Feb 9th 2009 11:44AM
By the way, a developer named "gagou" just released the beta for a VERY promising QuestsFu replacement/improvement (LDB data-source). QuestsFu has been a fan favorite for years, and the community has been struggling to fix it with each WoW patch that comes out, but this guy has finally stepped up and coded a brand new addon!
He's even working on Lightheaded support for an upcoming release. If you've never used QuestsFu, it's probably one of the best quest log/tracker replacement addons you'll ever find. Check out his vision, called tomQuests2:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tomquest2.aspx
You just need a LDB display addon like Fortress or NinjaPanel (or if you use FuBar, you can just snag Broker2FuBar from Curse to use any LDB with FuBar).
Nadril Feb 9th 2009 11:53AM
I always did like the "reader UI of the week" section. My suggestion would be perhaps post download links to said UI's in question? A lot of times I'll see a great UI here but be unsure of how they set it up.
ChiperSoft Feb 10th 2009 4:17PM
The best UIs are usually custom made and not available to be downloaded. Part of the fun in building a UI is customizing it to how you need it, and learning to use each addon to it's fullest. Once you know the addons the UI features, you can duplicate pretty much any screenshot.
garfunkel Feb 9th 2009 11:54AM
Very Happy to see this return! I agree with fellow posters here, more information would be great to show exactly what addon is what.....
On the other hand, I'd encourage players to just try them all, play with all options, the more you do, the more you'll understand.......customization is fun!
I still have a some work to do, but from the advice found here on WI, I have gone from standard UI to......
http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/oo115/Garfunkel_the_Hunter/Warcraft/WoWScrnShot_011909_203121.jpg
Please keep this column in rotation!
cheers'
Soccerdude Feb 9th 2009 12:07PM
Does anyone know where I can get an up and working AutoProfit, I had one that has not been updated for 100 days now and is not working with the current patch. Please tell me a site as I loved that add-on.
Josh Feb 9th 2009 12:19PM
If you have already checked the big two sites (and made sure to read the comments for links to off-site fixes or fan updates), you can always try the old "change the .toc" method. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Just open up the main .toc file in the addons folder with notepad, and at the top you'll see a short string "## Interface: 2xxxx" where the "x's" are the version number...you'll want to change that to whatever the newest patch version number is, which in this case would be "## Interface: 30000" (without the quotes). Then save the .toc file, overwriting the old one. Take a look in your other .toc files for addons you know are working, and verify that they are ## Interface: 30000, or in the future, whatever that string is, just change the broken addon to what the working ones have.
This is a crude fix and it doesn't always work, but I've salvaged quite a few addons this way. Just depends on how much the API changed between patches.
Josh Feb 9th 2009 12:31PM
LOL, nevermind everything I just wrote -- I didn't notice until just now what AutoProfit was. Dude, there are TONS of simple little addons that do this, and more.
A real simple one for just adding a "Sell Junk" button to the vendor frame is:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/sell-junk.aspx
It just sells all your greys. Slightly configurable, I think. There are a lot more just like it, and even more that offer additional features... Just offhand: Junk!, Sell-O-Matic, and Junkie (newest version at http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10607-Junkie.html)... but there are like, at least a dozen more...Google is your friend....Searching Curse and WoWUI are your friends....
ron Feb 9th 2009 12:06PM
Let's see... in no particular order:
* FuBar is fail. Is going the way of the dodo. LDB is where it's at now. Most authors of new addons are only coding native LDB support now because it takes so much less memory and is less buggy and simpler to use.
* That tree in the first screenshot has 2 different sets of raidframes. Fail. I'd love to see his memory usage.
* More than three or four lines in your threat meter is totally unnecessary. Just clutters things up and takes up extra brainwidth.
* Second screenshot is a lot better, much less cluttered and ridiculous. Hope he doesn't leave Recount up like that all the time, though. Also suffers from the "too many bars in Omen" problem.
* Third shot is the best of the three because of its simplicity and cleanliness, but it's hard to see what it actually looks like outside of a raid environment. Also, QuestHelper is fail and so are people who use it.
Mastique Feb 9th 2009 12:34PM
Oh dear ron, please forgive us for not living up to your expectations. Since we cause so much fail, we do not deserve to be listed on the same page on the interwebz, let alone the same planet as your holiness.
Get the frak over yourself. Your post was your opinion of course, and I respected that up until the point where you indicated that people who use Questhelper are fail. Its fine if you don't like a certain UI, but if others do, who are you to insinuate that they are of a lesser calibur than you?
You should take a step down off of the pretty pink pedestal you have placed yourself on and take a look around man. Stroking epic epeens causes cancer and possibly low sperm count.
Loser.
ron Feb 9th 2009 12:39PM
Case in point.
AyaJulia Feb 9th 2009 2:40PM
Remember kids, don't feed the trolls.
vhdblood Feb 9th 2009 3:09PM
That wasn't "Case in point." At least tell us why Questhelper is so much fail. Don't just make a list of a bunch of things and say people suck who use it that way.
Also, what's it to you if people don't mind a cluttered interface? That's their prerogative.
ron Feb 9th 2009 3:21PM
It should be self-evident, but fine.
QuestHelper is fail for several reasons.
1) It is a bloated disgusting monster with an enormous memory footprint and a huge CPU load. I used to run it, so I'm not talking out of my ass. You can get 10 fps back just by turning it off.
2) It is poorly coded. Ask any respected addon author to take a peek at it and they'll tell you the same. This is likely the cause of 1) above.
3) It works by collecting data from users and asking them to send it in. Because of this it is constantly getting bad data from private servers and sending people out to BFE on fool's errands.
4) And this is the biggest one: it reduces the game to a series of waypoints. People have always complained about MMORPGs being a rubbish because they are primarily comprised of fedex, collection, and "kill x of y" quests. QuestHelper exacerbates this problem. Turn your brain off and follow the shiny waypoint! As I said I used to run QH. I can't tell you how much more fun I started having when I turned it off.
If the last argument doesn't ring true for you (subjective as it is) then at least listen to the first three (factual) arguments and get something like TourGuide, which at least isn't a bloated monster.
And as are as clean, uncluttered UI's go... if you don't immediately see why they are a good thing, and to be preferred, then I can't help you. Trust me, though. There's a reason why OS X is so popular. I (among other things) design user interfaces for a living and simpler is always better. Always.