Reader UI of the Week: Andrea's UI
World of Warcraft allows an unprecedented ability to modify the user interface to meet our needs. Each week WoW Insider will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send it to us, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@gmail.com.
Andrea, whom you may already know from the blog Altoholics Are Us (where you can find more UI discussion), sent us this UI. Says Andrea, "Since I play a lot of alts, having one that works for them all is important to me." And how does one keep these many addons up to date and working? Andrea also advises WowMatrix, a third party application which will automagically download and updated versions of any addons you're using.
For the details on the exact addons involved, read on!
The addons used to make the above include the following, as described by Andrea (with the occasional addition):
SpartanUI: This makes the pretty bar display (the gray bar along the bottom of the screeninto which other UI elements fit). It's a complete package, including unitframes and button bars (Bartender4, to be specific), amongst other things. It's self-configuring, and requires no help from the user -- just install and go.
AtlasLoot: Displays the possible drops from all bosses, and gives information on badge items, rep items, and PvP gear. I use this to research which instance I'd like to go to, and what gear I am aiming for.
Auctioneer: An addon that scans the auction house and keeps a database of prices for you, which you can use as a reference for posting your own auctions later. (Though it sounds rather dry, it is a must-have for anyone interested in playing the AH.)
Bartender4: If you downloaded SpartanUI, it is included with the package. However, if you didn't, you can get the same effect on your own using this addon. It allows you to completely customize the size, shape, and location of your button bars.
Bejeweled: You likely didn't even notice that I had this one. I love Bejeweled, and now I get to play it whenever I am dead or in flight. Also has its own achievements.
BigWigs: A mod that displays the cooldowns and abilities of dungeon and raid bosses. Helpful when you want to know what to expect. (You may need to download additional mods to get warnings for older dungeons and raid content.)
Cartographer: A map mod that shows all locations and places of interest in a nice clear and easy to read manner.
Combuctor: An all in one bag, Successor to Bagnon.
Decursive: Purify/Cleanse/Dispell/Etc for dummies. Puts a small clickable box on the screen when a decurse is needed. Just click the box!
Elkano's BuffBars: Replacement bars that display buffs/debuffs in a larger, easier to read row of bars. (Along the right-hand side of the screen.)
Enchantrix - Displays what items are likely to disenchant into. Wonderful for deciding to DE or sell. (Often bundled with Auctioneer.)
FuBar – A toolbar that displays across the top (and/or bottom) of the screen that you can add a variety of informational modules (or "Fus") to. This UI includes:
HealBot: A one-click healing mod. This makes it possible to never deselect a target but still heal others. Assign heals to a certain mouse button and go.
IceHUD: Heads Up Display located in the middle of the UI. Gives information about your own Health/Mana/Energy/Rage and also gives information on pets and enemies.
Informant: Displays detailed information in the tooltip. (Also often bundled with Auctioneer.
Lightheaded: Attaches to your quest log and gives you extra information about each quest from Wowhead.
MikScrollingBattleText: Scrolling combat text that appears on either side of the HUD. Includes information that happens to you, to the mob, to your pet, and displays crits. (Though the default interface has its own scrolling combat text options, third-party addons tend to offer more customization options.)
Omen: Threat meter. Shows how far ahead (or behind) you are in threat on a specific mob. Useful for avoiding pulling aggro.
PallyPower: Buffing made easy for Paladins. Assign what class gets what buff and click on the box.
Prat: Chat modifier mod. Allows for more customization of the chat frame.
QuestHelper: Gives information about where quest-related mobs and items are. Also includes routing to help you quest efficiently. Goes best with Cartographer.
RatingBuster: Takes all of the Agi/Str/Mp5/Etc on pieces of gear and converts it to a easy to understand info in a tooltip below the item. A must have for anyone!
Recount: A damage meter that displays who does how much damage/healing/etc (and can also easily communicate this data to others). Useful to seeing how you do compared to others.
tekJunkSeller: Allows you to sell all gray items to a vendor upon opening a merchant window. Requires no extra action.
TomTom: Displays an arrow pointing the way to your next objective for a quest or to a waypoint you enter in. Works great with QuestHelper.
WIM: Takes your tells and puts them into instant messenger style windows.
That's all for this week! But with this, and many other recent UIs, using Elkano's BuffBars, we'd love to see some UIs with different buff mods -- or using Elkano in different ways. Have an unusual or interesting buff display? Send it our way at readerui@gmail.com!
Interested in getting the most out of your user interface? Check back once a week for more examples of reader UIs! Or for more details on individual addons, check out AddOn Spotlight.
Andrea, whom you may already know from the blog Altoholics Are Us (where you can find more UI discussion), sent us this UI. Says Andrea, "Since I play a lot of alts, having one that works for them all is important to me." And how does one keep these many addons up to date and working? Andrea also advises WowMatrix, a third party application which will automagically download and updated versions of any addons you're using.
For the details on the exact addons involved, read on!
The addons used to make the above include the following, as described by Andrea (with the occasional addition):
SpartanUI: This makes the pretty bar display (the gray bar along the bottom of the screeninto which other UI elements fit). It's a complete package, including unitframes and button bars (Bartender4, to be specific), amongst other things. It's self-configuring, and requires no help from the user -- just install and go.
AtlasLoot: Displays the possible drops from all bosses, and gives information on badge items, rep items, and PvP gear. I use this to research which instance I'd like to go to, and what gear I am aiming for.
Auctioneer: An addon that scans the auction house and keeps a database of prices for you, which you can use as a reference for posting your own auctions later. (Though it sounds rather dry, it is a must-have for anyone interested in playing the AH.)
Bartender4: If you downloaded SpartanUI, it is included with the package. However, if you didn't, you can get the same effect on your own using this addon. It allows you to completely customize the size, shape, and location of your button bars.
Bejeweled: You likely didn't even notice that I had this one. I love Bejeweled, and now I get to play it whenever I am dead or in flight. Also has its own achievements.
BigWigs: A mod that displays the cooldowns and abilities of dungeon and raid bosses. Helpful when you want to know what to expect. (You may need to download additional mods to get warnings for older dungeons and raid content.)
Cartographer: A map mod that shows all locations and places of interest in a nice clear and easy to read manner.
Combuctor: An all in one bag, Successor to Bagnon.
Decursive: Purify/Cleanse/Dispell/Etc for dummies. Puts a small clickable box on the screen when a decurse is needed. Just click the box!
Elkano's BuffBars: Replacement bars that display buffs/debuffs in a larger, easier to read row of bars. (Along the right-hand side of the screen.)
Enchantrix - Displays what items are likely to disenchant into. Wonderful for deciding to DE or sell. (Often bundled with Auctioneer.)
FuBar – A toolbar that displays across the top (and/or bottom) of the screen that you can add a variety of informational modules (or "Fus") to. This UI includes:
HealBot: A one-click healing mod. This makes it possible to never deselect a target but still heal others. Assign heals to a certain mouse button and go.
IceHUD: Heads Up Display located in the middle of the UI. Gives information about your own Health/Mana/Energy/Rage and also gives information on pets and enemies.
Informant: Displays detailed information in the tooltip. (Also often bundled with Auctioneer.
Lightheaded: Attaches to your quest log and gives you extra information about each quest from Wowhead.
MikScrollingBattleText: Scrolling combat text that appears on either side of the HUD. Includes information that happens to you, to the mob, to your pet, and displays crits. (Though the default interface has its own scrolling combat text options, third-party addons tend to offer more customization options.)
Omen: Threat meter. Shows how far ahead (or behind) you are in threat on a specific mob. Useful for avoiding pulling aggro.
PallyPower: Buffing made easy for Paladins. Assign what class gets what buff and click on the box.
Prat: Chat modifier mod. Allows for more customization of the chat frame.
QuestHelper: Gives information about where quest-related mobs and items are. Also includes routing to help you quest efficiently. Goes best with Cartographer.
RatingBuster: Takes all of the Agi/Str/Mp5/Etc on pieces of gear and converts it to a easy to understand info in a tooltip below the item. A must have for anyone!
Recount: A damage meter that displays who does how much damage/healing/etc (and can also easily communicate this data to others). Useful to seeing how you do compared to others.
tekJunkSeller: Allows you to sell all gray items to a vendor upon opening a merchant window. Requires no extra action.
TomTom: Displays an arrow pointing the way to your next objective for a quest or to a waypoint you enter in. Works great with QuestHelper.
WIM: Takes your tells and puts them into instant messenger style windows.
That's all for this week! But with this, and many other recent UIs, using Elkano's BuffBars, we'd love to see some UIs with different buff mods -- or using Elkano in different ways. Have an unusual or interesting buff display? Send it our way at readerui@gmail.com!
Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week








Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Karilyn Feb 23rd 2009 8:06PM
WowMatrix has been noted as having a keylogger built into it (It'll record people's username and Password if they click the "Launch WoW Now" button instead of opening WoW manually), and selling account information to gold selling companies.
It's BAD
Don't encourage using it WoW Insider D:
Tannaka Feb 23rd 2009 8:10PM
How can I download her complete UI?
kasprague84 Feb 23rd 2009 8:12PM
I don't advise using WoWMatrix either. They don't credit mod authors and they steal profit from Curse and WoWInterface.
Ichthus Feb 23rd 2009 8:25PM
Completely bogus claims. Blizzard has a hacks team which would either disable WoWmatrix from being able to do this by killing the key logger process or put up a major announcement that WoWmatrix has a keylogger.
There are anti-hack programs built into WoW. WI has done several articles on them.
Hakker Feb 23rd 2009 8:52PM
This is complete bullshit. Multiple people as well as myself have run full scan's of WoWmatrix while running and idle and have found no evidence of any shady activity. Check your facts before you believe trolls on the forum.
Jyotai Feb 23rd 2009 9:02PM
The people at wowmatrix have their own answer to this accusation:
http://www.wowmatrix.com/safe-computing.html
As is I've yet to find any credible claims that there's a keylogger in their software. I've been scanning the files on my Mac, and I can't find any code in there that does anything odd. And I've looked directly where some claims stated it was storing usernames ( the LibDogTag files ).
So far nothing.
CannedBread Feb 23rd 2009 10:22PM
WoWMatrix may be virus-free, but the fact that it skims ad revenue from sites like curse and wowace, and the fact that it's actually kind of cumbersome turn me off of it.
And that's assuming that it's legitimate and not shady.
Pete Feb 23rd 2009 9:26PM
Personally, I love WowMatrix and can't imagine keeping my mods up to date without it.
Quick summary of the cons though...
Legit:
* Does not display information, status (beta/release), warnings, comments, tutorials, etc. about the mods. This is why I personally do not recommend using WowMatrix to _find_ addons, but for me it doesn't limit it as a tool to keep things up to date.
* Will cause your machine to download directly from Curse and/or WowInterface without displaying the advertisements on those sites, denying those companies pay-per-impression revenues. Personally I'm not a big fanboi of either site, and would be fine with seeing everyone switch to WowAce or Google Code or Codematrix anyways, which might happen if either "major" site chooses to block WowMatrix in the future.
* Lists mods without the authors' explicit permission and is slow to remove mods on authors' requests. For me, WowMatrix is useful enough that I'm likely to choose a competing mod that IS listed on WowMatrix over a mod that isn't.
NOT Legit:
* Keylogger claims. Many, many people have been using this since release and there are zero credible reports of a keylogger ever existing in this app.
Maybe:
* Authors continue to claim that they are not credited for their work. I could swear that the author's name is listed among the information in the bottom pane whenever an addon is selected, but I'm at work and can't check right now.
Trelteth Feb 24th 2009 3:19AM
You are correct. I had my account keylogged a few months ago after using WowMatrix. It updated an addon that had a keylogger attached. My account was hacked shortly after.
I DO NOT recommend using WoWMatrix!
toddcore Feb 23rd 2009 10:43PM
The claims of WoWMatrix having a keylogger built in to the software are very likely erroneous. However, more than once their poor validation processes have led to malicious users submitting supposed updates for mods that were, in fact, keyloggers or other software with ill intent.
It's for this very reason that WoWInterface does not currently offer an add-on update utility. It requires massive oversight to be completely sure that every add-on your passing on to your users is safe and WoWMatrix has been proven to lack that oversight.
Soccer Feb 24th 2009 7:55AM
I personally use the Curse Client, it works just fine. It does not install from WoWInterface but for the 2 add-ons I get there, I do not care. Also, it has a find add-on list built-in, and there are buttons on curse.com to automatically launch it if you find an add-on you like.
Kondharz Feb 27th 2009 9:18AM
You are either:
A. Full of it.
B. A damn fine troll. (Sure got me NERDRAGING)
C. Ignorant.
The ONLY way that wowmatrix could be considered a keylogger is if some author updated his or her addon with a keylogger.
Or someone claiming to be the author.
Guess who you have to blame then.
Whoever uploaded it.
And not wowmatrix.
And stealing profit from Curse or WoWInterface?
Really?
That just sounds like butthurt there.
havitech Feb 23rd 2009 8:12PM
Very unorganized and filled with wasted space, in my opinion. I'd recommend the addon Align, so at least everything doesn't just look like like it was thrown in a vacant space.
And I've heard some sketchy things about WoWMatrix. Apparently, they download their addons from other sites and cause those sites lost revenue in ads. (While they get money from their own ads.) I've never used it myself, but I would advise people to look for more info about it before they use it themselves.
kasprague84 Feb 23rd 2009 8:14PM
I would agree. This UI is terrible. And them promoting WoWMatrix is even worse.
Pfooti Feb 23rd 2009 8:25PM
Actually, almost all addons can be found either on curse or wowinterface. I just created accounts there and added the addons I use to my favorites list. Every so often, I go through and download the latest version of anything on my favorites list that's updated. Curse even emails me when something updates. Way easier than running a program like wowmatrix or curse client, both of which don't have the granularity of control that I like. Alas, wowaceupdater was the one true program.
Pfooti Feb 23rd 2009 8:27PM
Oh, and the UI is decent (I kind of like SpartanUI), although I dislike using both unitframes and a HUD. The whole point to a HUD is to replace your player and target unit frames. I also detest the comic-book font for SCT, but that's just a personal preference.
Flairy Feb 23rd 2009 8:51PM
This is the worst pre-packaged UI ever :(
Xora Feb 23rd 2009 8:56PM
Very poor choice in promoting WowMatrix.
Most addon authors hate it as it never asks permission to host their addons and don't remove them when asked.
Plus it never has the most up to date releases like Curse or WowInterface
Jyotai Feb 23rd 2009 8:58PM
The UI does what it sets out to do - be something that can remain constant across all of that player's alts.
That said, it would be nice to see screenshots of it in use on very different kinds of toons.
I've been working on putting together my own UI for the same purpose - as I have some 36 toons. But my goal is to go minimalist - I'm trying to see if I can even go without having an actionbar at all. Not going to be easy to pull off. I've got my DK's keybinds memorized, and my resto druid, but I think it will be harder with my warrior, and beyond that - the other 30-odd toons, its going to start breaking down.
The more different things you do, the more junk you end up needing on that screen. At least this user has a reason for her clutter. When I see UIs this cluttered on people who are dedicated to a single main, that's when I raise my eyebrows.
CannedBread Feb 23rd 2009 10:22PM
This UI is, well, aggressively mediocre.
There's a lot of wasted space, it seems kind of confused, and there are a lot of configuration tweaks that would make it look better (I.E. making the buffs smaller but using a more visible font for them to conserve space), there is also some redundancies that waste memory and more space
I like one-section bottom-heavy UIs, but I prefer them scaled way down and for everything to be somewhat transparent except for the minimap.
IMO if you really know what you're doing and you know your keybindings/macros/layout and they're set up well, you should be able to play without focusing on anything except for the environment around you and the task you're on, not where your buttons are.