Reader UI of the Week: Jake's Larger UI
by Mathew McCurley 
Feb 16th 2010 at 11:00AM
This week on Reader UI of the Week I've decided to focus on helping people in need of user interface tips for smaller screen resolutions or the need to have buttons larger, as you will see in just a short time. It's kind of like Dear Abby, except with more video games and less mouthy grandmas. The Community has been great in its response to sending in your user interfaces, so keep them coming! Without further ado, let's go a user interfacin'...
I would like to use the Reader UI of the Week column occasionally to offer advice as well as showcase some of the ideas and innovations people come up with. I also like to take a look at the community's user interfaces that present a solution to a common problem. This week is one of those weeks. Jake wrote to me with a very interesting issue. Let's see if I can help out a little.
Jake writes:
While most people like to make their UI small as possible, I need it to be big and bold as I am legally blind (I have Keratoconus, which means cornea's are cone shaped and thin.) Which is why I make sure everything that contains text is nice and bold, I play most games at 1024x768 res (including my desktop)
The Addon's that can be seen in the screen shot are:
CTmod - Download at [WoWInterface]
Bagnon - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Sexymap - Download at [Curse]
Fubar - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Gatherer - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Quartz - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Prat - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Recount - Download at [Curse]
MoneyFu - Download at [WoWInterface]
PerformanceFU - Download at [WoWInterface]
Healbot - Download at [Curse]
Thank you for the e-mail, Jake. The plethora of addons available for World of Warcraft do not favor smaller screens or scaled up UIs on the whole. As more and more addons are taking up more screen space, the less area we have to see the game itself. However, there are many tools and tips that we can discuss to help you get more of your screen back, while allowing you to keep the UI scaled up to meet your own needs.
Jake's UI looks pretty good and is scaled up appropriately for his needs, but let's throw out some general tips to see if we can help reclaim some vital screen real estate.
Tip 1: OPie
OPie is THE addon for players who want to save a lot of button space while still retaining excellent functionality at their fingertips. WoW.com has previously done an entire AddOn Spotlight on OPie, but I believe it bears mentioning again. OPie is an addon that creates radial menus for player specified abilities using easily customizable rings. The player sets a button command to bring up the radial menu and then selects the ability off of the ring. OPie is excellent for buttons you do not use all the time, like summoning spells, portals and tradeskills. Creating a tradeskill OPie ring relieves you of a good amount of bar space on the sides of your user interface.
Tip 2: Unnecessary Buttons and Action Bar Addons
Bartender4 - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Dominos - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
ButtonFacade - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
In addition, if you haven't remapped the buttons, I would remove the Menu buttons, or at least scale them down. Most of the Menu buttons are bound to keys (C: Character Info, P: Spellbook, N: Talents, Y: Achievements, O: Social, Guild and Raids, I: Dungeon Finder, etc.) so trimming the bar down in size or removing it altogether might be a good way to save some space. The only downside is not having the Help Request button.
Tip 3: Simpler Unit Frames
Pitbull - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Shadowed Unit Frames - Download at [Curse] or [WoWInterface]
Tip 4: Quick Suggestions
Here are a few quick suggestions that can help to save space. First, if you're 80, remove your experience bar. Using an addon like Dominos will give you a floating experience bar that can be hidden easily. I'm torn on the reputation bar. I personally do not have mine up since reputation is just a keyboard click away (Pressing "U" opens reputations by default), so I usually disable it. That one is up to you. Second, integrating your cast bar onto your unit frame is a great way to save space. Most unit frame addons allow the player to do this, and it can be scaled larger just like the health and mana pools.
Hopefully some of these tips will help out people who need to allocate a little more space to make your buttons bigger, or for people having to use smaller screen size resolutions. Remember, just a little tinkering with the options in an addon can provide some excellent results.
And Finally...
First of all, I would like to say thank you to all the readers who sent me so much awesome feedback on my user interface from last week. We seem to have a really large and dedicated user interface group here, and I'd love to foster that as best I can. So please, keep sending in suggestions and tips, and especially addons you would like to see profiled as well as your UIs so we have tons of fodder for this column. Second, many people asked for a UI pack of my personal UI, which I will see about doing in the near future. Third, and finally, many people brought up an excellent concern - a user interface at rest is not indicative of the cluttered UI while in combat. Truthfully, the only difference in my UI in combat and in a raid setting is that Grid shows all of my raid members, and there is fairly unobtrusive scrolling combat text to the sides of my character. Otherwise, the user interface remains the same.
Interested in getting the most out of your user interface? Come back once a week for more examples of reader UIs. For more details on individual addons, check out Addon Spotlight, your source for everything addon-related.
Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Deathknighty Feb 16th 2010 11:09AM
This isn't quite UI related per se, but it is to do with Addons, which is pretty much the same ball park. What I'm wondering is, if I have GearScore, to know what mine is in case a rl wants to know it before I get invited, then will downloading GearScoreBreaker prevent me from being able to see my own GearScore?
If so, should I just toggle GSB off whenever I want to check?
jakedamuss Feb 16th 2010 11:28AM
people should be using elitist group instead of gearscore
Thodin Feb 16th 2010 11:29AM
If you're using GSB you must be against using GearScore, right? Why would you want to go on a raid if the leader is requiring GS? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of using GearScoreBreaker?
Evandrial Feb 16th 2010 11:32AM
solution to your problem: don't use gearscore, don't run with people who require gearscore checks
traptinacivicsi Feb 16th 2010 11:44AM
Why even use gearscore breaker if you are actually interested your actual gearscore?
You do realize GSB doesn't really work anymore either right? And that all it really did was keep people from getting into groups more so than without it?
Get gear > Get higher gearscore > Get gear
You should not be entering instances you are not geared for, and you will never run into a problem with gearscore. If someone else is demanding a high GS for a raid, make a new one, screw that guy.
Beatphreek Feb 16th 2010 11:46AM
Why on earth would you use GS Breaker at all... that's been patched with the latest GS version. Plus if you are going to go ahead and give a RL your gear score to get into a raid then why on earth poison everyone else's data in the first place? Take a stand or quit trying to break stuff. Either tell the potential PUG to inspect you if he would like to know your gear choices or quit trying to maliciously ruin other people's tools.
traptinacivicsi Feb 16th 2010 11:48AM
Yeah or you could follow Evandrial's advice and get groups composed of a good chuck of players who either don't know the fights too well/at all (when the info/video is easily googled), or don't have adequate gear to handle the place (when things are easily crafted and bought.).
Sounds like a blast :D
P.S. I have a great time pugging raids and events, we just, you know... get em done :P
Hoggersbud Feb 16th 2010 12:06PM
All gearscorebreaker does is spam the data channels used by gearscore. If you mouse over yourself, you get a gearscore from well, inspecting yourself.
So you can get a valid gearscore.
Of course, you probably shouldn't use an addon like GSB anyway, but that's another discussion.
Deathknighty Feb 16th 2010 12:26PM
@Thodin
I want to know what it is for raids, where it is fair enough to want to know GS, especially at higher tiers of raiding, but I want GSB to piss off the assholes who spam it in a heroic.
@traptinacivicsi
Actually, I checked it, it's over 5k, which is probably good enough to do ICC 10, which is what I'm aiming for.
@Hoggersbud
Great, that was helpful, thanks. :)
Hoggersbud Feb 16th 2010 12:45PM
>but I want GSB to piss off the assholes who spam it in a heroic.<
You are wasting your time then, as it does NOTHING to them. They're right next to you, they aren't relying on GSB's data channels.
So yeah, it's not pissing off those folks, they aren't being impacted by the addon at all.
You want to do something about those folks in heroics? try a macro to yell at them, it'll at least stand a chance of accomplishing something.
Deathknighty Feb 16th 2010 1:01PM
Ah. Damn. :(
Finnicks Feb 16th 2010 2:05PM
What pisses me off about this whole Gearscore debacle is how people think it sucks because it "can be abused". Really? Seriously?
These are the people who want to sue McDonalds because it made them fat. Potential for abuse does NOT mean it's bad.
The people who abuse Gearscore are bad. The addon itself isn't.
And don't give me the old "it doesn't take enchants/itemization in account" arguments. The latest version of Gearscore does ALL these things. It analyzes your gear in the same way Be Imba or WoW-Heroes does and if you look at the /gs inspection screen for a person, it actually gives you 3-4 gear scores, one for each potential spec/role the class can play.
Most classes get 3 gearscore bars on the GS inspect screen now, one for each spec, with a % scale showing how optimally itemized they are for that spec. Druids and DKs get 4 bars, FeralDPS/FeralTank/Resto/Balance for druids and Frost/Blood/Unholy/Tank for DKs. Mousing over each bar shows you how the person's current gear itemization influences the Gearscore for that spec. There's also a large box below the bars showing the complete summation in list form of all the stats that the character is getting from its current gear.
I require minimum GearScores for my raids, because it does a good job of accurately reflecting the quality of a person's gear. I also boot people from my raids who underperform despite great gear. I also invite people who don't meet my base GS expectations if I know they are capable of outstanding performance despite it.
Hate the abuser, not the addon.
Deathknighty Feb 16th 2010 5:12PM
I totally agree with you. I want GearScore for the people who'll use it properly, and GearScoreBreaker for the abusers (and don't worry, I have no intention of using it in a high end raiding environment).
zetathran Feb 16th 2010 11:24AM
Isn't there a slider in the interface options that scales the UI? I used it to make mine smaller because I figured that once I learned my keybinds I didn't really need to see the action bars themselves so much. I'm not sure if it would make it large enough for the need here, and I don't know if it would work for non standard UI as well, but it's pretty useful for fine-tuning just how much real estate you want for either UI or environment.
Westane Feb 16th 2010 11:33AM
I'm albino and thus suffer from the same condition (20/270 irreparable visual acuity) so I have to deal with the same UI limitations. As a tank that causes issues, as I like to have a lot of information immediately available.
realityworx Feb 16th 2010 12:16PM
Having important information on the screen is .. well, important. I have found that a good combination for this as a tank is the following mods:
tidy plates with threat plates in tank mode;
grid with GridStatusThreat, GridStatusRaidDebuff, GridDynamicLayout
clique (to shift click taunts and different paladin hands)
This combination (with a bit of setup) keeps a lot of the important information all in two parts of the screen. The nameplates over the enemies show your threat level, and you can see the building threat level on your party/raidmates.
Good luck.
-Shi@US-Lightbringer
Pyromelter Feb 16th 2010 3:47PM
I'd like to recommend you get Tidy Plates, and it's addons Clean Plates and Threat Plates. Frankly I think everyone should have these mods, whether you are a tank, healer, or dps... it gives you visual threat info right on the mobs, and you can customize it of course. Very easy to use too imo.
jakedamuss Feb 16th 2010 11:35AM
Thanks for the Tips, would be nice to get rid of the summons and trade skill menu's I have going down the side of my screen.
Also I should try out the unit frames as sometimes I rely on guildies telling me when the boss is going to go into his next phase cause I cannot see the percent without putting my head onto my screen, lol
Jierda Feb 16th 2010 11:37PM
Haha Hey jake :D! its war :D!
Healabit Feb 17th 2010 7:16AM
Deadly Boss Mods may also help you with the last issue. It gives audio and big flashing text warnings about thing like a change in phase, bombs or ghouls about to explode, etc. It will even give you a loud warning if you are standing in the fire ;)
Its very useful to me when I have healing induced tunnel vision :D