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The latest patch 5.4 newsReader 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 2 of 3)
jakedamuss Feb 17th 2010 2:50PM
thanks but I already use deadly boss mods, as a raider its a must have
Doodle Feb 16th 2010 11:36AM
Fading out bars with something like Bartender also frees up a lot of screen space. I fade out things like the menu, a bar with all of my consumables and little-used totems, and other things I don't need to see in combat but like to have available.
Darasen Feb 16th 2010 12:17PM
If I may, as someone who plays at 1024x768 myself due to a 17" CRT and not great eyesight, I would add a couple suggestions.
I do not know about Fubar, frankly, but I do know that the LDB/Broker framework, (similar to fubar) has an option that will show the micro-menu including the help request only when moused over. Also there is a bit that allows one to easily show or hide recount as needed. With broker there are many other plugins for the system that save some screen space as well as adding nice functionality. I use fortress myself to display my LDB add-ons as it allows me to place the individual plugins anywhere on the screen not necessarily on one bar unless desired.
For my mini-map I use Chinchilla. It has a really useful feature wherein you can hold a key and it will blow up the mini-map to a preset percentage. Very handy when looking for mining nodes or the like.
feniks9174 Feb 16th 2010 12:21PM
There is an AddOn (forget what it's called, hopefully someone can help out with that), that uses a hotkey to bring up a 5x5 grid of actionbars at the cursors location. Very handy for stuff like trade skills and summon spells that you need only situationally. Release the hotkey and the grid disappears. Both the hotkey and grid size are customizable.
PictoKong Feb 16th 2010 12:29PM
Nice UI for a Blind: Big buttons and Big vital information
As for me, my case is desesperate... I use around 55 addons ( UI, Castbars, Targets CD's, Arena frames, Mage procs watcher, Raid frames, Healing (Vuhdo in my case), RP addons (for my port casts, always nice to have a random chuck norris joke pop in your face ;), auto-selling junk, Autionner, Raid "must-have" addons (Omen, DBM and such), boss strats all mocroed in an addon for explaining fights (saves time), SCT, Actions bars, Decursive, Bagnon, and some others i cant remember.
Yes, trying to put all these addon in a minimalist UI was a real Pain, but i've done it and im quite proud (still have a problem, Ekano's buff bars dont filter Boss debuffs... in 25 mans, it all adds up and fills my screen, if anyone can give me advices, its apreciated)
Maybe i'll try and submit mine, looks nice
PictoKong Feb 16th 2010 12:37PM
Also, forgot to add, playing at 1280x1024
WTB edit button
Pyromelter Feb 16th 2010 3:49PM
You can blacklist any specific buff or debuff. You would have to manually set it, and make sure the debuff in elkano's is spelled exactly how the debuff is, but yeah, just go to the blacklist option under your debuffs and type in the individual debuffs you want to filter out.
Xhelius Feb 16th 2010 12:30PM
Stuf Unit Frames are excellent set of Unit Frames. Highly customizable, similar to DUF. Fairly low memory footprint also. The only UF imo.
As far as this whole GS thing goes. GS is just another tool of elitists to frown down upon the rest of the WoW players. I've seen more than my fair share of very high GS from people with no idea how to play their character. As always Skill > GS.
PictoKong Feb 16th 2010 12:36PM
To prove that, i did leaded a toravon (10 man) PuG with everyone's GS lower than me (im at 5k, i was expecting around 4.4k for everyone) and we did one shot him, no death, and fast enough.
Yes, everyone was not Overgeared and for most people that was their first toravon kill, and it's very rewarding when you know ppl ask for 6k GS for things like VoA 10 (because yes, toravon is a cake)
YES, skill > gear
Oh, and i dont use GS myself, some of my friend was checking if they were low enough hehe
Hoggersbud Feb 16th 2010 12:50PM
Skill does not completely trump gear though. Certain things about the game are not changed by skill. Better gear means you do hit harder, you do have more HP, or more mana, or more regen. There is no changing that.
Now you can improve both in theory, but let's face it, folks can't find out your skill without seeing you in action. But they can eliminate worrying about your gear rather quickly.
PictoKong Feb 16th 2010 12:54PM
@hogger
True, but who didnt saw guys needing full T9 for a naxx 10 run?
Yeah, you can't heal ICC in greens, but most people have enough common sense and know they are ready to hit that content, and that, there is no GS addons that will tell you thoses things
Hoggersbud Feb 16th 2010 1:47PM
>True, but who didnt saw guys needing full T9 for a naxx 10 run?<
I assume they're doing a speed run for badges/achievements/enchanting mats and respect their desire to do so. They obviously aren't running it for loot. Well, unless they're collecting things for looks I guess.
>Yeah, you can't heal ICC in greens, but most people have enough common sense and know they are ready to hit that content, and that, there is no GS addons that will tell you thoses things<
Actually there are, including the latest incarnation of Gearscore. Sure, it's an approximation, but it's at least as good as some people's common sense. Sad, but true.
But seriously, I just don't agree with folks who try to trumpet the value of skill over gear in response to their perception that folks are over-relying on gearscore. Sure, I can get the negative reaction to the gearscore problem, it's easy to understand why it's bad to boil things down to a single number and think that determines everything. But it's also (if not equally) bad to try the same thing with skill. Both skill and gear determine your ability to contribute to a raid, not to mention your class and spec. And even your latency.
Xhelius Feb 16th 2010 2:00PM
In the big scheme of things it's always much much easier to acquire gear than skill. Skill takes longer to learn especially if someone is playing multiple characters and trying to master all of them. With the LFD system is incredibly easy to gear now. From my viewpoint, most, not all, people are just concerned about gearing than skilling themselves to play their chosen class. There is a emphasis on gear. Yes you do hafta to have the gear. Ultimately you have to play your class.
itsthebrent Feb 16th 2010 2:44PM
As a Rogue, I can attest to the GS vs Skill problem.. in endgame, playing a Rogue really takes very little skill, asides from a memorization of a small rotation and knowledge of the fight(s), but our DPS output relies heavily on gear. The better the gear, the better the DPS. So higher GS can USUALLY means higher DPS, if the rotation is strong.
I'll probably get downrated for that, but I understand my class is a no brainer.. and at least I can admit it lol
Hoggersbud Feb 16th 2010 2:52PM
>In the big scheme of things it's always much much easier to acquire gear than skill.<
Obviously you haven't met my warrior friends who could never get a shield upgrade to save their lives... :P
They were quite thankful that there was a shield in regular HoR they could get to upgrade their crafted ones. Even if it took them days of running the place.
>From my viewpoint, most, not all, people are just concerned about gearing than skilling themselves to play their chosen class.<
From mine, gear in pugs is the one selector I can use easily. An examination of skill only comes with time. In my guild, with my guild members, I may be willing to spend time to help a person learn to play their class. Or to help them get gear. A random pug? I may be inclined to help. But I may not. There is only so much time in the day.
Not sure where we're going with this discussion though.
Jason P Feb 16th 2010 12:50PM
Shamans have a little "slider" bar for all of their totems.
Are there any Addons (or maybe settings that I am not aware of) that would let me create something similar for my mage (one for my different armor spells, one for my frost and fire ward spells, etc)?
Hoggersbud Feb 16th 2010 4:06PM
Yes, there's even one mentioned in this article. You might also try Lunarsphere.
BoomingEchoes Feb 16th 2010 1:04PM
I like the point of this article (to help people spruce up their existing UI or to help someone with a condition like Jake's have a great UI but still keep it big) But maybe this sort of article shouldn't be considered the "Reader UI of the Week" ...I mean its less about HIS UI then it is HELPING with his UI.
I'd welcome a separate article just for helping with UI issues ranging from stuff like this to even errors and interface failures due to addons but "Reader UI of the Week" has always been meant to showcase rather then remedy.
Either way though its a good cause!
wdm+hall Feb 16th 2010 1:05PM
As my play screen has become bigger over time I have noticed a tendency to move UI elements closer to my toon on the fly as needed during fights. On a large screen with high resolution it can be difficult tracking party health, things to cure, cooldowns, buffs, debuffs, DoTs, threat, party chat, and things I shouldn't stand in all at once. I still haven't found a good way around this but currently I have HealBot just to the left of my toon with a bar of holy crap buttons just below him. The problem is that the UI looks like crap when I don't need it all in close.
Not sure how possible this is but a UI-Manager type addon that allowed you to switch between preconfigured UIs by hotkey or whether you are in combat or not would be incredible. Bonus points if it animates the transition.
Xhelius Feb 16th 2010 1:30PM
You might wanna look at ActionBarSaver2 by Shadowed. Does what you're looking for.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8075-ActionBarSaver2.html
Also OpenRDX allows for mulitple "Desks" to be set. Then aloows you to switch between desks for solo, pvp, raids, etc.
Jason P:
Lunasphere might be worth looking at. Similar in concept to Necrosis.