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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsReader UI of the Week: Crazyate's UI
by Mathew McCurley 
Apr 6th 2010 at 9:00AM
Each week WoW.com brings you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com.
Emergency! Get ready people, let's move, move, move! We're going to need to get the whole pit crew together as soon as possible. This week, reader Crazyates the paladin sent me a plea for help -- tips and tricks to get his UI on course. He's playing on a laptop, so this week's installment of Reader UI of the Week could be very helpful to the small-screen crowd. We've got a lot of work to do! Release the kraken!
What follows is a plea for help:
Hello. Unlike some of your *other* submissions for readerUI of the week, my UI is not clean, neat, or very spacey. If you could take a look at my current addons, setup, requirements, and then give me a few tips, that'd be great! I've also attached a few screenshots, so you can see what I'm talking about.
Setup:
I play on a 13" Macbook, in windowed mode (for quick alt-tabing). This doesn't give me a lot of screen space, at least compared to my brother's 21" monitor hooked up to his gaming rig. It ends up being about 1200x750 pixels, or whatever the WoW aspect ratio resizes it to.
Addons:
-SpartanUI. This is a big one. I love nice, clean look of this addon, but it's disrupted by my small screen and other addons. It's lost a lot of it's original appeal. Note: SpartanUI uses Bartender for it's bar control.
-FuBar helps a lot in saving space.
-Omen Since I tank, this is a necessity.
-PallyPower takes up a lot of space. I liked ZOMGbuffs simply because it was smaller, but PallyPower is a little more "community accepted".
-CowTip Provides a bit more info, but can get pretty big.
-Decursive I tried it out for pvp, but i'm wondering how to simplify this, or if there is a more streamlined alt?
-PowerAuras I just like the look of this, and is a lot of fun to play around with.
-QuestHelper I minimize this most of the time, so it's not a huge deal.
-Recount is again minimized, but is nice to have every once in a while.
Problems:
-LIke i said, my screen is small, so i can't just spread everything out. Trying to fit all the unit frames for a 25man makes me shiver. As you can see, when i'm in just a 5 man pug, i'm losing about 2/3 of my screen (esp with pets - pets take up a lot of space)! Talk about tunnel vision....
-Unit frames! SpartanUI does not let you customize the UnitFrames in any way. XPerl or any other addon adds a second copy of each unit frame, instead of replacing them. This is a myway-or-the-highway setup. :(
-Shrinking or eliminating any other addons: decursive, CowTip, PallyPower, and/or the chatbox, for starters
So basically I need help! I've graduated Addons 101: how to use your addons (or so i'd like to think :P ), but i need help with Addons 201: using your addons to get the look and feel you want. How and what addons can I use to replace/supplement my current setup to fix these problems? And then, how can I keep it updated to change it for tanking, dps, healing, of pvp (all of which i'm capable of: stupid pallys) ?
Thanks for you time, and I hope you can help me out!
-Crazyates - Human Paladin
-The Scryers (US)
Thanks for the email, Crazyates. I'm here to help. Let's see how much we can cover and get you on the right path to user interface clarity. Your choices for most of the addons you have selected are perfectly fine, for the most part. Your goal now, especially when playing on a smaller-screened laptop, is to strip away the superfluous and combine addons and spaces into a more efficient use of screen real estate.
Let's address the three main concerns you're having, and we can go from there. From what I'm seeing, your three issues are Spartan UI, needing a general UI philosophy or goal, and class role UI synergy. We can do this.
This is Sparta!
Your first step in this whole ordeal is to load Spartan UI into a cannon and launch it into the sun. I have nothing against Spartan UI. In fact, it's a pretty damn good beginner's suite for people who want something that looks like, well, Spartan UI. Every day I get a Reader UI of the Week submission where someone uses Spartan UI and adds to the interface. With that being said, Spartan UI does not belong on smaller screens and, frankly, has way too much art for my tastes. You just do not need that much frame art getting in the way of your other addons, which could be using up much less room. With Spartan UI removed, you will now have the wide open plains of screen real estate to populate with addons.
Bartender, paired with the always and eternal ButtonFacade, is more than awesome. Releasing your action bars from their spartan prison will allow you greater flexibility in their positioning. I would recommend checking out my little diagrams from my past Reader UI of the Week: Mar's UI. For Mar's UI, I diagrammed a sample user interface that is made for smaller screens. The main philosophy is keeping the center of the screen clear with a single FuBar or ChocolateBar at the top holding all of your dockable addons and plug-ins.
Grid-iron
Your philosophy should be simple: Tetris. Fitting together disparate addons can be tricky but always doable. You already have a good number of addons hidden most of the time, so you're fine there. As a tank primarily, there's no reason to not substitute unit frames for Grid. Grid is a godsend to tanks because, most of the time, we do not need to know most of the information unit frames report. Grid features, by default, a red box in the upper right corner of a person's grid displaying whether or not they have aggro from a mob. Isn't that all you really need? Grid can replace your unit frames in 5-man, 10-man or 25-man content, making it a perfect addition to your suite.
As for unit frames, you cannot go wrong with Shadowed Unit Frames or Pitbull. I recently talked a little about Pitbull last week, so read over that paragraph for a quick primer on what to do with your now free unit frames.
Download Grid at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].
Roleplay
As a paladin, you fill many roles. You can easily craft a user interface that works for every spec you decide to play, with the right addons. Grid, as mentioned above, can be complimented with some excellent addons like GridStatusRaidDebuff, GridStatusRaidIcons and Clique, which when used in tandem create a very usable and very minimalist user interface. Clique allows you to bind some excellent spells to mouse-over click-casting for easy healing. Twigleaf's healer UI, profiled back in June of 2009, is an excellent example of the healing powers of Grid and friends. Remember that most pieces of the user interface can be static, especially as a tank or DPS. Your chat, threat meters and assorted general-use addons won't be moving anywhere, and Grid will double as a healing interface and as information for tanking or DPSing.
Download GridStatusRaidDebuff (requires Grid) at [Curse].
Download GridStatusRaidIcons (requires Grid) at [Curse].
Download Clique at [Curse] or [WoWInterface].
That should put you on the right path, Crazyates. The biggest hurdle you will have is the learning curve in retraining yourself in a new user interface, but the results will be astounding. Free yourself of Spartan UI and go it alone with individual addons fit together simply. All of that extra screen artwork that is now gone will free up a good deal of your laptop's screen. Try to keep your bars two to three buttons high and work around that. You'll have something beautiful in no time. Please report back after you have had time to slave over your interface, and let's see what you come up with!
Thank you all for reading this week. Before we go, I wanted to give you a few more suggestions for anyone who wants to potentially submit their own user interfaces. First, the biggest the screenshots, the better. I can only work with what I am given, so bigger screenshots can be manipulated better for the article and for closeups of addons I enjoy. Second, tell me about your user interface. Why did you put certain addons in certain places? I love seeing pictures, but I know the readers and myself would love to know the thought process that went into the UI. And finally, please send screenshots along with movies of your interface in action. Movies are fine, but I would appreciate screenshots along with it. See you all next week!
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 6)
Negatron Apr 6th 2010 12:31PM
lmao Chrisamcnicholas
"Pimp my mods X to the Z!!!"
InevitableBetrayal Apr 6th 2010 9:10AM
Another tip from an old macbook user (upgraded to macbook pro :P) is to use the Maximize option. While doing that, you can get fullscreen window and cmd+tab easily.
About the unit frames, take out everything you dont need. I recently started using grid (as a healing priest) but even before i had only the player frames in view. No pets, minions or anything else i wasn't going to heal.
Plantman Apr 7th 2010 9:12AM
My main is a restoration druid, with hunter and warlock alts....it always amazes me when healers never heal pets. For many classes pets represent either a large portion of DPS or provide group and raid wide buffs. I never have an issue or problem healing pets. I will heal characters before pets, but will always drop heals on the pets.
Alexa Apr 6th 2010 9:48AM
Not that you should be focusing your energy on pets, minions, etc... but isn't it a good idea to at least be able to drop a heal on them if they're hurting and you have nothing else going on? I guarantee it's a great way to become ingratiated with your guild's hunters, warlocks and death knights. :)
I suppose if pets aren't in your UI you could always just target them, but that seems to defeat the purpose of seeing their health go down to begin with.
There are several mods (including Grid) which allow for the pets to be put in a special additional group - so you can pay attention to them when you have the time.
Bronwyn Apr 6th 2010 11:29AM
I leave pets up on healbot but I took the poster to mean there's no reason to have them on a party frame, or grid or anything like that to target.
StoNe Apr 6th 2010 9:11AM
I still don't get what's wrong with the WoW default ui.
I use grid on my healers, and all chars use decurse, omen and recount. Also DBM is helpful for raids.
But personally, I love the default ui shrunk down on my two 22" monitors. Really don't see why people like having tiny icons on big backgrounds...very odd.
Magnett Apr 6th 2010 9:37AM
This. I can't see a single reason to use a UI mod unless you're a clicker.
Erzfiend Apr 6th 2010 9:47AM
Hello, everyone.
My name is Erzfiend and I am...*deep breath*...a clicker.
K Apr 6th 2010 10:13AM
You can use Skada instead of Recount and Omen and have even less add-ons.
It's very comfortable once you understand how it works.
Zuckerdachs Apr 6th 2010 1:47PM
I'm half blind and have trouble with certain colors. I use mods to help me register information simply without having to strain, making some bits big and high-contrast, and others smaller and out of the way (or completely absent, like the mini-menu). How's that for a good reason? =P
Sunaseni Apr 6th 2010 2:02PM
What I don't like about the default UI is that all of the necessary information is spread out, and some things like debuffs you place on the enemy is hard to see. With Unit Frames in the upper left, buttons on the lower screen, and buffs on the upper right, it makes for a lot of eye movement and distractions from fire.
What I do is use Unit Frame mods like Pitbull and bar mods like Bartender to put both Unit Frames and Action Bars to the bottom center of my screen, that way if I need to look at me, my enemy, or my cooldowns, I'll be able to see my feet in case something nasty comes my way. To keep track of debuffs I put on my enemy like Living Bomb, the default UI is somewhat lacking since the debuff list is small and hard to see (not to mention all the way up there), so I also use a class timer mod to have simple bars for all the debuffs I put on my enemy, that way I don't have to strain my eyes to figure out when to recast Living Bomb or Death Knight diseases, etc.
It's just my personal preference to reduce eye strain, if you prefer the default UI, more power to you.
toddcore Apr 6th 2010 3:09PM
I see essentially this same comment in almost every AddOn Spotlight and UI of the Week's comments and it makes me wonder why people who have already decided that they hate add-ons keep coming to features clearly meant to focus on add-ons.
Proper use of add-ons allows a user to make their interface more efficient by eliminating unnecessary elements and information from the screen and adding new and more useful elements and information. The default UI provides only barebones functionality and is ugly.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the fact that the interface can be so vastly improved is a major reason I still play this game. I sincerely doubt I could have tolerated looking at stationary unit frames and action bars and cheesy space-wasting gryphon art for all these years.
And to the person who said anyone not using the default UI is a clicker, I don't follow your logic. If you never need to click any of your abilities and have everything hotkeyed you'd want to use add-ons to hide your action bars completely and free up all that space the default action bars eat up. Even if you had some infrequently used abilities you wanted to be able to click you could put them on a bar that only shows on mouse-over, still saving screen real estate. Does the default UI let you do that?
Tayla Apr 6th 2010 3:33PM
i'm a keybinder, i use UI mods to make my buttons small so i can shove them in a corner, or hide them all together.
http://i39.tinypic.com/34j7nlh.jpg
Elmo Apr 6th 2010 9:19AM
I'd say get dominos or bartender and get the main actionbars in the centre down and the bars with buffs/res and other not so often used skills faded along the side.
or just fade them all and remember your keybinds.
nonentity Apr 6th 2010 9:21AM
Sorry, but he's playing on a small screen and he's intentionally using a UI that uses up 1/4th of his screen? Not really my cup of tea. There are far more minimalistic options out there.
By using something like oPie he could cut down on the stuff he has in his actions bars. I barely use 24 slots total, on any character.
Also - what's up with placing the minimap in the middle of the screen? I see so many people doing that but I just don't see the point. Yeah, it may look nice designwise, but what's the purpose? I'm doing fine with a small map in the upper right corner in regards to mineral radar etc. The middle of the screen is probably the main point of focus for most players, why put the useless - in combat - minimap there?
Bronwyn Apr 6th 2010 11:24AM
Well, he *did* write in asking for help.
Samuel Reese Apr 6th 2010 9:21AM
One of the biggest problems I see from this interface is the fact that it appears they are providing a button for every single action they have available instead of pairing them down with things like Macros & Grid/Clique. Using macros with modifiers allow you to easily cut your buttons down to a quarter of what you have currently, then it's just a matter of memorization where you have left certain abilities.
Second, there's a redundant information on the screen that really doesn't need to be there. Having both PallyPower as well as having your buffs on buttons is absolutely unnecessary if you've configured it properly, for example.
Third, as it' was mentioned in the article, the art and graphics are absolutely unnecessary not only from an aesthetic perspective, but also due to a limited canvas that you have on such a small monitor (not to mention processing power needed). Eliminating those pictures, as well as decreasing the overall scaling of the party/raid (let's be honest, you don't need to know much other than "is this class dead or dying"?) can give you even more space.
Lastly, one of the best tools I discovered when playing my hybrid class Paladin was Reflux. This will allow you to easily switch addon profiles all at the same time, including layout and keybindings as needed. When I'm tanking, I really don't need to have as much of a focus on how much HP the rest of my group has, so my tanking profile has a much smaller sized raid panel. Comparatively, when I'm healing I'll switch up so Grid becomes front and centre but removes the Threat metres I really don't need from a healing standpoint.
The fact Reflux helps when I'm creating alts to getting a default interface set up as well is another plus to it. You can find it here: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12811-Reflux.html
slartibart Apr 6th 2010 10:16AM
Thanks for the mention of reflux.
I've gone through several installs of wow, and occasionally I like to just wipe my wtf/cache folders and start from scratch. I used to use this addon, and had forgotten the name.
Mathew Collins Apr 6th 2010 9:22AM
To much UI there. Not for me, sorry.
TheVygs Apr 6th 2010 9:34AM
I don't think many people are reading the article... this UI isn't a suggestion, it's a cry for help.
On that note, I've found that the default Buff/Debuff frames are far too large, especially on the limited screen estate of a laptop.
Personally, I use Elkano's Buff bars. Buffs/debuffs are show (can be shown?) as small horizontal lines with a great amount of flexibility. I have a long strip along the left screen edge with every buff (