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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 5 of 6)
Pumadam Apr 6th 2010 12:16PM
Tauntmaster ftw! I recently started experimenting on this addon and it has severely cut down on my addon needs for raiding and five mans. As a prot pally I can just click on a player frame that lights up when they have aggro and it automatically taunts whatever mob that is vs having to figure out which mob out of 20(icc trash mobs anyone?) is targeting a specific player. It also shows their health so it is easy to keep track of what is going on.
feniks9174 Apr 6th 2010 12:22PM
I see two problems here. First, is simply a lack of configuration. Very few AddOns work perfectly out of the box. To be more specific, they'll work out of the box, but they rarely are exactly what you need them to be without some configuration. Secondly, I see a huge amount of things that just don't need to be on screen at all times.
- Do you NEED to have your fish feasts, baby spice, heartstone, First Aid and Campfire on your action bars? No. Use those things from your inventory/spellbook or (even better) put them on a seperate action bar that will fade out when not being used.
- As a tank, do you NEED to know your target-of-target's remaining/max Health and Mana and see a picture of them? No. All you need to know is whether or not the ugly thing your hitting is hitting you back.
- SpartanUI - It's designed for people with huge amounts of screen real estate. -Should you decide to keep it-, you can do several things to make it far less obtrusive. For example, the small 3x4 grids of buttons on the far left and right sides? Those can be disabled allowing you to move Omen/Recount/PallyPower down into the Bar rather than on top of it or in the middle of your screen. In reality, though, you'll probably just want to get rid of it.
- Use SexyMap to simplify your mini-map (faded square ftw) and disable any buttons you dont need (DBM, the map button) the rest can be set to only show on a mouse over. The way Spartan puts it right in the middle of the screen looks good, but is functionally terrible.
- Use a Unit Frame AddON like Shadowed/PitBull for you player, focus, Target and ToT frames and Grid for your Party/Raid frames. Grid can be resized/stretched so it fits in the space you need (mine currently puts each unit into small horizontal strips just big enough to be easily visible and hold the players name, as a DPS and tank, I just need to know if people are dead/dying). It can also be set to show pets, should you desire (mainly for healing).
- Cowtip - Do you really need to know that your mouseover target has 564,123/978,953 Health and is a Night Elf with the Steemwheedle Cartel Faction? No. Turn off whatever you can live without and put that huge tooltip on a diet. If you're just looking for a way to move your standard tooltip anchor point, try Tipsy.
- PallyPower - I'm not a paladin, but my understanding is that, configured properly, it allows you to do raid buffs with little more than a click or two thereby letting you take all your Blessings off your action bars. Fewer things on your bars = good.
- OPie - Try it. I've never used it but I use Necrosis, the warlock specific equivalent. An AddOn like this is amazing for giving easy access to things like Aura's and situational spells without cluttering up your screen/bars by putting them in little drop-down menus. It takes some configuring, but it's well worth the trouble.
- Do you NEED to see your bag bar and Micro Menu at all times? Not really. Shift+B opens all your bags and, once you get used to it, becomes second nature. Move your Micro Menu to a corner and set Bartender to have it fade out until a mouse-over.
- Mountiful - A great little AddOn, especially if you have a lot of mounts. It randomly picks a mount based on which would be the /best/ choice for your current location (epic ground in Old World or Dalaran, Flyers in Northrend/Outland). The good part of this for YOU is that you can bind this to any key through the standard keybind interface and take all your mounts off your action bars. I see that Bronze Drake over there . . .
Lastly, setting up Profiles with AddOn's like Grid can make the switch from tanking/dpsing to healing much simpler. Big and centralized for healing, small and out of the way for everything else. Just a couple clicks can switch between the two.
Farproc Apr 6th 2010 12:30PM
I don't want to go all OT here, but I far prefer a miimal number of changes to the Wow default UI - when patch day breaks all my addons I prefer to see a UI i still mostly recognise.
My problem is, I play over a high (600ms) latency connection and *Really* need an addon that, well, is the Quartz latency module - just without all the reskinning Quartz does. Is there a lightweight version of Quartz Latency that works more akin to Visual Heal - just decorate the default UI?
shatto.a Apr 6th 2010 12:43PM
Typing "/sui scale .75" will work wonders for this guy.
Boz Apr 6th 2010 12:48PM
@Mathew McCurley
While it is ultimately the reader's fault for not actually looking at the text, you can cut down on the idiocy in the comments by putting pictures AFTER the opening paragraph, and summarizing as much as possible in the opening line of your entry.
For example, put the italicized first paragraph at the end of the article, and cut the opening fluff to lead with your core message, "Crazyates the paladin sent me a plea for help. 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!"
You'll still get junk comments from people that skip to the first picture, but in general readers look at the first paragraph of blogs and news stories and skim the remaining content. This is fast becoming one of my favorite columns - and I learned a lot from the blog content - so I hope this helps from an editorial standpoint!
rastir Apr 6th 2010 12:51PM
Fu_Bar? People still use that?
Seriously though,
Dump Fu_bar... your playin on a laptop, so resources are at a premium. fu is a MEMORY HOG.
Replacement = NinjaPanel (www.wowinterface.com) and get some brokers.
also
Get Shadowed Unit frames (www.curse.com)
I would also recommend that you run with ONLY WHAT YOU NEED, & NOTHING MORE. Its a lappy... also, every time you hearth/zone in, it has to re-parse your addons folder.. so make your pc happy, clear out what you don't need.
Matt Apr 6th 2010 12:53PM
I play on a 15" Macbook Pro, so I find these articles about smaller screens to be very helpful. I also tried SpartanUI for awhile, until I figured out it really wasn't helping my situation at all. I ditched it and kept Bartender, shrank the action bars, faded all but the two main bars, and I've been pretty happy with the results.
One thing to note about SexyMap and the way SpartanUI centers the map at the bottom of the screen: I couldn't figure out why the default Blizzard quest objectives tracker also moved to the top center. It was incredibly annoying, though because the quest objectives ran down the middle of my screen. Well, it turns out that it was locked to SexyMap, so that when SpartanUI moved the minimap, the objectives tracker was moved as well. When I removed SpartanUI and moved the minimap back to its default location in the upper right, the objectives tracker went with it. Not sure if this is a bug with SexyMap or SpartanUI, or not a bug at all, but maybe someone else has this same problem and can't figure it out.
Worcester Apr 6th 2010 3:57PM
I'm not sure this is a bug at all. I think the quest tracker is tied to the map, no matter where it is. I don't have Spartan installed and the quest tracker moves when I move Sexymap. I totally agree, though. I'd like to see that changed.
JDM Apr 6th 2010 1:00PM
Good god! D= Might want to drop your uiScale a bit if you're going to run with that UI setup...
catharsis80 Apr 6th 2010 1:09PM
OK, I confess...I originally posted saying how this UI blocks most of the view of the screen. I didn't realize the purpose of this column.
Why is it called UI of the Week when it is not that at all? It is more like "Pimp my UI." The column title is EXTREMELY misleading and should be changed. "Employee of the Month" doesn't mean it's an employee seeking help cause they have bad work habits.
Kylenne Apr 6th 2010 3:59PM
Or, you know, you could read.
eugee Apr 6th 2010 1:24PM
I don't have anything against the super minimalist UIs out there, they look really clean and everything.
But I love SpartanUI. Not like it--I love it. I would marry it, given the opportunity. I love the default UI--it LOOKS NICE. I like the gryphons and portraits! If I wanted to have a UI that fed me critical data while looking lackluster, I'd still be playing EQ.
I love SpartanUI because it actually looks better than the default UI, uses very little of the screen and keeps everything at the bottom of the screen. However SpartanUI actually states right up front that it's made for widescreens and just doesn't work on standard aspect that well.
Anyway, I'm not hating on minimalist UIs, but I just think not many people appreciate that it's okay for your UI to look nice.
http://www.eugee.info/wow/WoWScrnShot_032010_112552.jpg
That's literally as cluttered as my screen gets. (I don't use Grid.)
Snuzzle Apr 6th 2010 1:55PM
Why can't your UI look nice and be minimalist at the same time? Isn't that the goal of everyone: to have a UI that meets your needs and tastes and is visually appealing to you? Well in my case, the goal is minimalist, and yes I think my UI looks quite nice thankyou :D
feniks9174 Apr 6th 2010 3:38PM
The problem with Spartan is that it only works with huge monitors and massive resolutions. Yours is a perfect example of when Spartan works beautifully.
The submitted UI, though, is anything but that. Small resolution + small screen + big UI mod = blech. It forces you into this wierd situation where you need to choose between seeing your environment (making everything on your bars microscopic) or seeing your bars (shrinking your viewport to near non-existance).
eugee Apr 6th 2010 7:56PM
feniks9174:
I even acknowledged that SpartanUI doesn't work for the laptop UI the post is about. I wasn't responding to that--I was commenting towards the badmouthing SpartanUI was getting throughout the comments.
But let's be frank here. I have a 22" widescreen LCD @ 1680x1050--that's not a "huge monitor" or "massive resolution". If you don't have a widescreen, SpartanUI isn't for you--but I'd wager that widescreens are pretty popular these days.
Snuzzle Apr 6th 2010 1:51PM
Not trying to bash the guy but....wow, do you really NEED all those buttons available all the time?
I heartily recommend LunarSphere for all your less-used button needs. I attach to it things like my hearthstone, trinkets, forms/stances/auras, buffs... plus there's buttons you can set to be something like "Use best health restoring item" which will automatically use the health pot or healthstone that will replenish them most HP, or "Use best food and drink" which will automatically use conjured biscuits before your store-bought ones.
It's truly a godsend for those with minimal screen real estate, and will free up for you about (counts 28 buttons and compress them down into just 4 buttons ....and the sphere has space for 10. And it probably won't take up much more space than that little square of buttons he's using for his food and drink over there on the right.
You can see how much of a space-saver it would be.
I absolutely love LunarSphere to death and will never stop recommending it when it's just such an awesome all around mod.
http://www.lunaraddons.com/
Doma Apr 6th 2010 1:57PM
he knows he needs help and should be commended. gearscore aside.
I had the same problem with my UI, though my screen isn't that small (17"). Aside from dropping spartan ui for a minimal unit frames addon (I still use Xperl, it's seriously not as awful as everyone says it is), I see three things to help right off the bat.
1) Fubar is a great way to consolidate addons, but it's best to have only one bar, not the top and bottom. I strongly recommend using the top bar only so it doesn't push up your unitframes and bars.
2) Take advantage of addons that can hide themselves on mouseover and combat! Fubar is where i would start. Make it appear only on mouseover. Since it covers the whole top, it wont be hard to find, but it's out of the way enough to not be accidentally moused-over in combat. I now use Omen and Recount in the same exact space. Omen appears in combat, and hides out of combat. That's when recount appears- only after combat (only time you should be looking at the damage meters in a raid). Another option is to find an addon that combines both- like Skada meters.
3) I think there is an addon to manage minimap icons as well. Like a mini fubar. Something-bar. Forgot the name. That could completely clean off your minimap and some of your Fubar. Another option is to have all those minimap icons hide when not moused over.
Bart Apr 6th 2010 2:00PM
I use spartan and it is good depending on how big your screen is at any rate, I have about 1440x900 so it's not such a big deal but anything less and you may lose half your sight...like having your lower eyelids up all the time, it has a few PvP related bugs like it doesn't show the timer for forced PvP and the capture bar only shows up half the time and does so in a arandom place. But I rarley PvP so these arn't much of a problem, I recommend at least TRYING spartan and if it doesn't work for you you can always uninstall it.
Ralene Apr 6th 2010 2:08PM
I completely agree with the other Macbook users here about space and how to keep it all organized, for sure. Believe me, if there was a way to keep all of my addons active all of the time and NOT have to turn them off in raids, etc, I'd be much better off.
Unfortunately, such is the way of life until I upgrade to a newer Macbook with its own graphics processor.
anime2000z Apr 6th 2010 2:50PM
Why does anyone use Spartan UI? It's big, it's bulky, and looks like complete shit.