Reader UI of the Week: Mvin's UI
by Mathew McCurley 
Apr 20th 2010 at 4:00PM
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.
Greetings, Reader UI of the Week readers! It has been another awesome week for reader UI submissions, but keep those submissions coming. Mvin, this week's lucky spotlight, has sent in an awesome variety of screenshots to show us not only the evolution of his user interface, but also addon positioning as part of a helpful guide for those taking suggestions.
Mvin, start us off:
Hi there!
This is Mvin, Fury Warrior of <Silver Blades> from Lordaeron EU writing you. I hereby submit my dearest greetings from the beautiful country of Germany ;-)
I've sent you my UI because I felt it's been a while since I saw a warrior-friendly UI on your column, if I ever saw a warrior UI there in the first place^^
So the first thing you might notice is that I sent a total of 4 screenshots, not because I think my UI should be viewed from every angle (^^), but because the first 3 screenshots display the steady evolution and change over time while the fourth is a short legend of all visual addons that I use in the newest version. You don't need to post them all of course, I just wanted to give you enough room to play with the article :D
There are a couple of things I'd to elevate:
First, I made heavy use of the Xperl Raid Frames when WOTLK started and continued to use it for most of the expansion. The one thing that bugged me was that I wasn't able to configure it properly, in a way that didn't block half of my screen. I switched to Grid and Pitbull quite smoothly when I discovered their vast adjustment options. In the second screen you can actually see me using both Xperl and Grid as Raid frames.
Secondly, the 2 bars above my standard action bars display a rage indicator (tired of always looking up to my character portrait for rage status) and a swing timer. I got rid of the swing timer in my new interface and replaced the rage bar with the whole portrait, which fit quite nicely.
And thirdly, I am very proud of whow my new UI turned out. It marks the first time I am actually confident enough to send it to you guys ;-) I finally mastered kgPanels to the point it started to look tidy and managed to limit the number of things I'd like to see on my screen to a decent point. Please note that most of my addons had the background texture and borders disabled to achieve the dark, uni-colored effect with kgPanels.
So that's basically it! Thank you so much for your column, I've adapted a quite a few ideas from there myself and please give my regards to Matthew "the cared and feeded warrior" Rossi, would you? :D
Greets
Mvin of Lordaeron
Thanks for the awesome email, Mvin. I am floored at Mvin's thorough submission to the column -- not only is it awesome to see the evolution of the user interface, but the final legend screen shot is exactly what many people have been asking for. Awesome job. Let's go screenshot to screenshot and trace the evolution of Mvin's UI.
Here is what Mvin's original user interface looks like. The menu buttons are proudly on display, as are some pretty huge party frames complete with tons of buffs, numbers and portraits. Our good friend "out of the box" Sexymap looms over the cramped buffs area. Raid groups are a mess of colors and statistics that no one really needs. The user interface is cluttered, which in and of itself isn't a problem, but there is just too much going on with unnecessary information all over the place.
Mvin's user interface begins the slow crawl to awesomeness, replacing the hefty raid frames set up with a simpler, Grid-based raid makeup. In addition, the party frames are gone, freeing up a huge amount of space on the screen to do fun things like see the game and experience the world. DPS and threat meters were moved side-by-side as opposed to stacked, but the menu bars remain. Everything is shaping up nicely, but the buffs are still a garbled mess and Sexymap still presides over the addon masses, straight out of the box.
Can I take a quick second to say that everything in World of Warcraft sounds better in German?
Finally, we reach Mvin's final stage in his user interface. I love it. Mvin uses kgPanels to great effect, keeping the motif unobtrusive and uniform. ForteXorcist looks awesome above the action bars, and the various target and player windows sit evenly atop one another. Omen and Recount are spectacularly done, each getting their own square flanking the action bars. The dreaded menu bars remain, but I cannot fault Mvin for keeping that one aspect tried and true and still managing to make it look decent and not take up too much space.
Sexymap has been broken free of its confines in "original setup" land and now has a flush and simple border mirroring the rest of the user interface. A simple square plus a simple border can go a long way when dealing with Sexymap. Raid frames are out of the way and ButtonFacade cuts away all of the unnecessary borders from action buttons. Mvin has successfully moved his buffs and debuffs to a location easily segregated and visually soft -- a marked improvement over the crowded buff panels of yester-UI.
All in all, I love Mvin's user interface. More than that, however, I loved the journey. Over time, you can see how elements of the user interface moved to meet space demands and a cursory education in kgPanels gave the user interface the right tint to shine. Mvin included a legend of the mods and addons he used in his user interface and where they went for anyone out there who want to replicate some of the excellent placement of bars, in particular his target and player frames, in my opinion.
That's it for this edition of Reader UI of the Week. If you ever had any questions about the absolute best way to submit your UI, take Mvin's submission as the ultimate advice -- many large screenshots, an addon/mods legend and some awesome commentary.
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 4)
Baba Apr 20th 2010 4:11PM
Love the legend at the bottom, it's given me a few ideas about my own warrior UI. Props to you Mvin :)
got a question though, if you remove the party frames, can you use the /trade, /inspect etc functions via Grid? As I'd be playing a non-healing class, there's precious little use for it otherwise, apart from seeing when a wipe is imminent.
Eastland23 Apr 20th 2010 7:32PM
In the default GRID config - no. You have to click the grid of the character to target them and then right-click the unit frame to get the context menu for inspect, trade, uninvite, etc.
However, I see greater benefit to using GRID as a dps class than just knowing "when a wipe is imminent". Being able to see who got the disease, which healers are down, or which tank just went splat can allow you to change your game play to actually PREVENT a wipe (ok, situational, but still true on occasion). In more broad situations, at least you aren't going to die from proximity death because you are (no longer) standing by the guy who just got burning bile or blood nova.
I'm a raid leader, so it's helpful for me to see lots of information about every raid member, even when I'm dps, in a compact addon that light on screen real-estate. It's not difficult then to extrapolate other circumstances where I'd want to see all the info, even if I wasn't leading and keeping track of people's goofs.
sangrael Apr 20th 2010 8:08PM
You can use GridUnitMenu to replicate the standard right click menu.
Marius Apr 21st 2010 4:38PM
Sorry for a noob question :) but is there a way to download this wonderful UI?
Baba Apr 20th 2010 4:28PM
ah thanks, I'll have a try with that then
037 Apr 20th 2010 4:34PM
Or you could just not actually bind R-Click and L-Click.
I only bind them with a Shift, Control, or Alt modifier. That way my default clicking remains normal.
Mkrah Apr 20th 2010 4:58PM
Wow, that's actually a really clean interface, ill have to show it to my friends. Too bad i cant use it though, because I'm a clicker. There really should be more interfaces that are clicker friendly here. Still, pretty good though!
Thijz Apr 20th 2010 4:46PM
Or you could just stop clicking and start using hotkeys.
Mkrah Apr 20th 2010 5:49PM
I'm more conformable with clicking though, and see no real reason to use hotkeys.
Majorfalcon Apr 20th 2010 5:01PM
you could consider not clicking
TinyLittleRobot Apr 20th 2010 5:06PM
I fought it for awhile myself, but once you start key-binding you'll never go back.
Mkrah Apr 20th 2010 5:12PM
Ok, ill try it. anyone have guides for a brand new key binder? specifically for hunters maybe?
Risq Apr 20th 2010 5:23PM
Some people have hands to small to be able to reach enough hot keys, therefore they have to click. A neat ui with more action bars would be cool to see.
Lee Weaver Apr 20th 2010 5:42PM
I afgree need more Click friendly interfaces key binding sucks to much crap to remember. much easier to click on an icon.
sherekhan88 Apr 20th 2010 6:04PM
@Mkrah
There's no real 'guide' to key-binding. Usually just having the 1-9 keys as your actions as default is a good start. Get a feel and rhythm for your rotation and you start mentally remembering where things are.
Now, personally I bound the Strafe keys to my A and D instead of the turn keys, which are horribly cumbersome, but it's up to personal taste. This also gave me the advantage though, of being able to bind any important clutch abilities or items to my Q, E, R and any keys around my WASD movement keys.
You don't need to pull up any action bars to bind them manually through Blizz's cumbersome keybinding interface. I HIGHLY recommend using an addon called BindPad. Basically, you can make a macro button of whatever ability you want, or just drag the skill from the spellbook onto the BindPad interface. Now you want to keybind it, and it's incredibly simple. Just left-click on it to get the keybinding screen, and click what key you want to bind it to. And that's it! No extra action bars or scrolling through insane numbers of functions and keys!
That's really all I can recommend. In the end it's still about what's comfortable for you. Keybinding will increase you reactivity in the longrun, IMO, but of course there's still a room for clickers everywhere (I also use Clique simple one-click functions like healing my pet or using abilities easily w/o even binding them either; hence my playstyle is really more of a combination).
Mkrah Apr 20th 2010 6:13PM
@sherekhan88
Thanks! i never knew such an addon existed. part of the reason i didn't want to key-bind is how long it would take to set them up. I'm gonna go download that right now!
icepyro Apr 21st 2010 12:01AM
Just as a warning, I went the other extreme once I decided to stop clicking. I used dominoes for its many action bars and I bound all the keys to something and this resulted in me typing entire sentences to fight and never touching my mouse. I'm still looking for the right way, but thought I would share some things that have helped.
The biggest thing that has helped is moving some of the default bindings to the area of the keyboard you aren't using. Once I got used to not using the keys around my hand for mundane out of combat stuff like sitting or looking at my character pane, I slowly readded the keys to stuff on my bars.
Bindpad is awesome if you can remember what you bound it to, but Dominoes and the like are still my main source of keybinds as I can at least see what it is I'm pressing. I'm slowly lowering the opacity and reducing the clutter, but sometimes I still need to see it and the cooldown is nice until I find a better addon for that.
OPie is another awesome addon. I use it on my hunter for the aspects, tracking, and professions. It uses a combination of mouse/keyboard, so it's not as fast as keybound shortcuts, but still clears space from the keyboard for stuff you are going to use when you have time for it anyways. Those wanting click friendly might want to consider this alternative so you don't have to move the mouse quite so far but still use the mouse a lot.
Macros help a lot, especially ones that use modifiers to determine the spell so you can stack multiple spells on one button. Using #showtooltip means you can see on what spell you are about to cast (and it's tooltip if you do happen to mouseover). I don't have an endgame hunter, but my pally hits the same "button" for all 3 judgments... 1 for JoL shift-1 for JoJ and alt-1 for JoW. It's one button on the bar using a macro. Many sites offer macro advice including this one.
I'm still figuring things out, so I am not the best source, but as hard of a time as I have had to find useful info, I felt it worth sharing my experience to someone who is also looking.
Rellokore Apr 21st 2010 10:31AM
I have found that the best way to handle key-bindings is to ensure that you don't have to remove your left hand from the wasd keys.
Bartender/Domino bars contain 12 buttons.
As a pally, I've found that DURING combat, I rarely, if even, use two full bars.
So I started looking at the buttons around my hand when I play. I've found that it's very easy for me to hit 1, 2, 3, 4, r, f. Hey.. Thats half of a bar!
So now I have half of a bar and there's three modifier keys also within reach: shift, ctrl, alt.
So I have my two full bars bound with 1, shift + 1, ctrl + 1, alt + 1, 2, shift + 2, etc, and I never have to move my left hand during combat.
for buffs (except what's covered with pally power), auras, seals and other use-once-and-forget type spells, opie has been a god send. I bind alt + z, x, c, v to various custom opie rings and I'm set. Anyway, I hope that helps.
Cowboy Apr 20th 2010 4:35PM
this is the most helpful and informative submission yet, great job, the legend is ubber.... Love the Buffs and Debuffs placement... Guess I will blow a hour staring at my UI tonight...
Babaloo Apr 20th 2010 4:37PM
How do you move that little box that pops up when you mouse over something? You know, the one that's pretty much just the tooltip of an item. It's getting freaking annoying. :/