Reader UI of the Week: Luis' UI
by Mathew McCurley 
Jun 22nd 2010 at 4:00PM
Welcome to another exciting installment of Reader UI of the Week, the greatest user submitted user interface column on WoW.com! This week, a gorgeous compartmentalized UI invaded my inbox, and I had to share. As frequent readers of this column are well aware, I am also a huge fan of using portraits in off-kilter, non-traditional ways. What do you know, Luis' UI does both of these things. Read on, friends!
Luis, please, tell us a little bit about your user interface and its design:
Thanks for the email, Luis! While I am having a hard time swallowing the "no threat meters" issue, I'm letting function slide in praise of form. And besides, if he pulls aggro, he'll get what's coming to him. I love how organized and neat this user interface is. The bottom row just makes me feel good looking at the setup. It is non-traditionally asymmetrical, no doubt about it, but clean lines and cleaner colors bring this setup together. Let's examine some of my favorite parts, and hopefully give you some ideas on addon and UI placement.Hi Mathew, everybody at wow.com and everyone else reading this,
I'm Luis and I play in the EU-Bronzebeard server. I pilot a char named Alluren, leader <Of Wolf And Men>.
Before we get into my interface, I would like to disclaim that I come from a pure FPS background and my first loot was a machine-gun, two months after "Wolfenstein 3D" hit the shelves at the age of 13. I have never played a game other than a FPS, until my best friend introduced me to wow last December.
To my interface (from left to right, top to bottom);
My UI has 3 different sections - on top I have debuffs on left-hand side and buffs on right-side; they are separated with a kgpanel to re-create a design technique (something like eye-barrier or whatever it's called) where your eyes move up quickly and once they meet this "barrier" the eye-movement slows down and your brain starts looking for content, other than just quickly sweep around.
For the main screen I tried to leave it as free as possible of any debris and faded scrolling text with damage and health. All other warnings are as bright as possible. Coming from FPS, I still prefer to look for what is happening in the screen; I prefer to stand near the healers and grab aggro from loose mobs, blink to where the tank is and then make my way back, instead of having a graph telling me what is happening. Hence the total omission of an aggro-graph (oh, I'm so going to be flamed for this.)
For the bottom of my interface I used the same technique as the upper frame and tried to made it one single line across the screen, using kgpanels to delineate.
The chat-box to the left is the original one, faded and completed with a kgpanel.
The party may seem irrelevant since grid is just after; but as I play a holy priest as well, it helps me keep track of other healers' mana and health. It helps me check how effective my group-heal spells are and we all know a well timed Hymn can help things run smoothly for lengthy encounters.
When healing it's almost impossible to take your eyes from the frame so I kept the casting bar with DBM-cooldowns on top, target's frame across and grid at the bottom.
Tooltips at the far left on top of the cool-downs.
The "transports" bar is a separate one to leave some room at the main bars. Map and Recount.
This interface is played in a 27'' monitor which, I believe, explains all the space taken from side to side and the absence of docked items in the main-screen.
Addons used are:
- quartz
- recount
- satrinabuffframe
- pminimap
- tiptac
- combuctor
- kgpanels + buttonfacade
- dominos + cooldowns + pitbull4
- dbm + mikscrollingbattletext + magealert
- grid + gridclickset + gridcustomlayouts
Any feedback would be much appreciated and I would like to hear if there is anything I could improve in the U.I.
All the best,
Luis
A portrait of a party member as a young man
I have talked about player portraits in the past. My own personal consensus on the subject of portraits is that they are unnecessary, boring, bring no new information to the table, serve little purpose, and clog user interfaces. The one big caveat, however, is that done with subtlety and panache, they are awesome. Absolutely awesome. The new trend I have been seeing is the slim portrait, as shown in Luis' user interface.
The thin portrait always strikes me as cool. I don't know why. Maybe because it looks very "video-gamey." It reminds me of an action movie poster. Whatever the reason, I love the thin portrait, and used correctly without overpowering the unit or player frames, the slim portrait can be a cool addition to any user interface. For this effect, Pitbull4 is used to add a portrait to one of the horizontal indicators.
Keeping the party frames compact is also a treat, as only the pertinent health information is displayed as well as the portrait. Notice also how the raid frames' kgPanels as well as the rest of the bottom portion of the UI just fit so snugly together? Very slick.
Off-kilter
Action bars off to the side opposed to in the middle of the screen is a hard pill to swallow for many people. We are used to the action bars in the middle of the screen from games past. However, notice the amount of features Luis fit into the area with the action bars. The minimap, damage meters, and Luis' own transport bar occupy a relatively small amount of space. Consider while building your own user interface which pieces can easily be grouped or fit together in such a way that they can live together without loss of focus.
Simple kgPanels go a long way to helping organize things. One of the best ways to set up your user interface is put separate kgPanel windows all over your screen where you want user interface elements and then proceed to fill in the panels. By doing this, you limit the space you're allowing yourself to use while still having a relatively easy guide to follow during construction.
The standard fare
Buffs and debuffs are easily viewed at the top of the screen, and while I consider bars superior to icons in the buff/debuff department, this setup is clean, light and takes up barely any room. Chat could definitely be improved, however. As has been said before, I consider the chat addon to be one of, if not the, most important addon in World of Warcraft. The amount of functionality chat addons bring is astounding, if not just for the floating input bar.
Great job, Luis. I love the setup. My love of well thought out portraits knows few bounds, and a simple does of kgPanels can make any interface shine. Just remember to keep the opacity low.
Two things before I escape. First, if you still haven't sent in your favorite addons for our second Community Choice Addon Spotlight, do so! I'd love to hear from some more people. Plus, your email may get featured as proof-positive that I love you and your suggestions. What's better than my love?
Second, submit your user interface to Reader UI of the Week by email! Include a description of your interface, some kind words about the creation of and philosophy behind your user interface, and some nice large screen shots so that the good folks at home don't go blind staring at their monitors from an inch off the LCD. Until next week, friends.
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 2)
Arktic Jun 22nd 2010 4:08PM
I hope this is the proper place to ask this. On MMO-champion, they have a PTR 25 man kill of Halion. The shadow priest who fraps it has what looks like an animated cooldown timer over his action bar. Does anyone know what this add-on is?
Ashzora Jun 22nd 2010 4:19PM
I could be wrong, but it looks like ForteXorcist to me.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/fortexorcist.aspx
Pyromelter Jun 22nd 2010 4:21PM
I haven't seen it, but it could be one of the following:
ForteXorcist
Power Auras
something else i can't think of at the moment... I'll watch the vid and get back to ya.
Pyromelter Jun 22nd 2010 4:22PM
That is 100% definitely absolutely ForteXorcist as Ashzora linked. A very excellent addon for spriests and warlocks that need to keep track of a ton of timers, dots, and cooldowns.
Arktic Jun 22nd 2010 4:38PM
Thanks guys. I'll have to give that one a try once I can get back on.
Waltz Jun 22nd 2010 4:53PM
There is also CooldownCount, cant remember if it does what ur talking about. I know Forte does tho
peepeehero Jun 22nd 2010 4:18PM
Orbs you noob!
Cyanea Jun 22nd 2010 4:23PM
Maybe it's a druid thing, but I couldn't stand to have all those buttons on my screen. I can get by with like...eight.
Camo Jun 22nd 2010 4:55PM
You're not playing kitteh!
Jorges Jun 23rd 2010 10:26AM
This!
You can't have few buttons as kitty, wich makes me think you're not one.
B.J. Jun 22nd 2010 4:25PM
This UI is definitely nice. Not something I could adjust to, personally, since I'm used to my own interface, but this looks way cleaner and more efficient than my healing UI, which is a cluttered mess. (But my mess. I know where everything I need is.)
I also really like the idea of the slim portraits. I'm one who likes having the character portraits just because I'm a very visual person. But you're right, they take up a lot of space and these solve both problems. They're cool to look at, but don't take up much space.
B.J., Owner of http://chum.ly/
gbtn Jun 22nd 2010 4:30PM
Not bad, but I do have a couple bones to pick.
First, you predicted people would be mad that you don't run a threat meter. I'm willing to give you a pass there. If you can run without it that's fine. However, you managed to make room in your UI for recount. There is no reason you need to see any DPS number while the fight is going on, it's meaningless at best and distracting at worst. You can use that space for a threat meter. Replace Recount with Omen, or use Skada and it can switch between modes for you.
Second, regarding portraits. I'm not a fan. The idea of narrow portraits is sound, but the execution never works. For instance, the portraits of Aleek and Alluren give us dramatic portraits of their eyes, just like a movie. The portrait of Bbadonde gives us a dramatic view of his, er, eyebrows. The other two portraits are mostly a mess.
Cyanea Jun 22nd 2010 4:42PM
He's a druid.
If a couple of DPS die, you wanna make sure you're rezzing the highest one.
It's why I run recount, and I'm a healer.
Pyromelter Jun 22nd 2010 4:43PM
Cyanea, he's a mage (last time I checked druids don't get arcane blast debuffs). He might be the one calling for who to brez as he stated he is the guild leader of his guild.
Personally I say keep recount, and put Omen right where that huge hole is to the right of the raid frame.
Cyanea Jun 23rd 2010 12:30AM
Oh. Fuck me...some of those icons looked like Starfall/Starfire/that one druid spell, whatever it's called. I stand corrected. (I don't play a Druid, OR a mage. :P_
Steven Santerre Jun 22nd 2010 4:31PM
I use ForteExorcist in my UI. It's pretty good for the druid's eclipse timer, as well as starfall CD.
After seeing this UI though, i'm hitting the drawing board again as soon as the servers are up. I need more simplicity in my life.
Pyromelter Jun 22nd 2010 4:40PM
A couple of comments about the UI:
Some criticisms first: I can't really deal with or understand action buttons that are not in the middle. Never makes sense to me to have them there (not that I'd be clicking, but I do glance down at my buttons at times as I have multiple alts with different abilities). I do like how he organized and styled them.
Not having a threat meter is just dumb. Unless you are a terrible DPS'er, which by the looks of it this person isn't. Pulling threat off a tank (which is totally possible as a high-dps mage) can easily wipe a raid, and really there is no reason for a mage to ever do that, as they have multiple ways of dropping threat instantaneously.
Which leads me to my next point. The UI up there could easily fit in a threat meter in that big blank space to the right of where the raid frame is. It looks to me like that is the area where pets would go. As a mage, you never ever have to worry about healing a hunter or warlock pet, so having pet frames are completely pointless. That being said, even if you wanted to keep those pet frames, that raid frame area could easily use a width reduction of 30%, which would give you a lot more room to put in a threat meter. You can even save more room by totally getting rid of party frames, which are also completely worthless in a raid setting. This would allow greater customization of the chat box as well as the raid and unit frames.
Positives: Extremely clean in the playing surface, very little clutter at all, and it does look like he is using MSBT which is perfect for a dps'er, as well as a mage notification timer. All very excellent.
Mostly my criticism of the above boils down to a lack of a few essential addons which look like they could easily fit into that UI with minimal modifications. Overall the look of that UI is very nice.
Lemons Jun 22nd 2010 4:45PM
I really think I need to install grid custom layouts. What I want is 25 boxes arranged in a square with the tanks in the top left, then me, then the other healers, then melee, then ranged descending left to right like that. Can that addon do something like that? I really hate my current 25 man defualt layout where the tanks can be on opposite ends of the grid and I'll be off in some corner.
Jen Jun 23rd 2010 5:21AM
Not 100% sure if this is what you mean, but check out GridDynamicLayout. It makes Grid look something like this: http://www.storiesofwow.com/images/gridjen2.jpg
Column 1 = tanks
Column 2 = healers
Columns 3&4 = ranged
Columns 5&6 = melee
Lemons Jul 7th 2010 4:03AM
That's actually what I want to avoid. I don't like putting separate roles in their own columns because the end result is too bulky. I use GridDynamicLayouts for 10 mans, but on 25 I just feel like it takes up too much real estate. I would like a mod that intelligently orders my grid without resorting to specific groupings so that grid stays in a standard-looking 5 x 5 square.