I mentioned tukui a while bag on this blog, and someone told me about how it's customizable in-game.

While there are some in-game options, it's still a pain in the rear end to do even basic modifications to tuk ui. The look of tukui (and elvui) is fantastic, but there is a lot of lacking in terms of functionality. The black bars stylistically look great, but it's rough on the eyes in terms of identification of health and mana (of yourself, your enemies, and your friends).

I think this is worth a try if you are on a laptop or a slower system. Really not useful if you are on a high-end machine and can do your own addons.

@ Pyromelter - with the recent rev of TukUI to v12, there's now an additional addon whereby you can do some basic configuration in-game without touching any .lua. If you want to get into the real nitty-gritty of things, yes, you'll need to open up those config files, but Tuk's customization has gotten better in the past few weeks.

It's not just the customization. The entire UI lacks a lot of functionality, and the thing is once you start putting other addons in there like MSBT, DBM, recount, Omen, things just don't add up really well.

I don't want to bag on tuk/elv, but I do want to point out its limitations. It is an excellent addon if you are severely limited by system resources, want a complete UI overhaul over the default blizzard one, or just like the style of how it's pictured. But it is certainly not friendly to information intake, to recognizability of the status of yourself or players around you, and it is not friendly to additional addons or modding itself.

In terms of customization, the last time I checked (which was a few days ago), there was no simple in-game way to resize, hide, or move the action bars. If I have to download another addon just to allow me to get those options, then what that is doing is taking a "simple" ui and making it more complex.

And actually, looking at the raid interface on wowinterface, tbh, it's not minimalistic in terms of screen real estate at all.

http://s.wowinterface.com/preview/pvw45408.jpg

Yes, the UI does have its limitations, but it's good at what it's supposed to be, and I have found that, on a high-end machine where I can spare more resources, that addons (many of which are skinnable to mimic the look of the UI) fill in a lot of those information blanks.

Every UI edit is going to have its limitations. Obviously this isn't the one for you, but I've found I can get all the information and ability I want from using this UI plus my addons, and it all works in a manner that I can easily parse.

It was built to be minimalistic and low-usage. And it will always be so.

Low usage? check

Minimalistic? http://s.wowinterface.com/preview/pvw45408.jpg

That's elv's UI screenshot, right from wowinterface. Can you argue that that is minimalistic? I might even argue that that UI is approaching keyhole territory.

Now, I'm not going to say that it's bad. Elv has a "Light of Dawn" title, so the UI obviously doesn't hamper tanking on (arguably) the hardest boss wow has ever seen. But that is decidedly not minimalistic. You're right, it's not for me, but again, I'm only pointing out limitations, not totally trashing it. It's good for what it does, but it leaves a lot to be desired. In my opinion.

I originally found ElvUI in the comments a couple weeks ago in this very column, at the time I had been working on a letter for a call for help, but once I found this I stopped cause I found what I was looking for. As a Balance Druid I always had trouble with UIs, either they cost an arm and a leg in resources (me being one of those who do have issues) or spread everything out on the screen so much that I couldn't focus. This gave me that and something nice extra that I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention, this UI has an option to color the theme according to your class colors. It's just making the thin line orange on my Druid or purple on my Warlock but it's effective. The built in skinning is great, as is the modual I found that would skin DBM, it makes the overall UI come together, makes each addon feel like it's supposed to be there.

Here is what I did with this addon.
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n243/RoboDuckyX/WoWScrnShot_111210_203640.jpg
Also you can't really see it in this pic here but I moved the DBM allerts over to the quest tracker area to clear out the top of the screen. With this I have finally been able to keep everything to a nice "U" shape, well... maybe more like a "W", but the parts of the screen I most want clear are clear. For me this UI has been a winner and will be what I use going into Cataclysm.

@Pyromelter: I can't speak for ElvUI (I don't like the look of it either - it's too bulky for me), but Tuk is much easier to configure, you can supplement it with add-ons for any information that you might require.

I've never said Elv was minimalistic - I was speaking about its base, TukUI.
(Frankly, the only way I am going to try this out is if I can get all of its extra features to look exactly like base Tuk. This edit is not my version of minimalistic; however, Tuk fit's the bill.)

What information are you unable to get from base TukUI that you would have, when and where you want, in a default UI, without evoking another addon?

You're absolutely right about one thing - if this UI suite doesn't do it for you, find something else or code a variant of your own. Yeah, it's got shortcomings, but if you require low usage or like the screen real estate (at least on TukUI) or whatever, it's fine.

You seem to be implying that this UI has poor configuration and is too bulky to be used. All of which can be overcome with a bit of research, if someone likes the aesthetics of the thing, and use addons or edit lua to make their changes. For an out of the box UI replacement, I don't think it's too bad. One can manage just fine with the configuration options available, and by using your stock addons.