Reader UI of the Week: Cleaning up a distressed laptop UI
by Mathew McCurley 
Dec 27th 2011 at 4:00PM
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend, because it's time to get serious -- interface serious. That's like the most intense kind of serious, next to super-serious. This week's reader submission needs some super-serious help, tips, and tricks to help make things more manageable for its user, Shamonkey. And while I'm not the most forgiving person when it comes to novelty pun names, I am forgiving when someone is in need. Shamonkey, we've got your back.
Shamonkey's UI is a little out of sorts -- not unusable by any stretch of the imagination, but things could use a bit of a tidying up, don't you think? There's no shame in asking for some help, and laptop UIs are always a hot topic amongst emailers and commenters. Take a look, read my advice, and maybe post some of your own in the comments.
Shamonkey's UI -- laptop UI, multi-purpose, just a little messy
What's the situation, Shamonkey?
i play a shaman and a warrior on zuluhed-us.Thanks for the submission, Shamonkey. The problem with laptops is not their computing or video quality, considering WoW is one of those games that is designed specifically to be run on pretty much any machine out there. Sure, you might have to tinker with some addons to get the ones that won't give you a performance drop, but for the most part laptops function in a very similar way to desktops with regards to World of Warcraft.
my ui is jacked and im looking to clean it up to be somewhat like the one shown on dec. 20th 2011. he was also a shaman and it looked really clean. the only addons i want to keep for sure are titanpanel and bartender. i will condense those to whatever size needed. also, i play on a 13" macbook so my screen space is limited. my shaman is pve only and my warrior is pve/pvp. if you have any ideas for solutions to both, feel free to tell me, but if youre having trouble, all im really worried about is the shaman, btw, im elemental. HAVE FUN.
Shamonkey-ele shaman-zuluhed-us
As usual, my first piece of advice is to always have a clear set of goals and rules to follow so that you give your UI some extra boundaries other than the four corners of the monitor. Why do we want clear goals? Well, if you know your destination, making decisions to get there seems like a worthy endeavor.
For a laptop UI, the first thing to think about is realizing that you have limited screen real estate and consequently that you're going to want to cut down on addons that duplicate functions. Taking away some of the repeated addon functions will clear up some space and open up your options as to what can go where.
The second big goal is to get rid of interface elements that have some easily usable keybinds that you can spare. Removing interface elements that have other avenues to their precious interface features means less stuff on your screen. Good times, right? Let's get started.
Duplicating functions
People who send me UIs to look over and give them advice almost universally have too many addons that do the same thing. Shamonkey is guilty of having both a player/unit frame addon as well as a HUD-style player frame draped to the sides of his character. For the space-conscious, you're going to want to remove this waste. Pick which addon type and display configuration you like the best, and move on. Especially as a DPSer, you're only really going to have to be monitoring your health, since mana and resources usually aren't an issue for your DPS classes.
If your unit and player frames are taking up a bunch of space, double it when you're in combat. Remember, the enemy has a target frame and information that goes along with that, so choose wisely, because you're basically choosing twice. If you don't mind this amount of stuff on screen, try scaling the UI elements down a bit so that they are still present but take up less space.
Remove some stuff
I've always been a staunch advocate against the huge, unwieldy micromenu bar that graces the bottom right corner of Shamonkey's screen. There are addons that you can find to change the way the micromenu works, where you can move it, and stick it on a LDB bar. The micro menu has most of its functions mapped to keys by default, so if you do not use a lot of the letter keys for abilities, you might still have all this stuff bound to their original keys.
If you don't want to get rid of the micromenu, try scaling it down. An addon like Bartender or Dominos will let you independently scale the micro menu bar, and you'll still be able to access all of the functions but with fewer space concerns.
Bag icons are probably not needed. Doesn't everyone just default the B button to open all of your bags, anyway? As someone who has had some sort of bag addon for years, I still cannot fathom why we're doing the separate bags thing anymore. It's just not that fun and it takes up a lot of space. So get rid of those bag buttons, make B open all bags, and you'll save yourself some prime corner real estate down in the bottom right.
Now that we're cleared up
Now that some interface elements are moved or gone or scaled down to the point where the UI is comfortably viewable but also open enough, we can start shifting pieces around. After the micromenu is moved and scaled and the bag bar is just flat-out shot into space, you have a whole empty corner to stash some addons in. First, move the damage meters down to the bottom and spread out the action bars a bit. You'll have more room to play with them, as well as scale your action bars, so have fun. Play around with locations.
For laptop screens, I tell people to pretend the middle of the screen is addon-phobic -- addons just bounce right off the center and push out to the sides. Create your interface with addons around the periphery rather than up front in your character's face. You'll have an easier time moving around, noticing ground effects, and addons just won't be in your way.
The chat box can also stand to move around a bit. Having it float out in the open like that could potentially get in the way of the action, but it's not too bad. Like I said, once those addons are removed or scaled from the bottom, the action bars can move and the chat box would fit perfectly in the corner, a happy new home for your favorite text.
Finally, consider a minimap addon that will let you scale the map as well. You don't need the minimap for as many things are you think you do, and a smaller minimap allows for greater customization up top. Keeping the Titan bar up top is perfectly fine and exactly where I would leave it, but the minimap definitely needs a tweak or two to save you even more space.
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, or visit Addons 101 for help getting started.
Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
lazymangaka Dec 27th 2011 4:23PM
My 'B' button strafes me to the right, so I like having a dedicated on-screen button for my bags.
MrJak Dec 28th 2011 5:07AM
What is your movement key setup? Sounds very interesting if 'B' is your strafe right button!
lazymangaka Dec 28th 2011 9:04AM
I move almost exclusively with my mouse. My first four fingers are permanently placed on 1-4 for abilities, my thumb hits V and B for strafing or space for jumping, forward movement is done via left and right click or middle mouse for autorun. I find it very efficient, and I have trouble adjusting to any games that use WASD now.
Stenenis Dec 27th 2011 4:31PM
Hey, nice to see someone else out there on a 13" MacBook!
When I was redoing my UI a few months ago, I was greatly inspired by a REader UI of the Week article (http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/06/21/reader-ui-of-the-week-go-hotkey-crazy-with-vardelm/) that showed a UI with mostly keybinds, not action bars.
While i deviated more than a bit from what is seen in the article, but removing most of my action bars (I used keybinds already, who needs to see the spells?) and switching major CD's to TellMeWhen and lesser ones to raven cleaned up a lot of space.
I use this UI on my PvP Fire mage main and a prot pally, so i find it quite versatile.
Good luck to all on UI breakthroughs!
Saz Dec 27th 2011 5:03PM
A little trick I used on my MacBook with Bartender was to make the Micro Menu and a bar or two containing my more unused buttons (professions, repair bots, hearthstone/Astral Recall, etc) either fade until moused-over, or to completely disappear (and made click through-able) upon entering combat. I've also done a fade-out function on my totem bar since I typically don't do much totem swapping mid battle (if I do, I have certain totems remaining on my bars for that anyhow) and my most commonly used configuration is keybound.
I recommend making your reputation bar fade until you mouse over, grab a bag addon (I prefer ArkInventory, but there's many great and more lightweight bag addons out there) so you can disable your bag visual, group up and fade/hide in combat/until mouse over your two right hand side buttons (make them click through for combat!), and scale the rest of your spells down a touch. I know it can sometimes get a bit hard to see on that small of a monitor, but tinker with it until you're visually comfortable.
TitanPanel - You can turn off your XP tracking and pop something useful in there, like FPS/Latency tracking (my personal preference).
Good luck my shaman brother from another mother!
HDPriest Dec 28th 2011 12:33AM
For those lesser-used buttons like Hearthstone, professions, and such I found Geist to be just perfect. It lets u make a 12-button bar that comes up/hides when u toggle a keybind. That way it's easily accessible when you need it, but completely off your screen when you don't.
Pyromelter Dec 27th 2011 7:05PM
It looks like he's using xperl... I'd get rid of that and go with Shadowed, and use Grid for party/raid frames. Grid's default is pretty small which would help. Simple MiniMap will help position the minimap better.
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/shadowed-unit-frames
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/simple-minimap
Also, Mat, the reason why you need the bag and minibar buttons visible is if you are typing something somewhere, like in a chat box or in the auction house, and you need to bring up your bags or the wow menu over your AH interface. For example, let's say you are talking with someone, and then in the midst of chatting, you want to link an item. Your choice there is to completely blow away what you typed, then hit B, then retype stuff and then link the item... or you can just click the bag button.
I agree the bag and minibar buttons should be as small as possible, but I've used those buttons many times, so I do believe they are useful.
So for that laptop UI, I'd use Shadowed, SimpleMinimap, Grid, Bartender, recount, titanpanel, deadly boss mods, OmniCC, and Prat (still can't live without a chat addon). For shaman, the default UI proc notifications are usually good enough that you don't need power auras. I would also consider a dot tracker (Needtoknow or classtimer), and maybe a scrolling combat text, not because you need to see it, but because in aoe situations, it's good to have control over the numbers popping up on the screen. A scrolling combat text can help organize damage numbers with minimal effect on the visual field.
Curokk Dec 27th 2011 8:08PM
If he's looking to free up some space I'd check out Opie too. Maybe put the mounts on the left into a ring and free up that area.
Braden5792 Dec 28th 2011 12:16AM
Ahh the memories... Within the past 6 months I upgraded from a 17 inch laptop to a full throttled desktop computer with a 32 inch monitor. Made for a much better playing experience and well worth the money.
I remember how hard it was to build my UI on that laptop though. The best advice I can give you is to scale down your action bars and condense them, get rid of the bars on the right and move those spells to the bottom of the screen. It will make a HUGE difference, but take some play time to fully get used to it. Also, try moving your chat box to a corner, the middle-screen location is far too valuable for Guildies.
All-in-all you aren't too far off from what you want, just a few small tweaks and you're there. :)
Kole Dec 28th 2011 1:43AM
I haven't used Titan Panel since I switched to TukUI but when I did I used http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14482-Titan-MicroMenu.html MicroMenu.
My former laptop setup was Bartender, titan panel (with micro menu), sexy map, chatter and shadowed unit frames.
Currently I just use TukUI (though I have hooked up a much larger 2nd monitor to play on and leave the laptop screen for a browser.)
Vhei Dec 28th 2011 5:33AM
I remember a year ago I got spotlighted for this article. BUt I suggest tinkering around with a base of another UI. Start fresh and only load that UI up like LUI or something then tear it down. Watch your MB usage, too.
cpr10162 Dec 30th 2011 2:14PM
Couple other things... get rid of Skada\Recount etc etc, you don't need them during a fight, if you need to see your dps\healing\interupts yada yada do it at the end of the fight or dungeon or raid. You don't need the distraction of trying to out dps someone and paying attention to the fight.
It looks like he has 4? mount icons, pick your fav ground mount and flying mount and you can always switch them out as needed.
If using the B button is not your thing use Bagon, its just one bag button(if you need one) and then with the new space at the bottom you can pull down your side bar into that area.
I would also move your minibar to the top of the screen to create more space down there in the lower right. Between moving the bags and the minibar you should be able to fit the side bar buttons in that area. I will send in my UI in and maybe it will give you some ideas.
Silvarna
Bouks Dec 31st 2011 1:56PM
One way of reducing the Micro Menu footprint is to get rid of it and move it to your Titan Panel. Personally I moved from Titan to LDB a couple of years ago, so the addon I use is an LDB one, but a search comes up with Micro Menu on WoWI (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info18329-MicroMenu.html) as an addon that creates a Titan plugin with the menu. The prior mentioned Titan - Micro Menu has been discontinued for this.
In most cases I'd recommend moving from Titan or FuBar to LDB, since the support is broader, but since OP specifically wanted to keep Titan that may be impractical. Still, look at LDB - almost everything you can get on TitanPanel has an LDB-enabled version or clone.