Posts with tag ui

So I was zipping around the other day snapping screenshots for an article, when I discovered I'd been playing for a short while -- actually playing, even returning to town -- without having turned my UI back on. I had no text, I had no NPC or player names -- and I had no stress.

I can clearly remember a time when I was trying to streamline my UI when I experimented with turning off as many names as I could. I hated the lack of information; in fact, it was shortly after that that I went out and got my first tooltip mod. I suppose my change of heart the other day was due to my relaxed engagement in zones where I was in absolutely no danger. (It wasn't even a PvP realm.) Still, it struck me how pristine the experience of making my way through the zone and through town was. Was I headed in precisely the right direction? Who was this woman? Did that fellow over there have the herbalism supplies, or was it something else?

I'm guessing there are roleplayers who partially or completely turn off their UIs in town on a regular basis. Do you? What about out in the world, when you're adventuring? How minimal could you go and be effective and have a good time?

---

Slim here. I warned you I'd do it.

Blizzard has integrated the features of many current add-ons into the pet battle UI for patch 5.1. The journal, wild pet tooltips, and battle UI now display information making it easier to choose which pets to capture and which to kill.

• During battle, the quality of the pet is shown in the color of the opponent creature's name as well as the border of the icon. This renders Pet Battle Glow unnecessary.
• Mousing over a pet in the wild now shows how many of that creature you have collected, if any. It does not show what the highest quality of that particular pet you own, however. So the Pet Caught add-on will still give more information than the new UI.
• Mousing over the opponent creature during the battle will also display how many of the pets you own, but again, not their qualities.

More changes are after the break.

This week I'm taking a different approach with the UI sent in to me by Vanard, you can see it in the header image if you squint really hard, but for those of us with normal vision, here's a link to the full size image.

Vanard sent me his UI with a detailed email telling me exactly what he's using, and you should do the same! We're getting a lot of healer UIs, we had Synchrony's priest UI last week, and my own UI the week before. We need some tank and DPS UIs! If you do email me on olivia@wowinsider.com, tell me what addons you're using, why you're using them, what you like and what you'd change. And don't think you have to use a ton of addons, I'd love to feature a customized version of the standard UI.

I challenge you!

Actually, let's call that a challenge! Send me your best UI customization that only uses standard Blizzard UI elements. You can use addons to move them around, reposition, re-size, but it has to be exclusively Blizzard frames visible. Points awarded for using fewer addons, and for innovation, or doing things that most of us don't realize the Blizzard UI can do! Do still send me your normal UIs, as well.

Welcome to the latest iteration of Reader UI of the Week. I'm your new host, and we're back thanks to popular demand. Well, frankly, the popular demand was for Mat McCurley's column. I've taken the reins and am hoping to at least hold a candle to Mat's work.

I've been reading back over the past years' Reader UI of the Week columns, and trying to work out what it was that people enjoyed. It's a little bit of judgement, a chunk of advice, a little bit of looking at the good and bad sides of UIs and a big bit of discussion. It seems obvious to me that UIs are intensely personal. There's no right or wrong answer to the question "What's a perfect UI?" The question, in my opinion, should be rephrased to "What's your perfect UI?"

Nonetheless, we all like to judge. It's rather like the WoW equivalent of a home improvement show, this column. And on those shows, I always want to see the presenter's house. So that's what we're doing today. The above image is my own UI. This column has been a great motivator to fix up some of the UI elements on my own screen that have been bothering me since the start of Mists, but that I've been too lazy to repair!

With patch 5.0.4 dropping today, there are quite a few UI changes you'll need to get used to. Many of those changes are coming to your trusty spellbook. The way you find and use spells has changed slightly, and the spellbook now includes some handy hints to help you grasp your class and spec's role and abilities. Here's the basic rundown:

• All core class and spec skills are now on one tab under the main Spellbook tab.
• The Core Abilities tab gives you a rundown of the key abilities you'll use for your class and spec.
• The What's Changed tab lets you know what's new for your class and spec.
• The Mounts and Companions tabs are no longer in your main spellbook.

Let's take a deeper look at each of these points now.

This morning, I want to thank the developers and maintainers who manage the lesser-known plugins. While everyone knows and loves addons like Recount, Deadly Boss Mods, and Bartender, some of the others do things that are just as amazing with a fraction of the support.

For example, one of the addons I simply could not do without is Baud Manifest. This little guy completely eliminates the standard "inventory-as-icons" motif and just gives you a list, with searching/filtering/custom categorizing features available. If you're like me and remember what something's called long before you remember the icon, then definitely give this one a try. It also works seamlessly in the Mists beta, which makes me a happy panda.

What do you think? What are your favorite addons that nobody else knows about?

---

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

When it comes to a custom UI, information is king. Sure, there are ancillary benefits, like the pursuit of a pretty user interface, or a minimalistic one, or (be still, my beating heart) both. But when you get down to the real meat and potatoes of building a UI, the most successful are the ones that are most effective at presenting information to the player in an efficient and useful manner.

And of course, many players are perfectly happy with the stock UI, which is totally fine if that's your cup of tea. For many others, myself included, the preference is for a custom viewport into Azeroth that can distill everything at your disposal into a package that can be quickly digested by the brain, as well as all sorts of bells, whistles, and dinglehoppers that make for a more aesthetically pleasing interface. Because that's half the fun.

Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter.

Now this is awesome and share-worthy to the extreme: a UI built around incorporating 3D spell effects from WoW into the UI elements that support them. Using a combination of WeakAuras, ingenuity, and lots of beer, Kait:Auras was born. Is it impractical? Yes. Is it awesome? Double yes. If you're going for eye candy, pack it with sugar and calories.

Just when you think you've seen the last out of the World of Warcraft UI, someone comes along and breaks the game with a poison swapper or allows you to draw a phallus army all over Dalaran. That sense of adventure, that the whole game could come crashing down at any point because of some enterprising young upstart, was what fueled the fun of the addon community and development -- the off-chance that your addon, in the grand history of addons, would change the world. Making the game better was one thing, but the unintended and often hilarious consequences of giving Blizzard such a (relatively weak) headache is kind of fun.