Pimped my UI, part 3
Here is the fruit of my labors:
If you scroll down to earlier blog posts you can see how messy the earlier UI was, how much real estate was taken up by various nonsense and over-sized elements. My goal with this new UI was to slim everything down, to not allow any elements to be bigger than they needed to be.
The two main things I decimated were my unit frames and my bars. For the former, there was no reason to have giant health bars and portraits. A small bar would suffice. For the latter, I was key binding just about everything already so I didn’t have to worry about abilities being noticeable enough for easy clicking, so I scaled those suckers down and slipped them all into a tiny space. ButtonFacade with the DSMFade skin helped make the buttons smaller and svelter.
I also completely jettisoned ClassTimers, which was really only serving the purpose of “oh, is my seal on? What about blessings?” Now I have that function carried by Power Auras–those funky symbols and text you see floating over my character. If Righteous Fury is off “RF!” will alert me. If Blessing of Sanctuary is off, the blue S. If I don’t have a seal on, that weird cross symbol will warn me. If I’m afflicted by Forbearance and can’t pop a cooldown, I’ll know.
Per Kerridos’ suggestion in the last UI post, I set Recount to only show when out of combat (it’s an option in the appearance tab, I think) and Omen to only show while in combat. Piling the two on top of each other, I cut how much real estate the two take up. Definitely one of the biggest space savers I managed to accomplish.
To pretty up the whole package I deployed some kgPanels (I was going to try sunport but the screenshots they had didn’t appeal to me) to organize the map-buttons area and the Omen/Recount spot. I really like how it adds sharp lines and solidity to the presentation.
Lastly, I was initially going to give MSBT the heave-ho, and I did for a time. But, the Ulduar hardmodes on Friday was pretty convincing that while I don’t think I’m noticing my damage intake in scrolling combat text, I subconsciously have been. It was a lot harder keeping track of damage intake by glancing at my player unit frame rather than seeing the numbers whizz by. Though, I still unchecked a lot of what MSBT was showing and reduced the text size/alpha to make it less distracting.
I can’t wait to take this UI for a spin in ICC tonight, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the fights than I ever have before.
Armory Feed
Have you tried Satrina buff frames? I noticed (maybe incorrectly) that you have the blizzard default frames for your buffs, and Satrina is infinitely more customizable – and you might be able to save some space there.
I also noticed that you have food/drink on your action bars. I got Opie, which is a huge space saver. It’s essentially a popup “ring” menu, which is IMO only useful for out of combat crap. I put all my food drink on that, and use a hotkey to bring up the menu out of combat. I also put my out-of-combat abilities (rez, hearth, crafting etc) on another opie keyring.
@Rhidach
6 April 2010 at 12:26 pm #
That’s actually Buffalo, which is basically the default buff frame with some small tweak options. I keep meaning to try Satrina, especially because Buffalo seems to crap the bed whenever I make a new toon and try to use it on them.
Thanks for the tip on Opie, I’ll definitely check it out! I’m getting sick of dragging water/mage food out of my bag and onto my bar depending on which I have. I keep meaning to make a macro (alt: mage food, shift: vendor water) but an addon would be easier for sure.
@hazmacewillraid
6 April 2010 at 12:28 pm #
Ah, great idea with Recount/Omen, big thanks to Kerriodos for that! Definitely going to do that as soon as I can log in.
I’m dumb, I forgot to include the link – http://cannotbetamed.blogspot.com/2010/03/user-interface-part-2-action-bars.html
Cannot be Tamed clued me in to Opie, and she has a good pic of how it looks (scroll to the bottom).
The best thing is I choose to show whichever food I want on the “ring” but it only shows me stuff that I actually HAVE. So if I have mage food, it shows mage food plus the other stuff I told it to show me. If I don’t have any mage food, it doesn’t show up at all, and I know that I don’t have any and that I should eat something else. You can also share rings across characters, so once you put a hearthstone on your “out of combat” ring/menu, every char will have it.
zelmaru’s last blog ..Why I am not talking about Cataclysm
Another option for the Recount/Omen deal is to use Skada – just switched to that myself, and find it has enough dmg/healing/absorb meter and details for me, and also includes a threat meter, so you can switch to that for combat. Trims down multiple addons into one.
True about Skada. I still use omen for threat but Skada is far less hoggy on pc resources than recount. Less lag in 25s with Skada versus recount.
You changed 10% of your Unit Frames and Bars? Looks like a bigger change than that.
I like the Recount/Omen suggestion, will try that tonight.
Cheers!
@Rhidach
7 April 2010 at 8:11 am #
@Curtana: Ha! I was wondering if someone was going to take me to task for using the word “decimate”.
I like your new UI. It’s much better than you old one.
Gratz!
Yeah, a pet peeve of mine.
I should make a Facebook group lol.
The only thing I noticed was the completion of The Booterang: A Cure for the Common Worthless Peon.
Damn but I miss the Booterang.
Not bad. I never liked all the spells clumped up like that.
here is mine
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/696/wowscrnshot111909225529.jpg