Thread: Post Your UI

  1. #18001
    Pandaren Monk shanthi's Avatar
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    There's a perfectly valid design principle for using Decursive, as a healer. (My history: I used to use Decursive when healing, I don't currently.) It's a question of balancing breadth and depth. In web design/UI design, newer designers often make the mistake of trying to, say, put all fuctionality into a single menu. But just because it's possible to do it doesn't make it the right call, because there's a usability cost to making things (like a menu) "too deep." It can be better to have two menus, increasing breadth but decreasing depth, to make it faster/easier to find something (assuming you do a good job of signaling to the user which menu is their best bet).

    Similarly, there is a usability cost to making your raid frames "too deep" in terms of all the click/mouseover functions you want them to perform. Using click-healing as an example, if you've already bound right-click, left-click, middle-click, control-left, control-right, control-middle, shift-left, shift-right, shift-middle, alt-left, alt-right and alt-middle to heals/cooldowns (and the easy-to-reach keys on your keyboard to utility spells), there's a very good argument that using double modifiers either for dispels or for certain other utility/cooldowns is not optimal, cognitively. Instead, having a second (very small) set of "frames" (if you want to call Decursive that) that simply dispels with a right or left click adds a little extra breadth (of screen real estate) but arguably significantly reduces the cognitive load of the added depth that would come from putting them on your raid frames with further click-bindings or mouseover macros.

    This was especially true for a priest (which is what I play) in the past, where there were two dispels, one for magic and one for disease. That's a thing of the past (and priest toolkits--especially for discipline--have been pared down dramatically in Warlords of Draenor), which is why I no longer bother with Decursive. But the principle is still valid. Obviously, you can also take that to extremes, in WoW UI or outside UI (one single-item menu for every website function or one set of WoW UI elements for every heal, for example, would be silly) or simply waste too much space on breadth for what you're gaining. Each person simply has to balance that for themselves.
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  2. #18002
    Quote Originally Posted by shanthi View Post
    There's a perfectly valid design principle for using Decursive, as a healer. (My history: I used to use Decursive when healing, I don't currently.) It's a question of balancing breadth and depth. In web design/UI design, newer designers often make the mistake of trying to, say, put all fuctionality into a single menu. But just because it's possible to do it doesn't make it the right call, because there's a usability cost to making things (like a menu) "too deep." It can be better to have two menus, increasing breadth but decreasing depth, to make it faster/easier to find something (assuming you do a good job of signaling to the user which menu is their best bet).

    Similarly, there is a usability cost to making your raid frames "too deep" in terms of all the click/mouseover functions you want them to perform. Using click-healing as an example, if you've already bound right-click, left-click, middle-click, control-left, control-right, control-middle, shift-left, shift-right, shift-middle, alt-left, alt-right and alt-middle to heals/cooldowns (and the easy-to-reach keys on your keyboard to utility spells), there's a very good argument that using double modifiers either for dispels or for certain other utility/cooldowns is not optimal, cognitively. Instead, having a second (very small) set of "frames" (if you want to call Decursive that) that simply dispels with a right or left click adds a little extra breadth (of screen real estate) but arguably significantly reduces the cognitive load of the added depth that would come from putting them on your raid frames with further click-bindings or mouseover macros.

    This was especially true for a priest (which is what I play) in the past, where there were two dispels, one for magic and one for disease. That's a thing of the past (and priest toolkits--especially for discipline--have been pared down dramatically in Warlords of Draenor), which is why I no longer bother with Decursive. But the principle is still valid. Obviously, you can also take that to extremes, in WoW UI or outside UI (one single-item menu for every website function or one set of WoW UI elements for every heal, for example, would be silly) or simply waste too much space on breadth for what you're gaining. Each person simply has to balance that for themselves.
    true enough, but having to look away from your raid frames to see if someone needs a dispel is not exactly the greatest thing to do as a healer. and you can set debuff colors in your raid frames to see what kind of dispel is needed. also there have historically been fights where there are things you should dispel and things you shouldnt in the same fight (example: beastlord), and decursive seems like it would be awful for that as you cannot distinguish.

  3. #18003
    Pandaren Monk shanthi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kheath812 View Post
    true enough, but having to look away from your raid frames to see if someone needs a dispel is not exactly the greatest thing to do as a healer.
    Decursive can be placed right alongside healing frames, so your eyes don't need to move to any significant extent--that your eyes need to move at all is where breadth comes in, in the first place. Having Weak Auras to track cooldowns, or a holy power tracker, etc, all increases the breadth of your UI and forces you to move your eyes off your raid frames. That isn't automatically a negative, the question is how much you need to move your eyes and whether the benefit is sufficient and there isn't a clean conclusion that's true for everyone or every case.

    also there have historically been fights where there are things you should dispel and things you shouldnt in the same fight (example: beastlord), and decursive seems like it would be awful for that as you cannot distinguish.
    Decursive also allows you to filter debuffs to help you avoid dispelling the wrong thing (though that's a separate issue anyway; you're arguing whether Decursive is a good addon at all for dispelling, regardless of whether it's redundant, which wasn't the thrust of my post).
    Last edited by shanthi; 2015-04-20 at 04:47 AM.
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  4. #18004
    Field Marshal Darcascia's Avatar
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    Resto Druid Perspective

    Last edited by Darcascia; 2015-04-20 at 05:40 AM. Reason: add thumbnail image

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  5. #18005
    jesus. theres so much going on, so many different fonts...

  6. #18006
    Quote Originally Posted by Arborus View Post
    Anyone familiar with editing fonts? I'm trying to scale up a few so they don't look awful when rendered in WoW, but they keep coming out like this.

    http://puu.sh/hk1xh/d69bc20bed.png

    They appear fine in Windows' Font Preview and Photoshop, though.
    It looks like the letters are overflowing the spacing lines (I don't know what they're called) in each glyph, but I dunno for sure. I'm no expert on fonts but if you PM me the file I can have a look.

  7. #18007
    Quote Originally Posted by Veyn View Post
    Here's mine. Any suggestions appreciated

    http://i.imgur.com/NTy1Go9.jpg

    The castbar is right underneath my Cooldowns
    there you go

  8. #18008
    Deleted
    Thank you

  9. #18009
    yeah, general layout in principle...not so bad. alignment and consistency of fonts/themes....not so good.

  10. #18010
    Field Marshal Darcascia's Avatar
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    You know, checking little things like fonts and thematic consistency never occurred to me, so thanks for pointing that out. As far as layout goes, it may help to see it in action, so temporarily visible elements will maybe tie it all together... although I still need to make a few tweaks to how upcoming boss abilities are tracked as well as making enemy cast bars more prominent, which makes it easier to predict and prepare to handle certain mechanics.

    Here's a video of the UI in action; perhaps it'll aid in your gaining an understanding of my intent: (I have also made slight changes since the posted video, such as shifting the scrolling combat text display area, rearranging action bar contents, and making additions to WeakAuras.)

    Heroic Imperator Mar'gok - By Darcascia GWAR with Transcendent-Kel'Thuzad

    Thanks for the input!
    Last edited by Darcascia; 2015-04-21 at 01:18 PM.

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  11. #18011
    Deleted
    Clean Looking I like it

  12. #18012
    Quote Originally Posted by Veyn View Post
    Here's mine. Any suggestions appreciated



    The castbar is right underneath my Cooldowns
    It's fine and looks like it will work well. Things I personally would change:

    - Have less fonts. A simple designed-for-screen sans serif font with Regular, Bold (& Black if possible), and Condensed style is a good way to go. Then you can use the different styles where needed and it still looks unified. Add in one special headline type font for really special text and you're set

    - the bars above your player frame could be colour coded to match the ability/item they track. If the addon you're using doesn't do that, WeakAuras can.

    - use the image replacement files I posted some pages back to make your quest log look nice and clean (but function the same)

    - the icons above the target frame look like an afterthought. they need a nice symmetrical home somewhere.

    - replace the Blizzard spell alerts with something cool from WeakAuras

    - take out the ATTENTION: ASTRAL SHIFT text warnings. I always think big spammy text alerts are kind of like a sign that the UI is failing elsewhere. For raid alerts they're ok. ish. [EDIT - is that a raid alert? or an ability thing?]
    Last edited by Kaitain; 2015-04-21 at 03:53 PM.

  13. #18013


    Base for the new layout I'm working on. Thoughts?
    Last edited by Arborus; 2015-04-21 at 08:20 PM.

  14. #18014
    Pandaren Monk Beroendet's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arborus View Post
    UserInterface[/URL]

    Base for the new layout I'm working on. Thoughts?
    Wow, actually looks... Neat, but. kinda odd. But still good! c:
    “We all know interspecies romance is weird.”
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  15. #18015
    Quote Originally Posted by Arborus View Post
    Base for the new layout I'm working on. Thoughts?
    I love your health and RP things. Love the overall style actually, but things are too scattered for my personal taste.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bootybear View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Valancer View Post
    I play as a holy priest and when I ran hfc lfr I noticed after the first boss my heal spell wasn't casting. So I looked at it and it shows that it has a 34.4 min cast time
    Do you have the class trinket? If so, the cast time is correct. /s

  16. #18016
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitain View Post
    - take out the ATTENTION: ASTRAL SHIFT text warnings. I always think big spammy text alerts are kind of like a sign that the UI is failing elsewhere. For raid alerts they're ok. ish. [EDIT - is that a raid alert? or an ability thing?]
    Looks like bigwigs spawning test bars.

  17. #18017
    Quote Originally Posted by Xintic View Post
    Yep, it's the emphasized warning from BigWigs.
    kk cool. You can tell i don't raid anymore :-)

  18. #18018
    Quote Originally Posted by Arborus View Post

    Base for the new layout I'm working on. Thoughts?
    Any chance on getting the health/RP WA/graphics? I really dig that.

  19. #18019
    im not a huge fan of xCT so i stopped using it with Skullflowers ui. For some reason though i cant change the scrolling damage font within elvui. any ideas?

  20. #18020
    Quote Originally Posted by Xintic View Post
    http://puu.sh/ho5uM/e2c70becc9.jpg Under the general options, go to Media and change the CombatText Font
    i actually did. the font thats being used and the font ive chosen are different. only seems to have been this way since i installed skullflower as well. figured one had sometrhing to do with the other.

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