1 ) What's up with the empty buff icons up top ?
2 ) Ditch the default minimap, it's ewwish
3 ) Action bars look good
4 ) Your chat box, unit frames and MSBT all have different text (also NEVER use the default msbt test, it's awful )
1 ) People seem to like the default minimap, there are MUCH nicer alternatives that can fit the theme of your UI
2 ) Are you using the Blizzard raid frames ?
3 ) Fill up your empty actions bars
4 ) Change the font of MSBT to the one present in Unit frames and chat, it'll look much better
1 ) I've used sexymap with the rest of my UIs, but the quest list positioning and the positioning of "broken armor person" that appears when low on durability is all messed up, and I've tried to configure them many times, but ended up going back to the original. Anyhow, I've been looking at nmap lately and probably will give it a try.
2 ) I don't, I've just got the "pull thingy" on the left for flares, etc. (I know there are addons, but they take up more space)
3 ) Don't know with what... but yeah, I like to have every slot with something.
4 ) Will give it a try. I hadn't even noticed.
Thanks
I use http://www.wowinterface.com/download...MediaPack.html
But I like your bar texture, Care to share what it is?
This is my first real self built UI that came out okay. I've been using compilations (a lot from this thread!) or just unfocused piecemeal kind of UIs for a long time. It still needs some work, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. Minimap and poisoner stuff definitely needs work, and I still have minor tweaks to nameplates, msbt, and buff tracking in mind. Used stuf, aloft, and raven for the main visual elements. I'm also probably one of the only players that hasn't bothered to pick up a new monitor in a long time.
Last edited by mmocba105e19de; 2011-11-11 at 05:11 PM.
I was finally able to get Fraps to cooperate (mostly) and get a video of my UI in action
This is the (late) beta version of what I plan to make Version 4.2 of IterUI. It replaces Bison with Raven for better buff frames and the addition of Debuff and HoT trackers (Hot's appear opposite the debuff tracker)
Yes, I'm a quiet raider when I'm not tanking :P And Yes, that was a sloppy ass kill XD
What would be the point in seeing the exact same UI over and over again? It's about as useful as someone posting the original Blizzard UI and about as inspiring or original.
Did you work on it? Did you change things? Will people look at it and instantly go "Oh, that's ElvUI, but he only added Recount rather than Skada/Sexymap/Titanpanels/whatever"? Would the changes be noted and make sense? Would the author of ElvUI maybe go and think "hm, you know, what that one guy did actually was pretty good, I could consider that for my next update"?
I think we can pretty much say that 90% (if not more) of the UIs posted have been heavily inspired by someone else. There's no shame in that. The time of breakthrough design has long been gone and most of it has been tried by now. It's largely refining what has been brought to bear already.
Sidenote, if people get upset over my knocking Sexymap, it's because it's pretty much the single most atrocious addon available. It used to be second most atrocious, but Gearscore is discontinued.
Yet you completely fail to try and rectify the problem by offering people what you would deem as a good alternative. I never got why peoepl go on rants in UI posts and then don't offer a fix to what they see wrong. The rant is as usefull to others as the mod is to you!
Youtube Chan : http://www.youtube.com/user/eqbobyboucher
Armory : http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Odina/advanced
1. I don't PvP
2. I filter out any irrelevant buffs(all longer than 2 Min.) on me, and I only show MY debuffs and buffs I (on my mage) can spellsteal on my target. I also show all my other buffs on me(by me) in the top right there.
3. Currently my guild only does 10-mans, so they don't cover up too much of the screen.
Last edited by tordenflesk; 2011-11-11 at 10:09 PM.
Last edited by mmocba105e19de; 2011-11-11 at 10:23 PM.
The add-on itself isn't completely horrible. However, your minimap shouldn't draw your attention away from the more important Ui elements. SexyMap is hardly ever configured beyond default when used in a Ui. You can actually modify the add-on to look quite simple and still have the functions that come along with it. As far as offering an alternative, pretty much any other minimap add-on that is currently updated.
Go to any mod site (curse, wowinterface, whatever). Search for 'minimap'. Hey presto, you now have half a dozen alternatives to SexyMap. Most all of which can do the same if you're looking for what Ishtara just described: toning the damn thing down. Additionally, they can do so at a fraction of the size of SexyMap. I've switched to a bundle of different ones as some get discontinued or I like some feature better, but there's plenty of options available with but a single search.
My main problem with SexyMap is what Ishtara said: people install it 'out of the box', after which it's an annoying rotating thingy that draws attention. Your minimap is not where your attention should be going. It's pretty much the last part of your UI that requires your attention (right before the micro menu). If you do modify it, I don't see the point in using an addon that is that bloated compared to what's available as well.
Didn't you give an good reason earlier in your post when you said "I've switched to a bundle of different ones as some get discontinued or I like some feature better"? Having an addon that's been continuously maintained for a few years now seems like a good reason to use it: you get consistency in your UI, knowledge that you're not going to need more maintenance than an update after a major patch, and several years worth of tweaks, bug fixes, and forum posts for support. Say what you might about "new hotness" addons - there's a lot to be said for established software too, notably the knowledge that it's likely still going to be maintained in 6 months time.
When CPU and memory are functionally limitless for addons, it seems strange to me to worry about a few megabytes of memory or a few thousand cycles-per-second (even in slow run-time environment like the WoW Lua interpreter). This could be a function of my "pretty good" hardware but even the most modest warcraft machine shouldn't have issues with an addon that isn't puking out lua errors several times a second or doing O(n!) algorithms when O(Log(n)) will do.
Finally, it could be that Sexymap has the right combinations of features that somebody would choose it on those merits alone. You said yourself you've found yourself trying different collections of addons to accomplish the same task because you like those offered by one or another. Presumably many users have similar feature desires - after a few years of development it's likely the most popular addon addresses those common features reasonably well: it should be no surprise people choose it on it's feature list alone.
Wouldn't you be better served by trying to draw the user's attention to their thoughtlessness rather than attacking the tools they used while being thoughtless? It's like hating a teapot because somebody has burned themselves with scalding water. It could be the tool is poorly designed and encourages misuse (imagine a teapot with the handle and spout on the same side) or it could be the user is simply careless. The mere fact that somebody has been burned is not reason to deride or attack the tool.[The] main problem with SexyMap is...people [don't configure it the way I think they should].
Last edited by a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51; 2011-11-11 at 11:50 PM.
This is my druid's new UI. I'm using art from Wildheart UI, it is available on GiganticTexturePack. Power auras: Green leaves are SM and WG and the one in the middle is Harmony uptime. White "pergaments" are cooldowns; innervate, LB, tranq and NS. And there is also OoC proc, that is blizzard aura. In 25-man setup Vuhdo will rise and fill cap between art and castbar.
I'm not sure how to make buttons look better, since there is no "grid" for them. I tried all clean icon skins(thin, square and original), but none seems to fit.
Edit: found masque skin, picture updated.
Last edited by mmoce60d2079f6; 2011-11-12 at 06:50 PM.
Why on earth would one present the default option to be the single most obnoxious minimap possible?
And honestly, no, I do not think people pick Sexymap based on its merits alone. They pick it on account of its name (well chosen, in that sense) or the simple fact that 800.000 flies can't be wrong (shit tastes great!). Why try some other addon when Sexymap is by far the most downloaded one? Similarly, quite a few people keep using awkward unit frames, because they never bothered to look beyond the one they got or what they got suggested.
The basic idea of tweaking your UI is to make vital information more easily discernable. Sexymap, in its base form, goes directly against that principle by directing your attention away from important areas into something that is utterly irrelevant. I raided without Minimap for ages. You just don't need it. Animations are designed to draw and keep your attention.
Your point about 'size doesn't matter' is somewhat relevant. However, I still see little reason to voluntarily just increase my memory footprint or even the size of my Interface folder when a smaller, compacter addon can do the same thing (or better).
Maybe to show of the "cool stuff" you can do with it? If it came out of the box as an ultra-minimal black square that might win the hearts and minds of those who subscribe to a minimal aesthetic, it also loses the opportunity to expose a new user to unique functionality (like animated borders) and squanders a chance to encourage a user to experiment with the configuration.
It's the same reason TVs ship out-of-the-box to super-saturated + ultrabright: it looks good in the show room. You're supposed to set it up appropriately for your home when you take it out of the box, and the manual encourages that much. The fact some people opt to use the default doesn't mean the tv or addon is any less useful.
Then there's always the chance that people choose to stick with the default because they like it. Maybe people really do want blue swirling borders! Horror of horrors, but in the grand scheme of UI design it's actually not that bad. As much as you or I might like to rail against superflous motion - the sort employed by sexymap is among the least offensive. It's blue (one of the colors people are least sensitive to), it's cyclic and slow: something our visual system is excellent at identifying (we're great at novelty) but then ignoring (habituation kicks in quickly). The appropriate complaint (IMO) is not that the default UI is distracting, but it's nature causes it to lose the ability to be distracting. You simply block out activity in that corner of the screen which makes it difficult to present information there at all. You learn quickly that there's "noisey motion" up there and ignore it automatically.
If we're all flies - maybe there's some wisdom in the swarm about the best places to lay eggs. It's not like flies would spend time there if it was positively toxic to larvae. Maybe some clever fly, like you, has found some rotting garbage worth checking out, but the cow-turd works pretty well for a lot of flies for a lot of years and I think it's foolish to dismiss outright it without good reason.And honestly, no, I do not think people pick Sexymap based on its merits alone. They pick it on account of its name (well chosen, in that sense) or the simple fact that 800.000 flies can't be wrong (shit tastes great!).
If the addon was clearly deficient in some way (for example it tossed divide-by-zero errors hundreds of times a minute) nobody would use it. Why is it so hard to accept that whatever shortfalls you see may not be weighted to heavily for others, or they may be seen as advantages. Maybe it's not right for your needs but your needs don't cover the entire problem space.
Ignoring for a brief moment that my goal and your goal with a UI may be very different (maybe RP-types don't give a darn about boss HP but they may care very much about having dragons and swords and magic runes on their interface for increased 'immersion'), maybe somebody who's been playing RTS games wants their UI to look more like the UI from World at War because they've imprinted on looking for certain queues about their game status.The basic idea of tweaking your UI is to make vital information more easily discernible. Sexymap, in its base form, goes directly against that principle by directing your attention away from important areas into something that is utterly irrelevant.
Further, just because an interface element has one purpose (like displaying to location of nodes to mine) doesn't mean that it can't also be "pretty". Pretty varies from person to person, and while there is a science of aesthetic the old adage "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" still caries some weight.
Once again, you've demonstrated an inability to allow for other peoples needs and wants. You said yourself you've had to change addons because ones you changed to stopped being supported. Some people can forgive slightly larger memory consumption for the knowledge that their addons have a multi-year history of support or the simplicity of a single addon to update or being able to ask their friends for configuration advice. That's a something that 'upstart' addons simply can't always offer and I think to dismiss people who value long-term stability or readily available support simply because they aren't congruent with your desires shows a mental myopia that limits your appreciation for the scope of the debate.Your point about 'size doesn't matter' is somewhat relevant. However, I still see little reason to voluntarily just increase my memory footprint or even the size of my Interface folder when a smaller, compacter addon can do the same thing (or better).