addon-examples
Latest
Reader UI of the Week: 2011 user interface review
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. For me, 2011 was a great year in terms of getting to know you guys and writing about your user interfaces. People sent in a variety of different types of UI, great tips, tricks, and cool new tweaks to a game that's pushing eight years old. As WoW grows the UI community that has sprouted up around it has grown as well, showing the drive to create and be a part of the whole WoW phenomenon is still very much alive. Mists of Pandaria will only serve to fuel more fire. I wanted to thank you all for your submissions last year, as well as issue a preemptive thank-you for all the great UIs that you have sent in over the year. Now, as we are knee-deep in Cataclysm's final patch, we all have time enough to hang out, sit back, and watch The Destroyed explode into sparkles while we tinker with our UIs getting ready for panda time. Here's a little taste of last year's highlights and my thoughts about 52 Reader UI of the Weeks.
Reader UI of the Week: Ring in the new year with something basic
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. We're going to start the new year off with a simple setup from Emandiputs from the Stormscale realm. Emandiputs is a self-described long-time WoW Insider fan -- and since this is the first Reader UI of the Week of 2012 and my 100th Reader UI of the Week column, I figured I would give the floor to a veteran of the site. So thank you in advance for the submission and the screenshots, Emandiputs. And thank you all for coming along with me on this journey. I didn't really know how long I would be writing for WoW Insider when I joined on. One hundred Reader UI of the Week columns as well as a host of other content later has really hit me today as a substantial thing. Thank you all for reading and letting me get to do this awesome thing. I appreciate it more than you could ever know. Let's get down to business, then. What we've got here is Emandiput's crack at another user interface after a new computer purchase and a trip back to the world of Azeroth. I cannot tell you how much I recommend trying to come up with a whole new UI on a new system. You'll feel fresh and clean and have that happy feeling when everything fits the way you want it to. An old UI from an old computer can sometimes leave behind a weird taste in your mouth. Something just isn't right, you know? It happens for me, at least.
Reader UI of the Week: Cleaning up a distressed laptop UI
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. 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.
Reader UI of the Week: Clear goals make better interfaces
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. Have you ever been in the situation where something that you had utterly convinced yourself was out of reach was in fact right in front of you the whole time? Sometimes people just don't know that they've got the right thing working for them when it's already working. I suspect that many people feel this way about their user interfaces and the addons that they choose to use during their play experience. One of the reasons people are in such positions is because they don't have clear goals set when they begin to tinker with their user interfaces. Addon newcomer Curokk doesn't know how good he has it already. With a few clear-cut goals, Curokk's interface is a solid piece of simplicity and function. Primarily a 5-man dungeon type of player with Raid Finder aspirations, Curokk forged his setup in the boredom and hopelessness that is the Time Lost Proto-Drake hunt. It features nice borders, a simple layout, and a whole bunch of screen real estate left open to view all the pretty action for his shaman to experience. Let's see what Curokk has to say about his UI, whether we can help out some ... and if he actually got the Time Lost Proto-Drake during all that UI building.
Sharing the same UI across all characters
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. We've talked about the standard all-characters user interface before, but with my own experience moving to level up an alt over the course of the next few months bookended by raiding on my main, I wanted to talk again about building one UI for all your characters. Let's get the myths out of the way first. The first myth about building a UI for all of your characters that I want to dispell is the fact that you can't actually do this. That's totally wrong. One UI that you build and maintain can be worked into a setup that works for all characters, no matter what spec or class. Sure, you may have to move something here or there, but if you relegate those movements to addons with simple move commands, you'll cut down on your own confusion pretty quickly. Reader Ymer sent in his user interface that aims to be used across his bevy of alts, ready to roll for any of the four characters who decide to log in on that given day. Let's take a look at his setup, see what we can glean, and then make some general comments about using your interface for multiple characters.
Reader UI of the Week: A tanking UI with a flair for scale
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. Welcome to another installment of Reader UI of the Week, WoW Insider's showcase for your awesome interfaces, customizations, and works of UI art. Sometimes we even learn a thing or two about how to assemble a working user interface from the charred remains of one poor soul's cooking disaster. Anyway, this week's user interface surrounds a subject close to home for me -- tanking. Warrior tanking, to be precise. Arothand's user interface boasts a clean layout that lets the addons themselves do the contrasting rather than a black background or border system, with an emphasis on keybinds and prioritizing buttons based on size. Let's jump right in and see if we can offer some tips and tricks, as well as praise, for this solid tanking setup.
Reader UI of the Week: Raiding without the clutter
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. One of the more common criticisms that commenters and players make about most user interfaces they see anywhere, this column included, is that interfaces that are made for raiding never show their true colors. Raiding players have a huge amount of clutter on their screen, from timer bars and boss health frames to cooldown notifiers and a bunch of meters. Well, not all raiding user interfaces are cluttered messes, and it's actually easier than you think to contain the cacophony of interface elements. Our featured UI this week was crafted by Scalions, a raiding rogue on the Stormrage server. His UI takes all of the cluttered, messy aspects of the common raider's user interface and works with those pieces to add them to the whole, rather than tacking them on as an afterthought. Let's talk raid UI elements!
Reader UI of the Week: The right kind of compact rogue UI
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. Keeping things tight is a noble goal for any UI junkie. Sure, flashy is fun and downright awesome when you can get away with it, but compact UIs are always the little darlings of the screenshot world. People marvel at how much screen is actually taken up by screen real estate and not addons or buttons. We love addons and buttons, but we just want them contained, penned up, and above all not running around crazy and loose. Khirsah sent me his rogue's user interface, which I thought was pretty neat and wanted to share. The user interface takes the bottom bar concept and augments the HUD interface to it in the most minimal way. The two raised sides composed by the chat box and minimap give everything that tiny bit of symmetry that puts me at peace. It's simple but dense and packed with information, yet it still looks clean -- noble goals fulfilled, in my opinion. Let's dive in a little deeper.
Reader UI of the Week: Going from laptop to desktop
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. The move from laptop to desktop can be a startling change of pace for many players. Usually players go from a desktop to the more mobile laptop, considering that laptops are so powerful these days that they're not being thought of anymore as second-rate gaming machines. Jumping from laptop to desktop would be a pretty jarring experience. Reader Blackoccamy has made this jarring move and has sent in her UI to show off a simple and lived-in DPS user interface. After going from a healer role to a DPS role, the requirements for a user interface drop a bit, since you don't need to have as much concern for your fellow raiders. Many pieces of DPS UIs don't need as much functionality as their healing equivalents, so you might find yourself with some extra space left over.
Reader UI of the Week: Mark addon territory with Aeide's setup
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. With many players getting ready to return to the World of Warcraft when the newest patch Hour of Twilight hits the deck, I thought it might be good to look at some more bare-bones approaches to user interfaces since setting up a whole new UI, especially after being gone for a while, can be daunting. A good friend of mine recently started playing his death knight again after a long time being absent and asked me what addons he needed. As my smile quickly turned into a serious, broad line and my lips lost all sense of joviality, I realized that one of my best friends hasn't been reading my columns. Tsk. Anyway, today we're taking a look at Aeide's user interface, built from the ground up with love and care. Aeide is a PVE player exclusively, with a penchant for pushing everything to the bottom of the screen and keeping the middle and top as clear and clean as possible, much to my own heart. With some simple kgPanel work and some minimal planning, you too can space out your addons and give them clear little borders to live within. Any UI that promotes addon segregation is one step ahead in my book.
Reader UI of the Week: A distraction-free hunter UI
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. Welcome back to Reader UI of the Week, where your awesome UI creations go out for the world to see and learn from. I must stress again that this is a learning experience, people. Learn. Adapt. Thrive. Evolve into user interface greatness. Our submission this week is one of those examples of coolness and tidiness that many people could get some cool ideas from. Sigkill is a hunter with a distraction-free UI. His email subject started to pick at my mind: distraction-free. Are there really distractions out there that are part of a user interface? Why would a game distract you from, say, playing the game? Are there addons that are distracting you during serious raid play or just flashing when things shouldn't be flashing? Am I being too nitpicky? Well, I might have figured it out, and with your help, I think we'll be on the road to distraction-free UIs for all of us.
Reader UI of the Week: Cruelblade pushes everything to the bottom
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. With BlizzCon only days away, you can imagine my excitement and the amount of chaos in planning and executing this week will bring me. Never fear, gentle readers. Reader UI will not get lost in the shuffle. Speaking of BlizzCon, if you're going to be around at the WoW Insider Reader Meetup party jointly thrown by Wowhead, Tankspot, and more, you should come say hello to me. If you can't find me, ask Twitter where I am. Cruelblade is a man cut from my own cloth. When you take a look at his user interface, you'll understand why. Everything is so neat and tidy, packed in to the bottom of the screen, leaving as much view space on top as possible. Meticulously planned and simple, to boot, Cruelblade's setup is one of my favorites this year. I mean, really -- look at how awesome those embedded target and player frames are. Are you serious?
Submit your UI to Reader UI of the Week
World of Warcraft's user interface is one of the most awesome features that the game includes. Where else in MMO-land can you find UIs as diverse, creative, and different than those of all of your peers and community pals? Here on WoW Insider, we have a little column where your work gets shown off and discussed amongst our own little community, and we want your submissions. The final patch of Cataclysm is coming soon, and as the most recent expansion winds to an end, our user interfaces are settling in to the new changes that the sundering brought. I want to see your Cataclysm UIs. We even love to help players with their UI design woes, discussing ways to change or adjust your UI to get it to look a little bit cleaner, a little bit smoother, or just plain nicer. If you're going to send in a call for help, please be as descriptive as possible -- it's hard to solve a problem that isn't exactly there. Submit your user interface to Reader UI of the Week by emailing, coincidentally, readerui@wowinsider.com. Here are some tips to remember and information to include when you are submitting your UI or call for help:
Reader UI of the Week: Absinth's simplistic healer UI
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. This week is a big submission week for Reader UI of the Week, meaning I need you fine folks to send me a new crop of interfaces to discuss. BlizzCon is coming very, very soon, and that means I have to get some columns in the bank, so to speak, for when I'm away having an awesome time with you guys and gals at the convention. So submit your UI to Reader UI of the Week. You know you want to. Send submissions, explanations, and screenshots to readerui@wowinsider.com. As for today's submission, Absinth is a priest is a clear goal: make a healing user interface that gets rid of the clutter, put most of healer arsenal on VuhDo, and keep the screen free. Overall, I think the style and configuration works, but some players may be reluctant to give over so much power to a healing addon. That fact does make you wonder about the power disparity between healing addons and the default user interface, though ...
Reader UI of the Week: Figuring out what is wrong
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. From time to time on Reader UI of the Week, I like to take readers' user interfaces and give them a bit of a face-lift and help everyone learn from the experience of looking at their UIs with a little bit more clarity and substance. This week's fixer-upper comes to us from Essmanna, a poor, distraught mage, who just cannot figure out what to do to make her UI look the way she wants it to. Maybe we can help put this mage on the path to interface enlightenment. Things are not hopeless for you, Essmanna. We are here to help. As a DPS class (and a mage, to boot), your UI needs are not going to be as extensive as, say, a healing priest. One of the best things you can do for yourself when first starting out changing your user interface for the better and spending the time learning the ins and outs of the whole ordeal is to start with a relatively simple and less demanding class. That's not an insult, I promise. Mages work well because they are very straightforward.
Reader UI of the Week: Another beautiful submission from Vhei
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. When I first made Vhei's UI a selected reader submission for the column way back in December 2010, I had no idea how much clamor there would be for the design and artwork. Vhei's stuff is amazing, as you can see from the previous entry. When Vhei's name graced my inbox yet again, I was filled with all sorts of amazement and wonderment. What could possibly be in store for me this time? Vhei's trademark is streamlined, simple custom art, and the potential that seeped out of every one of the email's pores was like a fog. Lo and behold, it's another beautiful UI from Vhei. Things are a little bit bigger this time around, especially in the target and player frames, but the entirety of the setup is just flat-out pretty. Everything fits nicely on top of the custom art panels; the player/target frames have some awesome-looking bars; and seeing this beauty on a beautiful monitor would even make the die-hard anti-UI player wish for something a little special, like what we've got here.
Reader UI of the Week: Laptop healing with Vqsharix
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. For a good while now, laptops have been the new desktop. These days, people want laptops that do it all, gaming included. Whenever laptop UIs are submitted to Reader UI of the Week, I like to give them a bit of extra notice because the need for more laptop-based UIs is growing more and more each day. Send in those laptop UIs and your laptop-specific concerns, and we can have even more tips for our portable brethren. Vqsharix is looking for some insight into cleaning up a laptop UI, but I think that we can talk about some healing ideas and spatial movement of healing UI elements. It could be fun, especially if you like talking about the location if addon elements on your screen. I know I do!
Reader UI of the Week: I am Jack's multi-purpose
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. Greetings, Reader UI of the Week fans. Everyone seems to have some sort of food poisoning or stomach problems this week, and I have no idea what is up with that. We have a national stomach epidemic here in the United States. Here's something that won't upset your delicate bodily balance; Jack's smooth and slick user interface setup, centered around grouping, dungeons, and questing. While I am a raider at heart, my recent obsession has been with players and nonraiding UIs. Not that I think that there is anything wrong with a raiding UI, but as someone who primarily lives in raiding content, it is interesting to look and see what 5-man-focused UIs are built around. With the coming of the Raid Finder in patch 4.3 as an introductory raiding system, more and more players are going to have to adapt their 5-man UI setups to a raiding environment if they want to succeed in taking down the big bosses of the raiding world. Jack's UI is a competent setup that can make the change and stands up on its own two legs.
Reader UI of the Week: Adding to a UI compilation
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. Welcome back to Reader UI of the Week, folks. I have just moved a few characters around server and faction-wise, so I've been knee-deep in moving interface folders around and setting up addons again with the incredibly annoying, yet functional, profile system. Suffice to say, I hope the profile system gets updated in the future with more options. This week's Reader UI submission comes from Zachi, long-time addon junkie and new reader to WoW Insider. Welcome, ma'am or sir; we are glad to have you here. Hang around, won't you? Zachi's UI is based around ElvUI, my personal favorite (and recommended) UI compilation that makes a great base for any user interface, be it tank, DPS, or healer. Adding to a compilation UI can be a tricky affair, so let's see what we can learn from how Zachi added addons to an already featured UI compilation.
Reader UI of the Week: Building a better PVP UI
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. Here at Reader UI of the Week, we try not to let calls for help go unanswered. After all, what's this great community without the drive to help one another in our ever-helpful, merry band? This week's call for help comes from a "wishes-to-be-unnamed" denizen of the Bloodhoof server who wants to know what makes a good PVP user interface better than the rest. Talking PVP isn't always my specialty, not from lack of participation but because my UI was never tailored specifically for rated Arena play. However, we're talking general PVP today, which I think I can handle with a little bit of help from you. Yes, you. A year ago -- seriously, I've been doing this for well over a year now -- I sat down with C. Christian Moore (of Blood Sport fame) and his PVP UI that he was using at the time. That UI was a super-solid template for how PVP players should expect to look at information as well as what PVP players should focus their expectations around. Before you read today's basics on the PVP UI, I'd say read over the article from last year to see a shining example, then continue on with today's topic. Are we good? Are you all ready to go? Excellent.
