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Does gender matter when designing your user interface?
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. Our interface today comes from lady gamer Rinjichan. I would not be so inclined to point out that Rinjichan is a woman if Rinjichan herself did not make it a subject of conversation. Why, you would ask, would a discussion of gender be relevant to a discussion about user interfaces? Plenty of reasons, actually. Do genders approach user interfaces differently? Do men and women identify different elements of the UI as important or relevant? Go beyond the stereotypical pink bottom bar and look at the placement of addons, the structure of the buttons, and the overall layout. These are the things that interest me, as well as whether or not a user interface can have gender ascribed to it.
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: 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: 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: 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?
Reader UI of the Week: Germany represents with Viday's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings 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. Tuesday is here, and you know what that means: We are one week away from a WoW Insider Show special live show extravaganza! You heard me right, folks: Next Tuesday, May 31, Mike Sacco, Matthew Rossi, and myself will hit the live stream for a full show dedicated to all things WoW. Plus, we're doing the show during downtime, starting at 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific, so you won't be busy and can totally listen. We'll be giving away prizes, too. That rules! Anyway, we've got other business to attend to right now. Reader UI of the Week gets a good number of submissions from both Europe and the United States, but there is a really fun factor in seeing non-English UIs. The localization process is awesome and incredibly intriguing to me, and I love seeing what different UI elements are labeled as and how UI issues are dealt with. Imagine my utter disappointment when German native Viday changed his entire interface to English so it would be more understandable. Story of my life. %Gallery-19902%
Reader UI of the Week: Vanity and Vanid's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings 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. I am a man of many words, as you fine readers have grown to understand over the course of my tenure here at WoW Insider. Talking about stuff in the most proverbial sense is where I feel the most comfortable. Sometimes the columns that I write take on this rambling nature, mostly because the dialogue that I am having with myself is accurately portrayed and transcribed on the digital page. For instance, when I first saw Vanid's user interface, I was impressed with the careful minimalism but wanted to ramble on and on and on about the bottom action bar. A single, solitary bar caused me much vexation. Maybe, if I use my words correctly, I can paint a beautiful picture of why style occasionally fights with form. %Gallery-19902%
Reader UI of the Week: Controlling chaos with Melosh's UI
Each week, WoW Insider brings 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. Chaos is inevitable. Our universe favors the breakdown of everything and anything, with order being held together by the most primitive of bonds, hanging by a thread over our celestial doom. Too high concept? Fine. Sometimes user interfaces get out of control, and there is little to do to stop it besides control whatever amount of chaos we bring about upon ourselves. This week's UI is from Melosh on the Wyrmrest Accord server, who does his best to control the chaos of a large amount of addons while still remaining information-viable. Plus, this topic lets me write blowhard-y introductions. First, a request. Many people have emailed me and asked if I still do UI renovation-type columns, where people email in their UI and ask for a fix or ideas on how to change something. Of course I do! People have sent in some decent examples of stuff they wanted fixed, but I kept answering them in personal emails, forgetting it might be pretty great for the column. So if you have an interface fixer-upper question you want answered here or want to show us your UI looking for a makeover, send it to me at readerui@wowinsider.com. Yay! %Gallery-19902%
Reader UI of the Week: Ozmorgius' UI and simplicity for tanks
Each week, WoW Insider brings 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. Since Reader UI of the Week is written before (obviously) the date of publication, my opening remarks about the present are actually predictions from a past devoid of clairvoyance. However, today (yesterday), I can say with the utmost confidence and fact (prediction) that patch 4.1 went off without a hitch, children are playing in the streets (of Azeroth), and sunshine and rainbows (of the double variety) have graced our presence. Truly, we live in an age of kings and men. Speaking of that, I need to watch the second episode of Game of Thrones. Enough of this! Enough, I say. You're here on business, aren't you? A stalwart soldier in the fight against UI clutter and an investigator of all things creative. This week's Reader UI of the Week comes from reader Ozmorgius, whose bottom bar-based user interface is simple enough to take care of clutter but advanced enough to be an effective death knight tanking user interface that facilitates rather than hinders. Let's take a look, shall we? %Gallery-19902%
