Looking for help with something

For those using an RSS reader, here is today's post

Hey everyone, I know there has got to be someone out there who knows how to create customized art to place onto your UI. I have used the addon eepanels, and well I guess I just wasn't reading into it enough or something. What I want is to find a reader who knows how to do custom art on their UI and is willing to teach. I then will write about what I have learned and help any readers who are like me that want to learn but have no idea where to start. (large amounts of credit will of course be given). If you are interested in helping me with this project, shoot me an email at mikemage2@gmail.com

I look forward to learnign from one or more of you,
Valrot

Pitbull and it's endless possibilities.

So today I am going to talk aout the best Mod I have found out there for unit frames. On my mage (my main) I currently use pitbull for all my unit frame needs. The thing that is most amazing about pitbull, is it's amount of customization. Pitbull is configured via the use of layouts, you then apply these layouts to the different units. This is nice, because I am able to use the same layout for my target as I use for my player. Pitbull can be configured to show as much or as little information as you want. For my mage, I have two settings, one for PVP and one for PVE.

My PVE set up is designed to show me all the information I need to know about my party/raid, as well as knowing what percent the boss is at. Not a ton of information needed here, so I made it flashy and fun. On the other hand, my PVP set up for pitbull is very streamlined. it is what you see on my screenshots. It shows (in a very large lettering) my health and mana, that's it, for me everything else is just excess that I do not need on my unit frames. I use other addons for vital information, that way my information is not crowded into a small unit frame. With both my set ups, I have my unit frame and my target frame in the middle bottom of my UI, it makes it so my eyes don't have to do much moving, and helps me avoid tunnel vision when fighting.

What addon do you use for unit frames? do you use the default frame? How are your unit frames configured? What was your thought process when you set your unit frames up?

Hooray the End of All Things Sad and Depressing!

Well it's done, it may not be pretty, but it's done. I am finished with all of my finals. Beginning with a final english paper, and then a physics exam the next day, and a engineering calculus exam the very next day, I felt swamped, overwhelmed, and downright near insane. It was weeks like these which made me wonder if my choice of mechanical engineering as my major was a good or bad choice. Oh well time will tell. All of that to say: I am done with finals, I am off for 3 weeks, and I will be blogging!

Today I would like to ask what you think of action bar mods. I personally used bongos in the past followed by dominoes, and then followed by bartender 4. Last night, I tried out a new addon for action bars, macaroon. This is the first addon I have found since dominoes replaced bongos that allows you to create bars and have them have as many buttons as you want. I was so excited to see that I once again had the ability to create bars which are 1X20 or any other super random combination I could think of. What about you? What action bar mod are you using? Why do you use the one you use? and what would you like for the author to change that you think would make it better?

Finals Week

Hey everyone, Wow! it has been forever since I last posted. I am getting ready to enter my week of finals for college, then I will dive back into working on the blog. I hope to get up to a 3 times a week posting over break and be able to carry that into the next semester. I appreciate everyone's understanding behind my absence previously, but the good news is I am back and playing with addons more than ever.

valrot

Quick Auctions

Hey guys, I wanted tos hare with you a nice little addon which makes auctioning of items you sell a lot, such as glyphs, consumables, or trade goods, incredibly easy. This addon is Quick Auctions. What it does is check the price of the item and posts yours undercutting the competition, as long as the price is over a certain amount. What makes this great for glyphs is that it will quickly check to see if you have been undercut and cancels your auction so you can go back and repost it lower than your competition.

You can find Quick Auctions here

The only real downside I have found with quick auctions is that it requires /commands to set it up.

However to combat this problem there is a very simple guide over at the justmytwocopper.blogspot.com forums about setting it up for the glpyh business, but can also be applied to many others. This guide can be found here

Reader UI: Mygda

Hey guys, Valrot here with another interface for you guys to take a look at.
This week we have Mygda's interface, the cool thing about Mygda's UI is well it is so completely different. You see most of the usual interfaces, many of which look similar to blizzard's default or similar to mine, Mygda completely broke free of the usual for his UI. Before you go screaming anything about not liking it, you need to read what he has to say showing why his UI is built the way it is.

"After i took a look at zupa's UI and with the intention to improve the discussion about "a good and welldeveloped interface" I would also like to share my ideas. first, you can have a look at my dk's UI (appendix). I know it looks a bit strange and totally off of the ideas behind common interfaces. but let me explain my thoughts behind this: overall, i want a very minimalistic one (love those). at the same time i want all necessary information (linke omen, player and target frame, proccs) on a place where i can find them quickly. so i did a few tests on myself and found out that your eyes are in the middle of the screen in most of the time. so i put all these data to the middle. next step, i read some articles about the brain and how your two halfs works together and so on. there i found out that clear data is best recognized on the right side of your view. so i put all important data (like player/target frame, omen, rune bars) on the right side. the not important ones like chat frames and minimap are also placed in the middle, but left hand side. the result of these observations you can see in the picture. my main attacks (aren't that much for dk pve) are used via keybindings and placed on a hidden action bar. the bars over the player frame are trinkets/pots and on-click attacks like dancing rune weapon for example. also i'd filter target's debuffs and only represent my deseases. boss has just the hp perventage (the rest is displayed via the tooltip window^^) party frame is normaly in the lower right corner, more to the bottom (as a dk dd u don't really need them :p )"

And here is two pics showing off Mygda's UI:

Mygda's UI is using:
AG Unit Frames
Bartender 4
Bison
Button Facade (with the Caith-skin)
Chinchilla
Debuff Filter (so you have nearly the same debuff effects like with xperl)
eePanels (so every frame is fully transparent with a panel in the background^^)(unfortunately i don't get kgpanels yet :/ )
Evil's Name Plates
Grid
Different Ace-Libs (i.e. SharedMedia for using my own fonts^^)
Magic Runes
MSBT
Omen
Omni CC
Prat
Recount
Recipe Known
Rating Buster
Stat_Block (FPS, Memory, Latency, sometimes Folks and Clock too)
TipTac
Xloot
DBM (of course^^)




I think that Mygda's research proves not only the smart choices made behind his UI, but also shows that Mygda really thought about why parts of the UI are placed where they are. Hope you guys enjoy this tangent from the normal. What do you think of this completely different design for an interface and the research made behind it.

Want to share your UI with the other readers? feel free to email me a small description as well as a screenshot of your Interface to mikemage2@gmail.com

Moving

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of posts, this past week was full of me packing stuff getting ready for my family's move. I will have a post up tomorrow.

Reader UI: Zupa

Hey guys, I recently received an email from a reader named Zupa. He sent me his UI. Some of the things I think Zupa did right is the placement fo grid for his party. Although it is clean which I really like, I feel that the use of Spartan UI is a little too domineering of the screen space. What do you guys think? Do you like spartan UI?

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o126/desarius/wowscreen4.jpg

Zupa is using:
spartanUI
bartender4
sexymap
grid + grid mana bars
miks scolling battle text
quest helper
titan panel
chatmod
yuri's rune watch
satrina buff bars
auracle - check this out if you havent already!
power auras
omen
recount
critline

Think your UI is well developed? Is it a good example of how to make a good interface? feel free to share it, and some day you may just see it here

Minion

How many of you used to use WOWMatrix to update your addons? (/raises hand) I used to, and I know I was pretty sad when I found out that it wasn't going to work any more. But there is now an even better program to do this for you and it is by the same site where I download most of my addons. MMOUIMinion put out by WOWInterface.com is a great resource to automatically update all of your addons.

The great thing about minion compared to the updater client put out by curse gaming is that if you use the free version you are not suffering any loss in performance. You can find MMOUIMinion here.

WARNING: Minion is still in beta mode, and contains bugs, despite this, I still find it easier than manual updating, which is why I am sharing it with you.

What makes a good interface? Pt. 1

The question that many people struggle with when developing their own interface for the first time. What separates the good interfaces from the bad interfaces?

In my opinion, there are five basic characteristics which make an effective interface

1. Cleanliness
2. Balance
3.Ease of Use
4. Productivity
5. Flare



The most basic characteristic of a good interface is keeping the layout clean. Most interfaces are divided into seven main parts. The Action bars, the minimap, the Unit Frames, Chat box/Combat log (these can sometimes be two different things.), party frames, buffs/debuffs (again can be two separate areas), and Cast bars. The addons I link to are my personal prefference for cleanliness in those categories, if you have an addon you prefer by all means enjoy it.

Action bars: A crucial part of any interface. The action bars can be minimalistic showing only that which is most vital or they can be all inclusive providing a button for every situation. It is really up to you. A common practice is to either lower the opacity of well known keybound action bars or to completely hide them. For action bars I recommend the addon bartender4, it can be found here. There are many choices for a clean set of action bars. Do you choose the block in the bottom full of everything and anything, do you thin it out and put only the necessary? Do you use long bars covering most of the bottom of the screen? I haave found that for most casters the choice of a block is the best wayt og o simply because of the sheer number of spells and abilities they have.

Minimap: the minimap can be many different shapes and sizes. The most common and in my opinion the cleanest choice is the basic square shape of the minimap. I prefer the addon Pminimap to provide a clean and simple minimap for my interface. It can be found here.

Unit Frames: The unit frames are in the simplest terms, the indicator of health/mana/rage/energy of your character, your target, target's target, and pet. The most common addons used for unit frames is Pitbull, Xperl, ag_unit frames, the default unit frames provided by blizzard, and many others. Blizzard's provided unit frames are good at showing pretty much everything you need to know, however they are not the most effective choice. My personal choice for unit frames is pitbull because of it's customization options. Many people like the choice of Xperl because of it's ease to set-up in comparison to Pitbull. Where do you put your unit frames? the top like blizzards? The bottom middle of your screen for quicker viewing in times of stress? I prefer the bottom middle for PVP purposes because it allows me to find health of my target and myself quicker when in tight situations.

Chat box/Combat log : My personal choice for chat box addons is Prat. It is simple and easy to configure Some people prefer the choice of WOW Instant Messanger to handle their whispers. There are also many choices for combat log choices. My choice for raids to keep it clean is the addon eavesdrop found here.

Party Frames: Party frames often come with unit frames addons like pitbull or Xperl, however if it doesn't I recommend using grid to show party frames and raid frames. Grid may take a little while to configure, in the past I made a post about a video I used to configure grid for my raid frames.

Buffs and Debuffs: Of course blizzard provides the buffs and debuffs for their default interface, however if you are moving around other elements of your UI you often would prefer your buffs and debuffs to be in a different location or size. To do this the two addons which I recommend are Satrina Buff Frames for anyone who wants to keep the look of the blizzard unit frames. Can be found here. For those who prefer the look of bars for their buffs I recommend elkano's buff bars which can be found here. I have found that for those who raid and gain a large amount of buffs that SBF is the better choice than EBB because of the amount of screen space taken up by the bars compared to the small buff squares.

Cast bar: Like most of the other elements of a UI blizzard provides their own cast bar, however just like many of the other elements blizzard's cast bar lacks a few important options that other addons can provide. My personal choice for cast bar addons is Quartz, it can be found here. Quartz provides a way to help counteract latency majority of the time.

I hope these basics to creating a clean interface help you to build a better interface that helps fit your needs. Expect the continuation to this subject in the near future.

Oh time management...

Hey everyone, I wanted to apologize for the lack of posts in the past few weeks. Alas the great conflicts that arise when trying to manage time, and I sadly hate to report that well in a time of graduation, work, and college orientation I have had to place blogging on the back burner these past few weeks. I plan to have new posts up very soon now that I have made it through the brunt of the thigns which demand my time besides WOW and blogging. Sorry again about the lack of posts. Hope you guys continue to stick around for future posts.

Up and Running!

Well I am back in business! My UI is back to it's old self again :) hooray for cleanliness. Now to get back to the addons...

Today I would like to feature a new addon that was just recently released. This addon takes a note from Microsoft word and allows you to see misspelled words when you are typing a message in chat? Doesn't seem like huge deal, but to those of us who are angered by their lack of spelling abilities (Like me) it is a great tool. You can find misspelled here.

AH!!!!

Well today my WOW client had a fatal error, I quickly restarted to see if I could load up, sadly to no avail. I repaired and held my breath... nothing. I uninstalled and reinstalled all three games, and many hours later I was on, the game ran and all looked well. That is, until I signed in.

The thing I had prided myself most on was gone. My WTF folder, although I had attempted to back it up before reinstall, was corrupted :( I had to revert to an old backup that is nowhere near as close to my liking. Well tomorrow is another day. I will fix my interface... eventually.

Loadit

Today I would like to share on of my favorite addons with you.
Have you ever decided to change up addons while playing? Say you forgot to enable deadly boss mods. Well normally you have to logout, enable the addon, and then log back in. This process often becomes very annoying and time consuming.

Thus to remedy this situation I present to the addon Loadit. This addon allows you to load any addon you had installed when you started WOW without having to logout, enable, and log back in. You are simply a click and a /reloadui away from having that addon enabled.






At first glance this sounds like it wouldn't be a very big deal, However, after using this addon for over a year now I can tell you that you save a lot of time being able to have this freedom.

You can find Loadit here

What addons do you enjoy? how do you have your interface configured? Email ideas or screenshots to mikemage2@gmail.com

Rating Buster

Hey guys Valrot here again. Today's addon is one I use quite often, and also was recommended by reader Adam T. Today's addon is called rating buster. This addon is great for helping you make those choices for which piece of gear is better. It adds extra information to your tooltip when you mouse over a piece of gear.

You can find this addon on Wowinterface.com here
And on Curse.com here

I hope you guys enjoy this addon.
Email me with any addon suggestions or pictures of how you have your interface designed at mikemage2@gmail.com

Grid: The basics of configuration

Hey guys it's Valrot again. Today I received a comment by Onewing. He asked me to explain the difference between unit frame addons and addons such as grid. The very basic difference between addons such as pitbull or xperl and grid is that grid is a way to easily display a large amount of information about members of your party in well a grid. Where as addons such as Xperl or Pitbull allow for configuration of frames such as player, target, target's target, focus, pet, as well as offering configuration of party and raid frames. I personally am not as huge of a fan of xperl or pitbull's raid frames as I am of using grid.

For those of you who are looking for an addon which will allow you to configure your party/raid frames into a neat setup I highly recommend grid. This addon does take some time to configure. however, would like to point you towards a video made by Paxnot which helped make that process easier for me and hopefully for you.

I did not create this video, and do not take credit for it.

I hope this addon helps you to develop a cleaner better interface.

Thanks for reading,

Valrot

I want your suggestions

Hey guys Valrot here. I want to take the time to welcome all of those who heard about my blog from Markco over at Just My Two Copper. For those of you who are addon and interface fanatics I would like to hear you recommendations for addons you would like to see featured or would like me to see.

I am also considering doing a featured UI of the week so if you think your UI is great and is worth showing off to the public feel free to email me with a link to the screenshot.

I currently in the future have plans for videos on Pitbull 4, Bartender 4, and power auras, so stay tuned in the future to see these if you are interested.

Thanks for reading,

Valrot

Dynamic Performance

Welcome back, Valrot here with another addon to share with everyone.


Have you ever found yourself getting mad at having to go in and change those graphics again because you re going into a 25 man raid? Ever wonder what your computer is capable of? Well then you may like today's addon, it's called Dynamic Performance. This addon allows you to set a framerate that you want WOW to run at and the addon will adjust your graphics setting in real time as you play. This game has saved me from many a deaths due to lag in Wintergrasp. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

You can find it here. It is a fan fix but works with 3.1 and still does the job.





If you have an addon to suggest or any questions regarding an addon feel free to email me at mikemage2@gmail.com

Align

Hey guys Valrot again, I wanted to share with you an addon that is very simple but very useful. Today's addon is Align. Another addition to the video I forgot to mention is that you can also type /align 64 to bring up a grid made of smaller squares. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm a convert!

Hey guys it's Valrot again. today I am gonna discuss my recent conversion from Xperl to Pitbull. I decided that the reason I had alway decided Xperl was better than Pitbull was because the idea of going through the config process of Pitbull is well, extremely daunting. However, yesterday I decided was going to sit down and just set up pitbull to see what all the talk truly was about. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't fast but I have officially switched to using Pitbull.

Right now my UI is under reconstruction looking into the addon autobar for my mage, I currently use it for my low level hunter because there weren't as many options for him as there are for Valrot. I will give you guys an updated screenshot when it is done.

*EDIT*

Played with Autobar, still feels like it has a lot of kinks to work out even with a new config setup. I decided to stick with my current set up.

Minimap Button Frame

Hey guys Valrot here again. This time with my first video hope you enjoy this simple addon called minimap button frame. It can be found at both curse.com and wowinterface.com

Warning: The Carbonite Questing addon and MBF do not like each other when it comes to minimap buttons, Carbonite now has a option to do what MBF does, but I do not find it as clean.

Top Five Addons I Can't Live Without

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome everyone to my first blog post. Now that we have that out of the way... I would like to dive right into the top five addons I can not live without. I plan to do a series on how to configure these addons in the future but for now here is the list for those of you tinkerers out there who want to try there hand at them.

5. Auctioneer:

The best auctioning addon I have found to date. This addon stores prices of items and makes posting items on the auction house a breeze. Batch posting is one of the greatest advantages to auctioneer that many other auction addons don't have. You would be surprised how much money you can make by using the search functions of this addon correctly.

4. ArkInventory:

Great way to organize your inventory. Allows you to break your bags into separate components for different types of items. As well as adding a search function. On top of all of this it allows you to view your bank or the inventory of your alts.


3. Quest Helper:

The way to get things done, period. This addon shows you where to go to finish those quests, gain that experience, and level that toon of yours. The common other choice to fill this role is Carbonite. I personally find having two minimaps to be annoying and found myself hiding the Carbonite map more than I looked at it.

2. Bartender4:

An action bar mod used to customize the look of your spells, abilities, and macros. I have found this addon to be the best balance between ease of use and functionality. One of the great things about addons such as these is the breeze of setting keybinds. No more searching through the menu trying to choose the right button to bind for the right spell.

1. Xperl Unit Frames:

The top addon I could not live without. I simply love the information that is shown as well as the clean style it appears in. There is less clutter and less empty space in awkward places compared to the original unit frames provided by Blizzard. Although others may push for addons such as Pitbull or AG_Unit Frames I find Xperl to take the shortest time to set up to reach a playable settup.

*Edit*
After trying out Pitbull I prefer it, however it takes a long time to configure.

What are the top five addons you have found you just could never live without?

Look for videos in the near future of how to configure these addons and some ideas of how to make your interface clean and neat. Thanks for reading.

Mike