Rather simple topic that I'm sure I'll be elaborating on in the future, but I'm incredibly bored right now and it's Friday night, so I can't go to sleep before 3am.
Any questions can of course be adressed, but I'd rather keep this for more advanced discussion rather than "lol wut addons r gud 4 rogs?"
Other tutorials/important posts in this thread:
eePanels2 Tutorial
Theo's UI download
Now, to start out, this is what my current UI looks like.
Here are the addons that are absolutely essential to any good UI:
Pitbull (ag_Unitframes is alright, but Pitbull is just plain better)
simpleMinimap
Bongos2
Bagnon
Elkano's BuffBars
FuBar
That's it. Nearly everything I've done with my UI can be done with those addons.
Simple, right?
Hardly.
A good UI will organize information in such a way that it's pleasing to the eye (I stare at my UI for hours on end, I dunno about anyone else), while still showing relevant information. Achieveing a balance is the most important thing when making a good UI, so let's talk about what makes a good UI and what makes a bad one.
Good:
Small screen footprint-
This means that you can still see a lot of your screen. Stuff like art bars and things like that, while looking cool, obstruct your view and don't do anything but look pretty. Avoid these.
Less is more-
As you can see, I don't have portraits shown. They're not relevant to anything. Yeah, they look nice, but in the end they 1) drag your FPS down, and 2) are distracting. To that end, I have very small unit frames as well. My party/party target frames are the easiest to click other than my Gladiator frame, and that's for a reason. I usually assist party members, especially in arena. Being able to click their target rather than having to actually click someone is incredibly useful. It also lets me see what my group is doing.
Also thrown into the category we can add raid frames: don't use them unless you're a raid leader or a @#%^ing healer. There's absolutely no point. If you can come up with one good reason why a rogue should have raid frames enabled, I'd like to know, because I honestly can't think of one other than "oo i liek 2 b distarcted during pewpew tyme11!"
Bad:
Large anything-
Large is bad. Big unit frames, big action bars, big minimap, big cast bars (unless it's your target cast bar, that sh*t is important to see for kicks!), etc are all completely pointless in a good UI. I don't care how leet your portrait looks, it's blocking my view and I'm trying to focus here, not become ADD and stare at my portrait.
Too much info-
Too much can be a bad thing. As rogues, we're lucky that really all we have to worry about is SnD time, Rupture time, our CPs (including where we are in our cycle), and our threat, in simple terms. To that end, we really only need something like ClassTimers and Omen (both found on files.wowace.com; you'll need Threat 1.0 for Omen) for on-screen info in PvE.
In PvP, there are a few more things we need. We need stun/CC timers, cooldown timers, and health/energy bars or both us and our target. As we get better at PvP, we start to add in more to that, but those are the basics.
So, we can see what makes a good addon already. Organization, simplicity, and to a lesser extent, looks.
That's it for now, since I just ate up a good chunk of the AV I was in (). Until next time.
Feedback is welcome both in the form of PMs and posts. Rate ups/downs are welcome too.
I'll be going more in-depth into UI creation as this post grows.
Edited, Sep 19th 2007 8:44pm by Theophany