My Sad, Sad UI

[Kelaan]

Sometimes seeing healer mana can be helpful when you're speed clearing. :3 But in general, I agree, mana bars are unimportant for a tank to see.

I pull out a single-target unit frame from the blizzard default Raid window for the healers whose mana I care about. 2-3 should give you a good idea of general mana level, and thus when it's safe to pull the next trash pack.

(that said, I wouldn't mind a mana bar on Grid.)

[Epimer]

Look what I found! Grid Mana Bars. Haven't tried it yet, could help de-clutter things some more.

[Lyre]

You might also consider Opie for removing buttons (like auras).

Opie Website

[Lave]

Sometimes seeing healer mana can be helpful when you're speed clearing. :3 But in general, I agree, mana bars are unimportant for a tank to see.

I pull out a single-target unit frame from the blizzard default Raid window for the healers whose mana I care about. 2-3 should give you a good idea of general mana level, and thus when it's safe to pull the next trash pack.

(that said, I wouldn't mind a mana bar on Grid.)

and i mouseover a few grid frames to see their manabars in the tooltip (cowtip)
there ARE ways to watch healers mana without it messing up your ui ^^

[MrDuck]

Well from what i see, most importnatly just use grid instead of these raid frames you have. That saves like a LOT of space. About healers' mana, i run XRS, dunno if it can reliably determine who is a healer, anyway i just have a bar for average mana of all priests/droods/palydans/sheimanz, and it shows all that i need to know. Though, i haven't yet needed to wait for healers' mana in a 25man even with 5 healers in naxx. Also, for spells/irems on bars that i dont use often, or mounts and such which i have bound somewhere, i use 2 very transparent bars on right side of my screen, taking basically nothing from what i need to see, but still being there.

http://img19.picoodle.com/img/img19/3/2 ... 8c2a9f.jpg

The empty place at bottom right, there now rests XRS showing healers' mana, and i'll try to fit addon to monitor raid buffs there. But then, it's widescreen, which is like a huge difference in wow, and i couldnt really play on not-wide screen now that i got used My 15,4" wide on notebook has more options to sort out interface than my old 19" not-so-wide on desktop had :/

[Epimer]

I'm going to ask this here because it's sort of related to the topic in hand and not really worthy of its own topic: why are people so fond of bar-style buff addons vs. some permutation of icon-type buff displays?

From my point of view (limited resolution to work with), they don't give that much more information than a properly sorted icon display (ideally with debuffs separated off somewhere more immediately noticeable), for a huge trade-off in screen space. Is the argument that they make important debuffs more visible?

I'm not trolling or being deliberately confrontational, just geniunely curious about something I see in a lot of UIs

[Gorlando]

Well from what i see, most importnatly just use grid instead of these raid frames you have. That saves like a LOT of space.

Yep, I am switching to Grid this weekend- I have to switch to Holy for a 25 man. Too many tanks on the server

[Levantine]

I'm going to ask this here because it's sort of related to the topic in hand and not really worthy of its own topic: why are people so fond of bar-style buff addons vs. some permutation of icon-type buff displays?

From my point of view (limited resolution to work with), they don't give that much more information than a properly sorted icon display (ideally with debuffs separated off somewhere more immediately noticeable), for a huge trade-off in screen space. Is the argument that they make important debuffs more visible?

I'm not trolling or being deliberately confrontational, just geniunely curious about something I see in a lot of UIs

I've taken to using the bars as they match the style of UI I've been using more than icons do. They actually don't take up more room than the icons if you know how to config them half decently. It's the people who have generally hideous UI's that think having their buffs cover half the screen is a good thing.

[Zx]

All of you who have huge raid frames please go and get Grid.

Grid here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid.aspx

It will be a huge help in reducing all the raid frames stuff.

Edit: SC of working grid. it is the set of bars in the left corner.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7073/wowscrnshot020608213806lk4.jpg

[Sanctity]

All of you who have huge raid frames please go and get Grid.

Grid here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid.aspx

It will be a huge help in reducing all the raid frames stuff.

Edit: SC of working grid. it is the set of bars in the left corner.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7073/wowscrnshot020608213806lk4.jpg

I just don't like the way it looks though, and i'm quite happy using X-Perl raid frames with my mouse over macros. I uses LibHealComm-3.0 with my X-Perl, helps alot for seeing who is already being seen to.

[MrDuck]

I'm going to ask this here because it's sort of related to the topic in hand and not really worthy of its own topic: why are people so fond of bar-style buff addons vs. some permutation of icon-type buff displays?

From my point of view (limited resolution to work with), they don't give that much more information than a properly sorted icon display (ideally with debuffs separated off somewhere more immediately noticeable), for a huge trade-off in screen space. Is the argument that they make important debuffs more visible?

I'm not trolling or being deliberately confrontational, just geniunely curious about something I see in a lot of UIs

Well,bars are really good to see duration on short time buffs, looking at digits is slow Anyway, i have something like 14px thick bars, and about 100 long, now if i had icons, i'd have them like 28px, 'cos the text with time below them (or on them) would have to take enough space to be readable, and some gap,so lets say 28px width (and 5px between icons), and some 28+5+12(font) in height for icon and text (unless the text was inside the icon, making it slow for me to recognize tbh:P), that's 45px high, so instead of 14*100 it's now 45*33, making almost the same space taken.

[dekort]

if you want to free up a lot of view space, I recommend the SpartanUI. I use it and love it, and it's being actively worked on constantly, so it's constantly being improved.