I’ll be going through my UI as a tank in separate (more manageable) parts structed like so:

1. What do I want to achieve with my UI?
2. Positioning, spacing and visibility.
3. Unitframes: What they mean and what they can do.
4. Action bars, keybindings and (useful) macros.
5. Other essentials: ‘Meters’ and Monitors
6. The ‘frilly’ stuff.

The addons and elements of my UI function for a DPS-offspec too, but as tanking is my main spec, I would think it’s fairly obvious that my UI suits that aspect of my game first and foremost.

So, what do I want to achieve with my User Interface?

I’ve seen many UI’s from players that need many addons, and just seem to cram them on-screen as much as they can.  Now if that’s the way they want to play, I can only try and convince them to tidy things up a bit.  Whenever I’m adjusting a UI, or looking at ways to make things a bit cleaner, I always think of the phrase: “don’t stand in the fire” as my primary objective.  If I can’t see what I’m standing in, I’d be waiting for a mod / addon to alert me to it, I prefer to trust my own eyes (as good as mods are, it’s just one of those things) so a clear view of what’s around me is necessary.  So for me, I want to achieve a UI that’s functional, has all the elements and mods that I need, but with clear viewing room and good visibility.  I play on a 1280 x 800 screen, so I’m lacking in the pixel-department compared to say a 19″ or 22″ screen (1440 x 900 or 1680 x 1050 resolutions) but that doesn’t mean my UI still can’t fit, work and look good.

I won’t elaborate much more, I think I’ve covered the points, possibly even rambled on a bit more and avoided the point somewhere along the line.

Coming in Part 2 of this series of posts will be explanations of my positioning, spacing and that all important visibility!  There’ll also be more diagrams & pictures!

Before I go, I shall include a picture of my UI with some annotations of what’s there, just to give you all an idea of what the game looks like for me.

The UI on Schnoobins

-Brunty