nUI -- A full feature standalone UI replacement
 

nUI has been in public release for several weeks now on two of the "other" WoW mod sites. I'd love to invite you to have a look at it and provide feedback.

http://www.wowinterface.com/download...fo.php?id=9108

Feel free to contact me here or via the comments section on my mod page. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

looks neat, i'll give it a try once it's approved

Nice looking UI. What raid frames do you use, or if custom, what do they look like?

All of the unit frames are custom using a single code base for all units. In fact, the entire UI is custom code. No third party mods or dependencies.

The raid frames are very simple. Player name, health, mana at present. However, all units are configurable once I get the basic functionality complete and code the options panels.

This is pretty cool. I couldn't use it, but it's cool you managed you fit everything into one addon, and just under 1mb (as a zip file). :)

Good job.

Dreadlord... Thanks for the kind word. Was there a particular reason why "I can't use it" ??

Okay -- v0.1.8 is out and should fix ALL taint issues related to action bars, etc. Rogues, Druids, Warriors, etc. should all be able to navigate their action bars without error. Likewise, the taint on Kara's Chess event is fixed, as well.

For the moment, out of mana and out of range do not work on the main action bar. I'll get that fixed in the next update.

I'm a minimalist, and it takes up too much screen real estate imo.

Gotcha -- thanks for the feedback.

Well, I downloaded it and played around with it and I must say it is a VERY good interface. I thoroughly enjoyed using it. I only have one complaint.

Everything is too big. I would use this all the time for sure, but it's just too big for me. If you could give the ability to scale it smaller, I would love this interface, completely.

Thanks for the kind word

Uh oh ~grin~

That's one of those things where I can't win. For every "it's too big" I get an "It's too small" /sigh

To be honest, I really am at a loss for how to satisfy both points of view. Font are too big, fonts are too small, buttons are too big, buttons are too small, etc.

I could conceivably scale the entire thing down for those who feel the dashboard is too big, but then there's the issues of the sides as the dashboard cannot logically have an infinite width since the textures must be pre-defined. And there's issues about how WoW handles text scaling and the ability to read button text, etc. The more scaling you permit, the more complicated laying out the UI becomes and the more load you place on the game engine when it has to redraw the screen.

Finding that happy place in the middle is an endless challenge.

You don't. You satisfy your own.

Awesome
 

I wanted to thank you for this UI. It is not to large it is actually perfect. Gives great use of action bars and maps. I am going to add 1 little add on at a time ( like one bag ) and some others i like to use ( tradeskill ) and see how it interacts with them. One thing though i do have a problem with. I miss my quest cup, spell/skill book and talent buttons. Is there a way to get those back?

V/r
Belszy

Thank you, Belszy, for the kind word as well.

As I explained in my e-mail reply to you, those items are there... it's just that by default they "fade away" when not in use. If you pay attention, when nUI first loads there is a console displayed in the center of the top edge of your screen. That console contains the micro-menu (the buttons you are looking for) as well at the latency bar and the frame rate meter. About 15 seconds after you enter the world, that frame fades away and is hidden from view.

If you mouse over the console, it will reappear and you can use the buttons as you normally would. If you prefer that the console be visible all the time, you can use the command "/nui console show" to disable the fade feature. You can use "/nui console fade" to turn that feature back on.

If you happen to be using Titan Bars and/or Fubar, then you may not notice the console at the top of your screen. If that's the case, you can move it down by using the command "/nui yofs2 {n}" where {n} is some number greater than zero. The larger {n} is, the further down the console will move. You'll find something around "/nui yofs2 24" is about right to move the console down one Titan Bar.

As a matter of record, you can use "/nui yofs {n}" to move the bottom dashboard up the screen to allow for Titan Bars and Fubar Bars at the bottom of your screen.

Even though I predict the bottom dashboard might be a bit bulky for my tastes, I must say I'm impressed with what I see and am going to give this UI a try later today.

I just have one preliminary question...can the opacity of the dashboard graphic be adjusted?

My suggestion, just let it scale and leave open spaces in the sides. People could throw other mods in there or something, just me, I would throw Pallypower in on one side and recount on the other.

Anyway, I'm going to continue to use it for a bit. Maybe I'll adjust, gotten so used to mine having just one little bar across the bottom.

You can do that now.... "/nui scale {n}" where {n} is some number greater than zero. You can force nUI to use any scale you want that way and you will get the blank space to the left and right. "/nui scale 0" will return you to the default nUI scale.

You'll note black regions on the left and right if you make nUI smaller than the display width. The reason for those black boxes is that nUI shifts the WorldFrame up by 1/2 of the dashboard height so that the loss of vertical viewport is split between the top and bottom of the world frame. You can do with that region as you will.

I do see that causes the HUD to shift south of the player character position in the world frame, but I can fix that easily enough in the next update.

And good luck putting Recount to the right of the dashboard ~grin~

Except for the minimalist among us, for those who use a slew of addons, I strongly suspect you'll find you actually have more open display area than you used to. The motivation behind nUI was the fact that as you add more mods -- recount, omen, KLH threat meter, pally power, healbot, WIM, x-perl, etc. -- the usable display area keeps getting smaller and smaller until you find yourself playing through a peephole surrounded by mods. The goal of nUI is to move all the on-screen clutter into a managed dashboard and a meaningful HUD.

Again, putting the true minimalist aside, I honestly believe that for most the notion that nUI "uses to much display area" is an optical illusion. Generally, it likely uses much less area than you were using before but rather than a piece here and piece there, it's all one place and until you get used to the dashboard, it has a feeling of being "out of place"

I can't seem to make the Omen window appear. Omen is installed, enabled, and I can access the options window, I just can't see the threat window itself. Recount I can see fine.

The Omen window will only display while you are in combat. It has no meaning when you are out of combat as there is no such thing as threat. Select the "Omen" mode in the information panel and enter combat. If you have Recount installed, the Recount window will vanish and the Omen window will display.

You should also see the threat bar in your HUD after you enter combat.

Great thanks for help
 

I want to thank you for your great assistance. I dont think i can use titan bar cause tried adding it - your tip to move the bar down worked perfect, but titan bar made minimap go away. had to remove it in order for it to work. Will fiddle with it more later to see if i can figure it out but other then that i got a lot of addons to work perfectly with this UI. Now gotta decide what quest program to use and if i will install cartographer or not.

V/r
Belszy

OK thanks, I seem to have it working now. I engaged in combat previously but I must have not had Omen selected in the information panel, or something. Still, it is rather hard to configure any Omen settings when it's impossible to make the window appear to even see test bars unless you are in combat. The Recount window doesn't behave this way, and is visible for configuration any time, whereas when I click the information bubble to go from "Stats" (Recount) to "Omen", nothing happens and the Recount window remains. Why not make the Omen window blank, but visible, at any time?

What I'm trying to do is to get the most bang for the buck out of a limited amount of space.

If you think about it, damage meters are of little value during combat ( other than ego maybe ). Threat meters are of NO value out of combat. By combining the two, I can show you the information that has meaning when it has meaning and hide it away the rest of the time.

I would also argue that the in-HUD threat bar makes the Omen information panel more or less meaningless. Aside from the fact that the moving bars are fun to watch, there's no critical information in that panel that is not represented in the in-HUD threat bar.

If you haven't yet, you might want to read the secion on the "INTEGRATED THREAT METER" on the "Addon Information" panel on nUI's download page. It explains how to use the in-HUD bar in some detail. I can tell you I have both a 70 prot tank and 70 hunter and I never look at Omen anymore while in combat. What I need to know is in the HUD.

I guess I just don't understand this forced display of what in your opinion is important at any given time. There is nothing wrong with seeing DPS meters in combat, and there is nothing wrong with seeing the Omen window out of combat. Why would you implement a button that switches from party to raid to map to stats to omen etc. if they only work when you think they should? I understand that this is your UI, and you are certainly entitled to make it the way you want, but this is also an alpha stage public release, and you are soliciting public feedback, yes? All I'm saying is the space for these windows is already allotted, the ability to switch the display to what you want is implemented, so let the user decide what to see, when.

I apologize if I come off as standoffish, or what have you, but I am a UI junkie, and your UI has piqued my interest in a way that hasn't happened in a long time. If anything, consider my attention as a complement ;).

When I had it just before my raid started, I got a blizz party frame, just one, at the top left of the minimap. It had no picture and said DC'ed, but it did contain a party member. It only happened in a raid group.

I'll grant you that I am making a command decision, but aside from access to the panel for configuration (which is a valid issue I will address) -- of what practical value is a threat meter out of combat? Now... if you want to see your Recount bars all the time without them switching to threat, then select the "Stats" info mode and your wish comes true.

It was my opinion that rather than have empty space sitting there out of combat, it was "handy" to have Recount displayed if available when you did have a threat meter active. Again... being able to see the threat meter for the sake of configuration is a valid issue, but being able to see it any other time when you're out of combat is pointless.

In any event, I do my level best to please as many as I can, but in the end I cannot please everyone and every decision comes down to me doing my best to minimize how many people object to the choice I'm making.

I do very much appreciate your input and I appreciate the compliment, as well. As I have said before, the biggest mistake most programmers make is telling the customer how to use the software when the customer is the one who knows what they need it for and should be telling the programmer how to use it. I do my best.

nUI v0.1.9 (alpha) is out --

* Fixed button sizes in all bars
* Completed migration of all bars to new custom secure state header bar code
* Fixed a missing method in nUI_Config.lua for upgrading versions prior to v0.1.6
* Added action bar page up and page down arrows to the new action bar
* Added usability, out of range and out of mana functionality to all action buttons
* Added movers to all action bars including pet, bags and micro-menu
* Tweaked the location of the world status frames for battlegrounds
* Fixed hotkey display on all action buttons
* Modified HUD to always vertically center on the player character at all scales
* Added FishingExtravaganza to list of ignored minimap POIs

Do you have any mods installed the interact with party frames? (besides nUI)

None, all I had installed was Baggins, Pallypower and omen.

I appreciate your replies. I know that you will work diligently to improve this UI, and I will enjoy seeing its evolution.

All I really wanted with my Omen requests was to just see the window, even if it's blank, at any time for setup and configuration. If there's no threat info, there's no threat info, but there are things to play with! It does sort of tie in to another point, though, and that's flexibility.

You could say there are 2 kinds of UI people. Ones that either create or use an all-in-one dashboard setup, and ones that just place their (modded) UI windows wherever they think they should be, all over. Some of us willy-nilly window placers might secretly wish we could settle down with a dashboard, though. They are just hard to "get right" for picky people. They're often "too big" or they don't have the right window placement. And they lack flexibility most of all. Your little information area is (currently) your only real chance to maintain a level of flexibility and customization in a dashboard setup. It's apparent that you realize the importance of this, at least to a degree, and you realize how popular these mods are, or you wouldn't have offered the integration. I just wanted to let you know that my interest was deeper than just wanting to fiddle with Omen :).

And just a final word about your integrated threat meter. I did get a chance to try it out yesterday while doing some dailies with my pet. It can definitely get the single target threat job done, but in a raid scenario, there's no chance that I'll be giving up Omen just yet. As a raiding hunter it is often important for me to see at least the top 3 on the aggro list, and if necessary, MD a 2nd or 3rd tank so they move further up the hate list. Your threat meter is good for packing as much info as possible around the HUD, but it's not quite an Omen killer at this juncture.

Sorry for the wall o' tirade! And keep up the good work!

~lol~

I'll give you that... but you did just give me an idea... if I change the tabs on the agro bar to be secure unit frames, then you can click them to cast. That would be pretty handy as a hunter looking to unload a misdirect.

nUI v1.0.0 (beta) is out --

* First public beta release

nUI v0.2.0 (alpha) --

* Added "/nui buttonbag" slash command to toggle the minimap button bag on/off
* Added "/nui clock 0" to disable the dashboard clock as well as "12" and "24"
* Added "/nui coord" to toggle the dashboard coordinates on/off
* Added the HUD configuration layout to nUI's WTF saved variables file
* Added management of the Enchantrix minimap button to the button bag
* Added management of the Baud Gear minimap button to the button bag

DrDamage Support
 

Thanks for the update, just wondering if you can add DrDamage support to the action bars, at the moment the on bar text from drdamage does not show.

I believe that's the second time I've seen that mod brought up. No doubt it is directly modifying the main action bars and would be unaware of nUI's custom action bars.

I'll be happy to add it to the to-do list as I can see the value of the mod. No promises on when it will happen though.

nUI v1.01.00 (beta) is out --

* Fixed unit frames appearing at bottom of display area when joining raids
* Fixed the elite mob dragon icon so it does not overlap the party/raid frame
* Fixed unit frames to update dead/afk status properly in parties and raids
* Fixed a button bag conflict with the RecipeRadar mod
* Fixed bug with capture bars not displaying in BG's and PvP zones
* Fixed a conflict with Titan Panel where Titan was blowing up the minimap
* Fixed a bug in the chat frame edit box that blew up the box in some resolutions
* Fixed a bug in unit type text (elite, rare, etc.) font size setting
* Added automatic detection of Titan Panel bars

Great UI. Only one problem so far - If I am on my druid or another toon that does not have a pet, then when I do quests that give me a pet (or allow me to control another as ion the chess event), no bar comes up.

Minimalism woo =)

nice ui btw

The new resized chat input box is now ridiculously small at 1600x1200 resolution. This must be a tricky element to fix, lol.

At 1280x800 too ;p, tiny.

It seems that in my attempt to fix one bug, I created a second one where the box is growing smaller over time. /sigh

I'll have it addressed in the next update.

nUI v1.02.00 (beta) --

* Reworked hotkey binding (shortcut) text on action buttons
* Tweaked HUD health bar colors
* Added automatic detection of Fubar panels
* Fixed a bug in ChatFrameEditBox when closing the world map
* Fixed a bug in ChatFrameEditBox where font size shrank over time
* Fixed size error on action button highlights for equipped items

While playin my hunter, if anything happens to my pet that causes the pet bar to disappear e.g pet dies or i mount up, when i re-summon my pet the pet bar doesnt show up. I have to /reloadui to get it to show up.

GothicKnight --

I've heard this from a couple of other people, too... and I've been trying to recreate it on my hunter or my lock and no luck. I'm not sure what the cause is, but I am trying to track it down.

Is nUI the only mod you're running, or do you have other mods loaded?

The only mods i have are the same mods i have been using for a very long time. I have removed my bar mods and unitframe mods since downloading your UI and that is the only change i have made. I will try disabling my other mods and see if i can work out the problem.

Thank You

Thanks for the update ;)

Petbar
 

I too have the petbar problem - mine happens when I am mounted and shoot my bow which dismounts me and puts me into combat but the pet bar does not show up - maybe a taint issue?

/nui hide
 

does what its supposed to but anything is the text say box does not show up and I had try /nui show sever times to get nui back

i just did some testing - if i go into combat before dismounting - petbar does not show up at all - until /console reloadui or /nui rl

Praise / Bug / Feature Request
 

I'd like to take a moment to congradulate you on your first pubic release of nUI. I've been working with it and I'm quite impressed. To do something similar (but not as tightly integrated obviously) I had to use and heavily reconfigure a large variety of disparate mods. Very nice, very well done.

I maintain a guild modset which I update on a regular basis for all of my members, (Over a hundred people) and I am seriously considering adding this in. Before I do that, though, I'll report the only bug I've found, and give you a feature request which I am confident that at least half of my guildmates will want.

1 - The bug / incompatibility. The... let me find the right terminology here... There it is, the nUI console, the one that's got the main WoW menu buttons and the latency/FPS meter on it.... By default, it appears when you mouse over it. However, when running FuBar, it doesn't appear consistently. I was able to duplicate this issue with a clean WTF folder as well. Anyhow, you probably already know about this issue. :-)

2 - The feature request. I absolutely love the HUD in nUI. It reminds me very much of MetaHUD. My existing modset design uses ArcHud, and I love it as well. However, half of my guild hates having the HUD up there in my existing modset and I'm sure they'll want a way to turn it off in nUI. The rest of the info could stay (cast bars, threat, etc) but the arcs themselves seem to really annoy people. I looked through the slash commands and didn't find a way to do it.

Going along with the feature request is this feature "change"... if the HUD is hidden, we'd need for the main unit frame display to show health and mana. Personally, I don't even use Target of Target, never mind Target of Target of Target. *head spins* I'm sure some people do, though. However, If the Unit Frames were a little more configurable with regards to how many levels deep the ToT tree goes, and had the option to show health and mana bars for each level, it be a big step towards making flexible enough to serve the needs of everyone in my guild.

Anyhow, keep up the great work, I look forward to watching how this mod evolves.

I'm a hunter, and I've found that if I'm riding around and get into combat with something, then dismount... my petbar does not show up. The only way I've been able to get it back is to do a full /console reloadui... that's somewhat annoying :( Otherwise, nUI looks great. I would like to be able to save state somehow... I also use Cartographer and it's scale settings seems to get ignored when I open it up.

First off great job on this ui.

My only problem is that i cant get recount our omen to work with this ui i have the latest version of both installed. The area were they would show up stays in raid format i cant change to map party or raid like i did when i first installed this ui.

Remove your omen.lua, and recount.lua from your WTF folder in the saved variable file.
Also in your character saved variable file to.

I trust everyone here in the States had a good holiday weekend... fireworks, good food and family. ~smile~

I am hoping to have a new update out today or tomorrow to address the pet bar issue and to improve performance in the battlegrounds. I will try to address some of the other requests I have been receiving at the same time.

As a matter of record, the petbar issue is decidedly a taint problem and I am in the process of coding a solution to it.

Kailef --

Thanks for the message and the e-mail. I'm going to reply to you here so that everyone can read over our shoulders.

Thank you for the kind word... it's been a lot of work and a lot of work yet to go, but it always feels good to know people value the effort.

FuBar's implementation is a PITA to "hook" into and have nUI react to dynamically. I'll spare you the gory details of all that and just leave it at: I am aware the FuBar detection is not working quite right, I hope to have it more stable with this next update.

Well... adding a slash command to not show the arcs would be easy enough. How to display the health and mana after that is a much more complicated problem given the layout of the player, pet, pet target, target, ToT and ToTT frames... which is touching on your next request.

One of the problems is that I overlay pet on player, target of target on target, etc. I recognize those are not features you use, but they are features a lot of people do use. But even if we leave out ToT and ToTT, there's still the pet that overlays the player. So, if we hide the HUD arcs, I would have to move the pet unit to be able to display the player health and mana and would have to disable ToT and ToTT to be able to display the target health and mana. And the cascade goes from there.

I suppose I'm going to have to seriously rethink how I chosen to lay out the unit frames. In the end though, the bottom line is that no matter what choices I make, there's going to be a non-trivial group of users who are going to hate them.

This is also a recurring theme. Everything in nUI is highly configurable and was designed that way from word one. However, until I code the configuration panels, etc., none of it is easy to configure. All of the unit frames are based on the exact same code set... be it player, pet, party, raid, whatever. Every unit frame has the capacity to display any and all elements of a unit including the models, health, mana, etc.

So, in theory, you can edit the WTF\Account\{your account}\SavedVariables\nUI.lua file and move, resize and option any unit frame you like pretty much any way you like. But that's not really a solution for 100+ people unless there were multiple nUI.lua config files for with and without HUD arcs, etc.

Shascar -- did Noble's solution fix your problem?

Well... it appears that I am still doing battle with the taint demons and the pet bar. So, it doesn't look like I'm going to get the update out today as I had hoped. I've come to the conclusion that it is not possible to manage the built in Blizzard pet bar and avoid taint at the same time, so I'm going to have to code my own pet bar from scratch. I'll get it done as quickly as I can.

Thanks to all for their patience while I sort this bug out.

No problem, i have had this problem with default blizz addons so good luck on a fix :)

I just can't wait for all the plans you have for this great addon/whole ui ;p

I love this mod altho i do have a problem.

Im having trouble with the chat window, everytime i try and move it the scroll down buttons blow out of proportion and it really bugs me that i have to have either the combat and chat window in the normal posistion or have them together =( if you need a ss to show u wat i mean ill be happy to take one. Is there something i can do so i can have combat window in the place provided and the chat window above the dashboard?

Also wish the buttons could be bigger but o well =D too small for my clicky like playstyle

A Screen will be much appreciated if I have missed the problem :)
Firstly do you need to have a constant look at the combat log?
To the problem at hand.
The scroll buttons are, by default with nUI, larger then normal, but they are only shown when moused over.

Yes, you can unlock the chat window right click --->unlock, then drag to where you want then lock again.

You can increase the ui scale going to Esc-->video -->ui scale-->drag slider.
You can increase the dashboard scale but this will cut off some of dashboard display:

-- /nui scale {n}

This option controls the scaling of the nUI dashboard to assist in fitting the dashboard inside the horizontal width of your display. Should the dashboard be too wide or two small for your display, you can alter the dashboard's width using the command "/nui scale {n}" where {n} is some number between 0.5 and 1.5 -- The larger {n} gets, the wider the nUI dashboard will become. Setting {n} to 0 will return the dashboard scale to nUI's built in default.

oki guess im gonna have to SS this to show u wat i mean =D

And ill try that thing wid the ui.