nUI -- A full feature standalone UI replacement

[eztiger]

i cant right click any members in my party -- just comes up with an error message -- Just spent like 3-4 hrs messing about with this addon and find out that one of the most important features doesnt work -- i fully understand this is a beta but is there any progress towards this bug? or have i got to spend another 3-4 hrs putting it back to my old custom -- Great Addon btw

[Seer]

Originally Posted by eztiger i cant right click any members in my party -- just comes up with an error message -- Just spent like 3-4 hrs messing about with this addon and find out that one of the most important features doesnt work -- i fully understand this is a beta but is there any progress towards this bug? or have i got to spend another 3-4 hrs putting it back to my old custom -- Great Addon btw

That is, apperantly a bug in Blizzards code, not the addon. Disabling voice chat should work, IIRC some one else also posted another work around but not sure about that one..

[Kailef]

Originally Posted by Seer That is, apperantly a bug in Blizzards code, not the addon. Disabling voice chat should work, IIRC some one else also posted another work around but not sure about that one..

eztiger and Seer,

Try installing mod "Clique", and programming the left mouse button to be "select". That's an effective workaround for the time being.

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by Archippus Hmm. Yep... I just noticed that I don't get the R-click menu on my target, either. Doing a dungeon tomorrow and that might be problematic, as I won't be able to mark targets for sheepage and sapping, etc. I'll tinker.

As Seer pointed out, just turning off the in-game voice chat will fix the problem as a temporary work-around. The option of installing a mod like Clique will work too as that bypasses Bliz's menu system which is where the bug is. The problem was introduced when Bliz added voice chat and I've been looking for an in-code solution.

[blackfirefox]

I am not terribly good at writing but I will do my best.

For those following NUI with great interest I would like to challenge each and everyone of you to donate to Spiel in recognition of his hard work. I can not prove to you that I have done so, but I have.

After communicating with Spiel over the course of the last week or so I find Spiel to be an amazing and truly inspiring person who is over coming some tremendous hurdles in his life right now. He keeps his head held high, keeps his nose to the grindstone and keeps on keeping on. He is working hours upon hours to truly develop from what I have seen one of the best user interfaces ever developed in the modding community. For that alone I encourage and ask to give Spiel the recognition he deserves and a pat on the back by donating to his cause right now.

I am doing this because I truly believe Spiel needs help with his situation, I will not divulge that information because that is personal, but I ask you trust and believe in Spiel's work enough to make a small contribution to help him out and acknowledge the hours upon hours he has spent to make this interface.

One more thing, Spiel has for all intents and purposes integrated so many requests that have been asked of him to this interface at your request without grumbling or complaining about it, he is doing what the community asks of him. So give back to him for acknowledging your requests by lending a helping hand.

So please click the link below to send Spiel a contribution. Your contribution of $5, $10, $20 or more to support the ongoing development of nUI would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...&charset=UTF-8

I personally thank each and everyone of you who have already donated and I thank everyone who will donate. Those of you who can not I understand so I am not ignoring you.

Thanks Everyone
BlackFireFox

[gothicknight]

I have been an avid supporter of nUi since Alpha, and rest asure, that once my finances are settled, which should be in the the next 2 weeks at the most, i will be donating to Spiel at least once, money permit, i am hoping to make regular contributions to his hard and great work.

I am a great admirer of his work, and although i thought the same of MazzleUI, i can feel (more like hope ) that Spiel will be supporting this for a long time, whether it be just bug fixes here or there, or like he is already doing, constantly adding new features that us, the users of this incredible piece of work, request.

Spiel, you have my, as well as alot of other peoples, full support and i will be more than happy to donate for your work.

Thank you so very much Spiel

Gothicknight

[t_storm]

I was wondering how the focus targeted window can be moved!
Currently when ever I have a focus it's in the top left corner of my screen and hidden by my 2x layers of Fubar partially!
I would prefer it to be down along the same lines as the other pics even if it's above them!

Also when I was doing the Prayer beads quest in HH when targeting the npc of the quest I could not get any health bars on him so had no clue as to what his health was. Now yes I know with this quest it's of no big deal but my concern would be if I ever played on my Priest again and was running Durnholde and having to rescue Thrall with having to keep him healed if I was in a noOb group! If I can not get health bars on him how in the world am I going to know if I'm looking in the middle of my screen?

These are some concerns of mine with using this UI that I actually love now.
Maybe they have been mentioned before, if so then I'm truly sorry!

Look forward to reading your responses!

Edited: read back about the past 15 pages an found the answer to one of my concerns. Seen reference to some of this but will still leave up!

[spiel2001]

Okay -- Lots of things here...

First... hooray! nUI finally made 5 star rating today I see. Hope I can keep it up and live up to it. Thanks to everyone who's voted.

Next... I have *FINALLY* found the "right" look and design for the default unit frames. I've attached four screencaps to have a look at. These are all images of the solo/player unit panel mode.

The first image is just your very basic player and target... note that I've reverted back in many ways to the original layout, but have all of the new unit frame features available now.

The second image is in combat with a pet and ToT in addition to the player and target. Not the target's buffs in the target unit frame, his debuffs above the dashboard... the auras are supposed to highlight red to the ones I have cast on hostiles and green for ones I have cast on friendlies... there's still some bugs there I'm chasing down. Also note the "target" button in the pet unit frame. Click that to target the pet's target.

Third image shows the unit frame with a cast underway... channeling actually. Note the pet's buffs on the left edge above the dashboard, as well. Also note application counters and expiration counters on buffs/debuffs.

The final image demonstrates the focus frame (and the small space below it is the mouseover unit frame). In this example you'll see player cast again (this time a cast instead of a channel) with the latency bar. Note the focus frame is faded because the player is dead -- status now supports both printing status text and fading the frame... also note that status no longer covers the entire frame, only the health/power bars... the same is true for the other four unit bars on the screen.

At this point it is my intention to call this the official release design... I really want to get back to focusing on fixing the bugs that are stopping me from putting out the next update and finalize the party and raid frames. That said, I do still ask for and value feedback, I would much rather hear issues now than a month from now... there's not a prayer I can please everyone, but everyone's opinions does matter.

So... enough of that... Next item...

I just wanted to comment that I am reading messages throughout the day and I am taking notes on the problems people are having, suggestions they are making, etc. I am not replying to every post at this point as I'm trying desperately to stay focused on the code and not spend my day writing messages. Please know that I am reading and I am listening... but I'm also knee deep in the code and want to get it out the door so I can go back to playing ~grin~ I just don't want anyone to come away thinking I'm not paying attention.

And, finally... last item... I wanted to address Blackfirefox's post from yesterday...

In the interest of making a long story short, Blackfirefox is an nUI supporter (as are many of your) and has been exchanging e-mails with me. I suppose he was observant enough to pick up on the fact that I was, umm... shall we say... "unnaturally" appreciative of the donations I received and he asked questions. I'm not one to pretend things as good when they aren't, so I answered them. In the interest of open honesty about my situation, here's what I wrote to him...

Hi there –

No… you did not offend me in any way and I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your e-mail sooner. Truth be told, I was in code-mode when it arrived and I didn’t want to be distracted, so I set it aside… then promptly forgot about it. /sigh

I actually have been coding for hours you wouldn’t believe… in part because I love it, in part because I’m “into it” at the moment and my mind is on fire with the things I want to do (it’s a curse ~smile~), in part because I feel some obligation to my users and in part because I really need nUI to be a success… which leads to your question ~smile~

The bottom line is that I’ve been a software engineer for all but three years of my adult life... during which time I was in the Army. I love what I do and honestly can’t tell the difference between work and play most of the time. And, setting modesty aside for a moment, I think I’m exceptionally good at it. However, a year ago last month I left the company I was working for due to personal reasons… I was going to have surgery, my daughter was having health issues, the company was bought by a global firm who promptly treated all of us like dirt, and so on. At the time I thought I was going to be going to work for EA games… I didn’t have an official offer, but I had everything else but. So, I left the company I was with, took some time for my surgery and to get my Daughter well again and when it came time to take the position at EA, the train jumped the tracks.

I have been looking for work, and out of work, ever since. It’s been over a year now and things are exceptionally hard. I have *NO* idea why I’m having such a hard time getting work… maybe it’s because I’ve turned 50 now and people are look for young college kids they can hire for ½ of what I get. I don’t know… but it’s really bad.

So… I have several projects going and nUI is one of them and at this point is looking like it’s going to be the most successful. Once the Beta 2 is done, I’m going to offer some things such as documentation for sale (user and developer), skinning tools and other such things to earn some extra dollars. Between now and then, I’m relying on what I get in donations and what I get from my other efforts to try and make ends meet and I keep looking for work in the area.

In a nutshell, I appreciate the donations as I do because they are the difference between eating and not eating right now… and, of course, a validation of my hard work which with my personality type means as much to me as dinner ~grin~

So... that's about it in a nutshell. To those of you who have been donating, I have written each of you personally to thank you and I meant it. What you've contributed to "the cause" has really made a positive difference and I can't thank you enough for that.

Mind you, I'm not trying to put pressure on anyone... I'm just "coming out" about my situation because it's already been breeched on the board and, frankly, it's my experience that being open about things does far more to diffuse them than trying to keep them hidden ever will.

To Blackfirefox... you've been amazing and your support means much. Thank you friend, God Bless. To all the others who have been supporting nUI with translation work, ideas, suggestions, answering user questions, and donations... thank you from the bottom of my heart... I could name names, but then I'll mess up and leave someone's name out and offend them. Just know how much I appreciate this community and how much I enjoy writing this code for you and watching you enjoy it. For a geek like me, that's the next best thing to a date with a supermodel ~evil grin~

As a final word... for those of you who are interested in helping the nUI cause, or my own personal "hurdles" as Blackfirefox put it, donatations are appreciated, but not something I expect. There are plenty of ways to help without cash... your input and ideas truly matter to me, helping find bugs helps and is appreciated, spreading the "Gospel" according to nUI helps too ~smile~ The more people using nUI, the better my chances of making something successful out of this effort.

And, in closing, if there are any of you out there who care about health, good nutrition, or are looking for ways to earn a little extra income networking, I have two projects I've been involved with that may be of interest to you, and that's yet another way I can better my situation... so, if you're dealing with health issues, care about good nutrition or are looking for some extra "at-home" income (like I am) then I invite you to check out my personal site at http://www.scottpiel.com

Now... with all that said, I'm going to try not to talk about this subject anymore.

My sincere and personal thanks to every one of you who has been helping.

[mscott998]

honestly i liked the last post you made where the unit frames had the model in the center of the frame with buffs and debuffs on each side... and the bars for health and mana going up and down.. seems like the new setup doesnt have much room for buffs and debuffs in the unit frame.. and is there any way to move the bags bar to a better spot? thanks for the hard work look forward to your release


looked real nice the unit frames looked like in the pic below can this style be used int the current positioning

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by gothicknight I have been an avid supporter of nUi since Alpha, and rest asure, that once my finances are settled, which should be in the the next 2 weeks at the most, i will be donating to Spiel at least once, money permit, i am hoping to make regular contributions to his hard and great work. I am a great admirer of his work, and although i thought the same of MazzleUI, i can feel (more like hope ) that Spiel will be supporting this for a long time, whether it be just bug fixes here or there, or like he is already doing, constantly adding new features that us, the users of this incredible piece of work, request. Spiel, you have my, as well as alot of other peoples, full support and i will be more than happy to donate for your work. Thank you so very much Spiel Gothicknight

Gothicknight... I just wanted to take a second to thank you for all the kind words and your support. It is my sincere hope that nUI can continue to grow and it is my intention to continue to support and to improve upon it for as long as possible.

As I told Blackfirefox in a separate e-mail, I stumbled into this project by complete accident. It's kind of one of those "one thing leads to another" deals that took on a life of its own. That said, I'm having more fun, and am more excited about the code I'm writing, than I probably have been in 20+ years. LUA is a very cool language, the Bliz API (with the exception of taint) is easy to work in and the result of it all are just plain fun. How cool is that?

You folks would be shocked if you had any clue the hours I've put in over the course of the last week... ummm... it all kind of blurs together but as I recall, I coded for 16 hours, slept for 5, coded for 20 hours, slept for 6, coded for 24 hours, slept for 2, coded for 20 hours, slept 10 (yeah... caught up to me) then another 24 hours and slept for 6.

The thing of it is that's how I used to code "back in the day" and boy could I tell you stories about that. But the bottom line is that I'm doing it because I'm excited by it, I'm having fun and I'm feeling better about this project than any code I've written in decades.

As I noted in the e-mail I posted in my last message, I have always wanted to be in game development and thought I had finally "made the grade" when I was thinking I was going to EA. I have no idea where this nUI effort is going to lead me, but at least I'm finally doing what I want and enjoying it in the process. It remains to be seen if it leads to an income of any kind, but you know what... even when times are bad, it's important to remember that there's much more to life than just a weekly paycheck.

This is an awesome community, I'm having an awesome time and best of all, I'm making great new friends while having fun.

Can't ask for a whole lot more than that, really.

Thank you for making is worth it.

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by mscott998 honestly i liked the last post you made where the unit frames had the model in the center of the frame with buffs and debuffs on each side... and the bard for health and mana going up and down.. seems like the new setup doesnt have much room for buffs and debuffs in the unit frame.. and is there any way to move the bags bar to a better spot? thanks for the hard work look forward to your release

Hi there mscott...

What goes "inside" the unit frame is addaptive. That is to say, only those elements that are detrimental to the player go in the unit frame. So... debuffs on the player and the player's friends go in the frames and their buffs appear above the dashboard where there's more room to see the timers and such while still staying out of the center of the screen. On the other hand, buffs on hostile mobs go in the unit frame and the debuff you and your party/raid members are putting on them go above the dashboard on the right where, again, there's more room to see their application counts and expiration timers.

The thinking on this is very focused. The reason for it is that what's in the unit frame is what is most immiedaitely important... debuffs on you and your party members need to be dispelled as do buffs on your hostile targets. The status on your buffs and the mash of all the debuffs on a raid target would require unit frames half the size of the screen to properly contain them.

That's a no-can-do

That said, the beauty of the Beta 2 is that I have created a completely modular state machine and you can arrange it in pretty much any way you can imagine without writing a line of code. For now, all it requires is modifying a data table, later there will be skinning tools (GUI config tools) to allow you to customize it to your heart's content.

The bottom line is that there is no way I will ever be able to post a screen layout design that everyone will agree on. Bah... I'm lucky if I can get 10% to agree ~grin~ I long since realized that this is the core issue and that's why the Beta 2 became a complete re-write.

If you think about it and you read back across the two month history since I release the program, there has been very little complaint about what nUI does or how it does it.. just some quick bug fixes. Where the complaints come from is in the layout. So... it became crystal clear that before I spent months growing nUI's capabilities and such, I had to start by creating a basic platform that would allow users to shove things around and turn things on an off to their heart's content.

The bottom line is that what I have done with the Beta 2 is a have added a state machine between World of Warcraft and the player. On one side is the nit and grit nUI code that is keeping track of who and what all the activity is and on the other side are simple plug and play features that the user can turn on and off, resize, move and combine in whatever way they can imagine. I've come to think of Beta 2 as an etch-a-sketch screen machine for World of Warcraft ~lol~ If you don't like what you've drawn, shake it all up and do it again.

The cool thing about the Beta 2 is that I have written it from the get-go to allow people to create and save their own custom "designs" for the front end user interface. It adds a whole new meaning to nUI's original name... "new UI" -- people can create as many looks for the World of Warcraft screen as they like... be they minimalists or data hogs. More than that, they can upload their skins to places like WoWI and people can just "plug in" the skin(s) they like.

I have also created an API in nUI so other mod authors will be able to add functionality to it with ease. But that's a whole topic of its own.

So, the bottom line is that I can't please everyone, but I can create a tool that allows them to choose how they want it to look. Unlike mod collections and hybrids, this is actual 100% original and tightly integrated standalone code and plugs right into WoW... zero setup. If someone else creates a skin you like, you download it, enable it in your WoW addons screen and log in. Done.

That's the goal.

So... I'm not going to move the bag bar... but you're welcome to at a later date ~smile~

EDIT: Two things...

one... the design you like and posted in the last post actually much LESS space for buffs than this one did and it had tiny bars which when I tried to play with it in battelgrounds quickly proved to be very difficult to deal with. The design I posted this evening all collapses to the center of the unit frame panel if you really look at it. I played it in AB for quite a while today to see how it "felt" and how well it performed and I was blown away by it. It was instantly "easy" for me to see everything I needed to know even though it was a brand new layout I had never played before.

two... I hope you didn't get the impression I was being dismissive of your thoughts. I certainly never intend that. The bottom line is that the look and feel of the unit frames is completely arbitrary with Beta 2. The player unit frame is one file of nothing but a table that describes which feature you want the frame to contain and how you want them to be arranged. You can change the entire appearance of any unit frame just by replacing the one file that describes it. I can create a new fully functional unit frame design in a couple of minutes... I may spend an hour being anal about every pixel lining up just right, but it honestly is a zero effort task. So... once the beta two is out, if you don't like my layout, I assure you you can create your own, I strongly suspect others will create designs you can try and so on... I hace no doubt you'll be able to use nUI and get exactly the kind of screen appearance that's "right" for you. So... I wasn't dismissing you, just telling you that I have to choose a "default" design, but in the end you can have any design you like.

Cheers!

[mscott998]

i understand completely..

Thanks for the response.. what ever you put put im sure will work out best..

im looking forward to trying it out :-)

[blackfirefox]

Spiel,

Thank you for that kind praise. I truly appreciate it, and I truly appreciate your efforts.

In the new layout the pet action buttons, can they be used by non hunter classes, I have an alt mage and have not been able to figure out how to utilize that bar.

Also can scroll bar in the chat window be resized, make the buttons just a tad smaller.

Last but not least......WOOHOO truly awesome interface!!

Take care today.

Thanks
BlackFireFox

[gothicknight]

Would it be possible to add support for diamondthreatmeter please mate. From what i have been told from friends and other players that it is an exeptionally good threat meter, although i havent had a chance to use it yet while using your UI.

Thanx for hard work and i cant wait for version 2. i check the site every 1hr or so waiting (yeah i no i am kinda obsesed with this UI)

Diamond can be found at
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...reatMeter.html

[Jungleanimal]

Ok, well I finally made it back from vacation and WoW (pun intended) this board has lit up with activity. I am extremely excited about the the new beta 2 by reading the updates. I will be sending another donation upon release because I love it that someone is doing this work that makes it easy for me to have a great UI without all the hassle of a million mods. I am really excited about the focus frame getting some much needed love because I am a mage and I set my sheep target as my focus frame in raids to get business done. My one and only question is that it looked like there was some scrolling text in the latest screen shots. Was that SCT or is scrolling text built into nUI now?

Today is going to a be a WoW day for me as I have missed many of my fun time hours due to being on vacation camping with the kids (which sounds like fun unless you are the parent organizing and taking care of the whole sweaty mess). Today I have a whole day to myself. Woo Hoo! Also, due to the insane configurability (not a word) that seems to be built into beta 2 I have no worries about the frames like I did before. I look forward to getting all that sRaidframes crap off my screen.

It looks like a lot has happened in the last week. It is going to be really fun to use the second version of a UI that is built by a professional software developer. I tossed out my previous cobbled together mess of mods and I am never going back. I work in IT and it always seems that the second attempt is when you really nail things down and fix "rookie" mistakes when learning a new language or API. The first attempt was awesome so I can only imagine that a complete rewrite based on the things you learned is basically going to make nUI THE ONLY CHOICE for the majority of people that just want a crisp clean UI without a bunch of hassle. I can't wait.

Jungle

[eloora]

I really like the new design, though I have a feeling my small gripe post a few pages back might have been accidentally overlooked.

I'm not crazy about unnecessary icons and values covering hp bars. Can you shove the PvP icon back in a corner so it's less obtrusive?

[Archippus]

I like the new "final" design quite a bit. My wife is an avid hunter player and she's "oohing" and "aahing" over the pet frame target button. Also, as someone who now understands and relies on the /focus feature, I really appreciate the intuitive inclusion of the focus frame.

I'm curious to see how the panel on the right pans out. :-)

One comment based on the casting bar in your screenshot... Get a new ISP or play on a closer server. You've got too much lag, my friend. lol

This just in from my wife: Does the mouse-over unit frame give any indication of level of difficulty? That's one thing she's missing. Is a target gray, green, yellow, orange or red to her?

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by blackfirefox Thank you for that kind praise. I truly appreciate it, and I truly appreciate your efforts.

The thanks is all mine... you've helped me a lot.

In the new layout the pet action buttons, can they be used by non hunter classes, I have an alt mage and have not been able to figure out how to utilize that bar.

In a word, no. This is something that comes up again and again as folks spot that space and go AHA! I CAN PUT MORE BUTTONS THERE! ~grin~ The problem is that space is multi-purposed which is how Bliz does it as well. That space is used for the hunter pet bar, the warrior stance bar, the druid shapeshift bar, the pally aura bar and the rogue stealth (a waste of space)

Those are all different bars and buttons and they are both not interchangeable and not action buttons... which is why you can't drag an action onto them and drop it.

On the face of it, it would seem that if your toon is none of the above, then why not be able to put something else there? The answer to that is the one bar I didn't mention, the possess bar which appears any time you possess another mob. Examples are a hunter's Eyes of the Beast, Warlock's Eye of Kilrogg, Priests Mind Control, etc. More than that, there are also quite a few quests and events that use a possess bar -- the Karazan Chess Event being the first that comes to mind.

So, anyway, in a nutshell, that space is a very busy place and it took a lot of tinkering to get it to work reliably as it is. Adding yet another bar is begging for a problem. Perhaps someday in the future when I have truly mastered all things WoW I'll look at adding the option of an action bar for classes that don't use a pet/stance/aura bar.

Also can scroll bar in the chat window be resized, make the buttons just a tad smaller.

Actually, in that screen shot, the only nUI code set that was enabled was the action bars and the unit frames, so the chat frame was the Bliz default at the time. But since you mention that, I'll make sure to add the ability to size and locate those buttons to the skinning system. Thanks for the idea.

[spiel2001]

Originally Posted by gothicknight Would it be possible to add support for diamondthreatmeter please mate. From what i have been told from friends and other players that it is an exeptionally good threat meter, although i havent had a chance to use it yet while using your UI. Thanx for hard work and i cant wait for version 2. i check the site every 1hr or so waiting (yeah i no i am kinda obsesed with this UI) Diamond can be found at http://www.wowinterface.com/download...reatMeter.html

Gothicknight -- I'll be glad to look at it... remind me again after the Beta 2 is out and things are getting boring again ~smile~

[spiel2001]

Welcome back Jungleanimal...

and here I was thinking you didn't love me anymore ~grin~

You know... I used to be an assistant scout master... I can so relate to the "organizing the sweaty mess" comment ~lol~

The scrolling text you saw was the built in Bliz combat text. It may sound dumb, but I use it on my hunter because it always circles the target and if my pet is attacking a hordie on the other side of a wall or obstacle I can see the text and know where I need to be headed.

And, as always, thank you for the kind words.

Originally Posted by Jungleanimal Ok, well I finally made it back from vacation and WoW (pun intended) this board has lit up with activity <snip>