If you’re looking for a new compilation UI to play around with, check out this one by Taeo. For this package, I utilized the three characters I played the most on so I could get a feel for it in a variety of situations.
- Discipline Priest
- Elemental Shaman
- Retribution Paladin
I wanted to see how the UI would act and function in a variety of roles. I don’t have a tank character so the closest thing to it was a Retribution Paladin. In this post, I’ll go over several of the addons that are used, the installation (and configuration) process, and how it felt actually playing on them.
Addons used
- Bagnon
- Bartender4
- ButtonFacade
- Chatter
- Chincilla
- ClassTimer
- Elkano’s Buff Bars
- Grid
- Pitbull
- Quartz
- SlideBar
- TicTac
There’s probably a few others I forgot.
Installation and configuration process
Easy. I followed the instructions here. Everything worked like a charm.
Almost.
The minimap was off slightly. No problem though. This UI is meant for a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Anything less than that is going to involve some configuration. Several th ings didn’t match up. My buff bars appears to be hidden underneath the mini map. I have a slight issue with seeing some of the buffs. That’s probably due to a resolution issue.
So let’s get to the meat and the potatoes of it all.
Disc Priest
Grid is the raid frame of choice for Taeo UI. You can’t go wrong with Grid. Although I myself am not a Grid user, I’m fairly adaptable. If you see one raid frame, you see ‘em all. I was a bit disappointed at the position that the Grid frames were at. They’re located in the top left part of the screen. You’ll notice the map was slightly off as well. Easily fixed thanks to Taeo. A quick email and a reply resolved that issue.
I need my raid frames centered. Otherwise I’m going to kill myself going back forth dodging fires and healing at the same time. Unfortunately, I didn’t play it very well. Came close to eating void zones and firewalls on an OS1D. Couldn’t take screenshots. Was trying to heal and dodge fires.
Elemental Shaman
It felt really clean to play this UI on my Elemental Shaman. No significant visual issues here. All my procs like Elemental Oath would activate just above my user frame on the middle-left area. Totem timers are floating right above my frames so I can see how long they last for. Nice touch. My debuffs are directly above the target. I can time my Lava Burst and Flame Shocks accordingly. You can see Quartz in action right above my keys there.
Retribution Paladin
Lots of fun here. Again, all procs are above the frame. I get access to four sets of key bars basically. There’s three bars in the center and one bar going down vertically on the top right. Nothing glaringly out of place or awkward at melee range. I can see everything quite clearly. There’s room for two chat boxes on the left and the right side. The bottom of the screen displays various information. It shows how many of your guildies and friends are online. If there’s any unread mail, it’ll display that too. Gold count, armor and technical aspects like latency and FPS round up the rest of the information shown.
All in all, this is a very slick compilation for those looking for a quick fix to their UI or those who don’t want to take the time to customize it. I would definitely use this for my DPS characters. Until they refine it for healing, I’ll have to shy away from recommending TaeoUI for healing.
However, we might not have to wait long. Team Taeo is hard at working refining features for 2.0 including a configuration just for healers. Follow the production blog. When it’s released, I’ll definitely do another review of it again from my Priest in a raid environment.
Found a cool addon? Want to share a UI tip? In the mood to contribute a guest post? Have some ideas for future posts? Feel free to 
I feel the little graphic at the bottom and for the buffs is pretty good, but the unit frames seem pretty lack-luster, same with the buff bars and recount.
Also “No Visual issues”? Since the UI was clearly made for widescreen you would need to edit this a bit, since some frames are clearly clipping. And the buff background disappears off your screen.
I suppose with some tweaking this is a good compilation for people looking for a easy clean-(ish) UI.
@Viridis: No visual issues means I can still do my job whatever it may be. As in there’s nothing completely obstructing my view. It’s a little rough around the edges in that regard.
I’m pretty sure I wrote no “significant” issues.
are there other packaged UI’s that you would suggest that dont require this high a resolution i have been trying to set up a decent UI for a year and consistently fail.
@Sunoh
Here is a good place to look.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/cat28.html
Most compilations will take some tweaking. I would suggest, with a lower res screen, that you just do a simple UI with kgpanels and bartender.
I did this a couple of days ago.
http://tinypic.com/m/4qpidt/2
I have a widescreen monitor but you could do something similar and just bring the elements together. I also toook some elements (unit frames, grid setup and quartz layout) from another compiltion from Supplicum. http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12701-SuppUI.html.
My suggestion would be to look over some compilations, find those aspects that you find appealing and download the zip file. The take the mod you want, say Pitbull, put it in your AddOns directory and put the saved variables from that compilation in your saved variables directory. Then you can make tweaks to suit.
I have never seen one UI that had everything exactly as I wanted it, including mine :)
Isn’t every UI a work in progress?
:)
I know mine always is.
Wenchie´s last blog ..For heaven’s sake people, stop marrying her!
If you really wanted your raid frames centered, dear Matt, why not hide the action bars (I assume you use key bindings & click-casting) and put Grid where the bars were originally? That would work, unless you are one of those people that need to see all those buttons. (I’m not. :P)
I will second Viridis’ sentiment regarding the resolution issue. The UI is gorgeous and I’d love to use it but it really only fits the designer’s resolution. When I loaded it up the alignments were far worse than what Matt had.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the work that went into the UI. I just wish there were a few more instructions so users would how to tweak the UI until it was just right.
For those of you concerned about the issue of the UI not scaling correctly for your resolution please take some time to read our blog (click on my name in the comments)!
I am working with a talented LUA developer to create an auto-configuring version of the UI. That means that the UI will arrange itself to appear correctly in your resolution and aspect ratio with almost no tweaking or configuration needed. My developer friend expects to have a functional version due out in early July.
Taeo´s last blog ..Polymorphic: Code By Numbers
@taeo
That’s fantastic! I had your page open and I was ready to download this and give it a shot for fun, however after reading some of the commentary, I decided not to, as my LCD’s native resolution is 1680×1050.
I’ll keep an eye out for future versions that scale, or can be set.
Looks great though!
I don’t really like the graphics, and some addons are simply put everywhere like elk buff bars and omen, recount and right actionbars – what are those places?. This is just my opinion. What I really liked is the organization effort of the author to put up a website for it and all that – it takes a lot of work for some. With the community feedback, it has potential. This I do admire so I’ll take a look at it for sure.
I don’t know if you mentioned it in your blog matt, but nUI (www.nuiaddon.com) is pretty good too, works in every resolution and is really simple. It takes some of your screen off (and for notebook players like me it can be a little irritating in the beggining) but it’s really simple to use and works. :)
bsides´s last blog ..A little update
@bsides Take a look at the screenshots on our website, http://www.taeoui.com. You’ll see that Matt got the configuration off a bit. The bits of the UI that look out of place in Matt’s screenshots (omen, recount, buff bars and party) were his own additions or not configured.
We are currently working on a version of Taeo UI that will auto configure to fit any screen resolution – so issues like this won’t be a problem in the future!
Taeo´s last blog ..Polymorphic: Code By Numbers
I’m wondering what the mod for the floating combat text is. I like the font of that very much. I’m using Mik’s mod, and although I enjoy it very much I’m always looking to simplify the UI whenever possible, to keep information as current and basic as I can while not detracting from the encounters (which seem to require a lot more footwork in Ulduar).
Thanks in advance for any help provided.
Not sure why its not posting i hope i’m not reposting again… sorry if i am… but i wanted to show all my UI based off of Taeo UI set up… i tried for a bit but really didn’t like it after a while.
here is mine enjoy… (http://images.wowstead.com/31682/20.jpg)
***EDIT*** link is – http://images.wowstead.com/31682/20.jpg
@EightyNine It’s not a floating combat text addon actually – I’m using an addon called gdFont to change Blizzard’s default font for combat damage text. The font is called Hotel Coral Essex I believe.
Taeo´s last blog ..Polymorphic: Code By Numbers
Damn… I really need a desktop.
Hey folks. I’m not sure if this counts as “thread necromancy” or not, but I figured I would point out that Taeo and Polydwarf have been hard at work at updating the framework for TaeoUI. It’s now a virtually hands-free configuration for almost any available resolution. It’s in Beta, at the moment, while they work some of the kinks out of their code, but I’ve been using it personally for a couple of weeks now, and I absolutely *love* it.
Badger´s last blog ..The Role of Roles in RPGs