The new design is almost finished!

Just a quick update. I have not forgotten about you guys. I'm just waiting on a couple of updates to make the UI completely stable, and I'll get it out to you guys. But here's a preview of some new features:

1. Easier setup! Remember going through all of the addons and clicking on the "Default" profile? No more of that!
2. Slimmed down memory footprint! I've dumped a couple of addons, particularly Lightheaded and ItemRack, since Blizzard's implementation of the quest tracking features and the equipment manager are now robust and full-featured enough to replace them.
3. Tight integration with Blizzard art! The preview pictures posted below are very similar to what I'll have in the release version, with a bit more polish.

So I should have the newest version of the UI ready sometime within the next week or so. Thanks for your patience.

Some action shots of the new design

The first picture is my UI soloing on my Death Knight with a pet out. The layout should basically be familiar.

The second pic is my UI on my Death Knight in Ulduar in a vehicle. Check out how the layout of the buttons works on the main console area.

The third is my healing 10-man raid UI, with focus frame shown. (The one with the magnifying glass on it.)

Let me know what you think.

Feedback Requested!

I've recently done a redesign of the major UI elements. The functionality is almost identical to what it was.

The UI, as you can now download it, has a fairly self-consistent and minimalistic look. I definitely liked it for a long time. But I kept finding that I wished that my UI looked more consistent with the default UI. You can have slick and modern unit frames and action bars, but as soon as you open up the character frame, the quest log, or one of the other default frames you see that it's not consistent.

So I took a bunch of the original Blizzard textures and used them to create the artwork for my preferred layout. This involved making backgrounds for the center console area and overlay artwork for the unit frames. I think I've come up with a really nice way to keep the layout I like while keeping the look consistent with the Blizzard default UI. Basically, it's the WoW look, but without the flaws in the default UI layout. :)

I'm posting a screenshot to see what you guys think. I really dig it, and I hope you do too. Let me know how it strikes you. There's more to the new layout than you can see in the screenshot. Particularly, I think I've finally figured out a way to make pet classes look really nice. If you guys want, I can upload more screenshots later so that you can see things in action. Tell me what you'd like to see, and I'll try to oblige.

The screenshot is clickable for a larger view, FYI.

DaedhirUI 1.3 released

DaedhirUI 1.3 for World of Warcraft 1.2.

I finally got around to finishing the update. Sorry, this is what happens when a grad student tries to maintain a UI project. :)

Get it from the usual source.

This isn't a major upgrade, so if you already have v1.2 of the UI installed, the best thing for you to do is to simply rename your current Interface folder (to back it up) and then copy the Interface folder from the new UI archive in its place. This will keep your settings intact.

Enjoy, and as always, let me know in the comments if anything isn't working correctly.

Updates slow in coming for 3.2

It appears that Blizzard has made some fairly major changes in the UI API code, so many of the addons in the UI aren't updated into a functional state yet. I have the UI back in a semi-working state, and as soon as I get everything back working with no errors, I'll publish a new version of the UI.

I get the impression that many of the mod developers didn't have much time to do testing on the PTR (and neither did I for that matter) so we may wait a little while for this one. I can tell you, though, that you can update Pitbull, kgpanels, Dominos, and FuBar and you'll get most of the stuff back working that you'll need for a functional raid UI.

And don't forget to check "load out of date addons" on the mod selection screen before you log in.

Enjoy the patch, and I'll update whenever I can.

A Question

I haven't made many major design changes to my UI in quite a while now. When I first started putting different addons together, I made fairly major, sweeping changes quite often. I would discover that a certain addon would interfere with my playing space too much, or it took too much computing time and robbed me of game performance, or it simply wasn't what I was looking for. After a lot of trial and error I finally ended up with the UI that's currently available.

I find that it meets my needs very well. However, I'm sure there are some improvements that could be made. So I'm wondering if any of you have downloaded my UI and made significant changes to make it more useful for you. If you have, I'd love to see a screenshot of what you've done and an explanation of why you decided to do it -- what need my UI didn't fill that your addition does.

The thing that has been bothering me the most about my UI recently is the hoops you have to jump through to configure the addons when you create a new character. Many of the addons handle configuration well by initializing with the default profile you've optimized on your other toons. But a few of them don't do this, and create a new profile for each new toon from their own defaults. The result? When you make a new toon, your stuff is all over the place. You have to configure the addons to use the default profiles. Is it a hassle? You bet.

So I'm looking into how to make this change. It would also considerably shorten the installation instructions for the UI. When writing them, I was fully aware that many people would read the first sentences and say "Well, forget this. I'll find a UI that's easier to install." I'd like to improve this, and I think fixing the profiles issue would be a good first step.

There is a problem though. In my original UI, I had modified a couple of addons myself, and this obviously causes issues for maintenance. It delayed the next release of the UI too, since I had to either modify the addons again in order to get any updates the authors had made or find another addon that restored the functionality but didn't require any modification by me.

So if I decide to fix the addons to do the defaults in an intelligent way, I will also have the added task of backporting the changes I make to any new releases of the addons when future patches hit. I'm not certain this is the way to go.

So again, please let me know what you think could be improved on the UI. And I hope some people are enjoying it.

DaedhirUI 1.2 Released.

DaedhirUI for World of Warcraft v3.1.

Get it here.

This is a much more lightweight version of the UI than the previous ones.  It should be much faster, and it requires less memory.  As far as I can tell, any slowdown in 25-man raids should be gone.

It's probably the best idea to reinstall the UI from scratch.  I did a complete overhaul and the UI scaling is slightly different from the way I had it.  I hope the instructions are clear enough.  They are enclosed with the UI.

Hope everybody enjoys this, it's working great for me in Ulduar.

DaedhirUI 1.1 released.

I've uploaded DaedhirUI 1.1 to WoWInterface.  The file might be pending for a few hours, keep checking back until the new download appears.

Get it here.

It's still got some issues, mainly in 25-man raiding.  I'm not sure what to do about that, although I've read that the Buffalo version I'm using is causing some major lag on some people's systems.  If you're having framerate issues in 25-man raids, I'd suggest trying to disable Buffalo and/or ZMobDB and ZuxanaModelCitizen to see if that helps.

This will be the last release of the UI until the 3.1 patch comes out.  I have a (mostly) working version of the UI on the PTR currently, although I'm waiting on a few library updates.  I'm also trying to reduce the number of addons the UI uses, since it's become kinda bloated and unwieldy to maintain.  My goal for 3.1 (DaedhirUI version 2.0) is to make a lightweight framework to provide the main functionality of the UI including graphics and layout.  This framework will be the bare essentials, and any other addons you might want to add to it will likely be easier to deal with.

I'll give more info on this when I have it, I hope to have the light UI ready the day patch 3.1 is rolled out.

Okay, I'm really sorry I haven't gotten a new version up in a while. Been busy in RL, and the time I have to play is pretty much devoted to raiding.

I'll try to get a new package up this weekend. There still aren't a whole lot of changes to the UI, and I'm currently working on getting it up and running (with stability) on the PTR so that we'll have a hot, fresh UI working for 3.1 on release of the patch. There are still some bugs on that front, as not a lot of addon developers seem to be messing with the PTR yet. I'm hoping and assuming that this will happen soon.

I'm also trying to pare down the UI into its most essential elements. I kept getting complaints from people that the UI makes things slow down too much, so I'm trying to minimize the number of addons in the UI package by default. This will give everybody the essentials (and the layouts, graphics, etc.) but will allow people to add whatever other utility addons they might need.

Again, really sorry to those of you who are waiting for an updated version. I even had somebody come find me in game to ask me to do this. (Wow.) This is just a hobby of mine, but I'll try to be better about updates.

Update coming for 3.0.8

I plan to have an updated version of the UI ready for when Blizzard releases the 3.0.8 patch. Auctioneer still hasn't updated their addon, but I found a hack for including the database from the development version in the release version, which provides vendor prices for all of the Northrend items.

Not a whole lot of changes to the UI will be included, since most of the AddOns still seem to work fine. I've been playing with a couple of other addons, like ArkInventory, but I don't think I'm actually going to be adding them in.. I'm having a memory issue with WoW that causes a crash if I'm in a zone with too much information, it seems to have something to do with the amount of memory allocated by the WoW client, which includes AddOns. So I'm trying to keep things a bit minimalistic, although when you have a UI as complicated as this one, it's not an easy task.

Sorry again for the delay in an updated version, there just aren't enough changes to justify getting it out and having to reissue for the new patch.