Eric Replied

An Introduction to Synii (Undead Priest) - Eredar Server
My friend Eric has been endlessly harassing me to contribute to his site since… well, I guess since he decided that he was making a blog. And I’ve firmly held to the belief that I really don’t have anything to say and I certainly don’t have anything worthwhile to say.

“Talk about user interfaces,” he would tell me. That would be fine except every idea I’ve ever had has been inspired by someone else’s user interface. Then talk about addons themselves he would reply. There is plenty of that to be found elsewhere is my typical retort. So, in the end, what do I really have to say? I’m not sure. This will likely end up being some evil bastardization of interface design and addon choices.

I’ve certainly got nothing new to say on either topic, but Eric insists and here I am. What qualifies me to critique design and tell you preferable addons to use? Absolutely nothing. I’ve gone through numerous (read: more than I could possibly count) iterations of interfaces in the futile search for the “perfect UI.” There isn’t one. There are interfaces that get the job done (functionally), there are interfaces that look great (but usually fall short in functionality) and then there are interfaces that do neither (read: Blizzard UI).

Why Customize WoW’s UI?
Most people are happy with what they (or others) have created, but in my case, I’m usually not.  My satisfaction comes from trying to discover the middle ground between style and substance.  As in everything, it’s finding where the fulcrum between need and want are. What information is absolutely necessary? What could I do without? How do I process information? Do I see numbers or pictures better? What is my focus in-game? PvE or PvP? All of these factor in how I choose a layout. Simply put: you can have the most unique UI, but if it isn’t practical, then it doesn’t matter.

So, all that being said, what do I really have to contribute? For some: not much. For others: maybe quite a bit.

You won’t see me pretending to be Hal, Caith, Tapestry, Saeto or any of the other numerous interface designers who truly bring something unique to interface design, but you just might see me bring some insight into overall design and perhaps help with your own interface. Now, on to the first of potentially many addon tricks.

Changing Font
Subtle changes sometimes provides the biggest impact in interface design. What more subtle change to implement than font? There are thousands of fonts to choose from and you don’t even need to download any addons to change them. There are four fonts that WoW utilizes:

• ARIALN.ttf (chat, numbers and login screen)
• FRIZQT__.ttf (main font)
• MORPHEUS.ttf (quest and mail font)
• skurrri.ttf (damage font)

  

Now that we know which font does what we can better understand what it is that we’re changing.

1. The first step is to create a folder named “Fonts” and place it into your World of Warcraft directory. This should be C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Fonts\ by default.
2. Find the font you want to utilize and place it in the Fonts folder. Rename it to whichever of the above you’re trying to modify. For example, if you’ve decided on using Adventure for your damage font you would rename Adventure.ttf to skurri.ttf.
3. When you log in, you’ll see whatever font you’ve decided upon.

It’s Not All About the Font
There are a few guidelines you probably want to follow when choosing a font. Your chat font should be something easily readable. Now, this may strike you as common sense (and if it does that’s good), but I’ve seen some very unreadable chat fonts chosen.

I, personally, use Myriad Pro as my chat font and it has served me well. The possibilities are endless, though, find what works for you. I, personally, prefer my main font (FRIZQT__.ttf) to be very similar (if not the same) to my chat though obviously you can use whatever. I use the same guidelines when choosing all of my fonts, I don’t want to have to struggle to read my screen at the expense of making it “pretty.”

Skip the File Swapping - Get the Mod
There are other ways of changing fonts, as well. You could always download and install Clearfont2 which comes with several different font packages and there are several more to be found in the Clearfont2_FontPack. Clearfont2 is a great package for those that want results without the time investment of trying to find that perfect font.

Go Beyond Fonts
Additionally, if you’re trying to change the font of a specific addon, SharedMedia is absolutely fantastic. It pools all your WoWAce2 fonts, textures, and sounds. What’s so special about this? Now you can use those fonts across all your other mods which gives you uniformity across your interface - a sorely underrated attribute. There is nothing worse than seeing 10 different fonts on 12 different statusbar textures spread across an interface. But that’s a topic for another day.

-JM

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 10:58 pm.
Filed under WoW UI.
Subscribe to RSS 2.0.
Leave a comment or trackback.