Building an Efficient Interface: Part 1 — Action Bars

The action bar is the set of buttons and widgets placed at the bottom of the screen by default. Skills, items and macros can be dropped onto this bar for quick access. This interface element serves as the default method for binding such actions, as well as displaying simple cooldowns and range checks.

The Addon

One of the most popular items on the interface developer’s agenda, the action bar can be modified through a plethora of addons. Many of these allow movement, resizing and creation of new action bars. Features that change on certain conditions — such as stance¹ changes, entry to combat, on proc — are also widely available, which may help druids or similar classes in particular.

First look at your needs. Before I became such an exclusive user of BindPad, I required the use of many action bars. On a druid or other stance-enabled class, I would need multiple stance bars (where by default only one changes on stance switch). My needs then simplified greatly as I started using rActionBarStyler — an addon which could, at the time, simply move and rescale bars using a single, static Lua configuration — and those needs were three stacked and rescaled bars without any of the art or widgets found in the default bottom bar. Nowadays I have a similar setup but with slightly different profiles for pet-enabled classes.

In any case, one need I’m going to imply is simplicity. You simply do not need the bag bar, mini buttons (character pane, etc.), latency display or art. Anything useful here can be replaced through superior, less intrusive means. Next, you’ll want to move and stack at least a couple of bars together for centrality. The rest is up to you.

Now pick up an action bar addon and get to work. Listed below are a number of popular choices, so just take a look at the author’s description and see that it fits your needs.

Dominos

Basic, but should be enough if you don’t want to do anything unique. If nothing else, it’s a good place to start.

Bartender4

Feature-wise I consider this a step up from Dominos, but still not quite at the kitchen sink level. At the time of writing, it is my preferred choice.

Macaroon!

Though I haven’t used it, Macaroon appears to do a lot more than just the standard, expected behaviour of an action bar addon. Certainly worth a look, but only if you’re going to use those extra features. Interestingly, one might do away with BindPad through using Macaroon, or at least according to the features page. I might pick this up and report back sometime.

Others

Of course, if you’re looking for something a bit more specific, you may wish to browse the WoWInterface category linked here. As I said, there are many action bar addons available.

Ideas

Extremely important is that theme of minimalism once again. I cannot stress how useful it is to display items on the action bar only if they meet one of the following criteria:

1. Shows a cooldown
2. Has a range that no other item on the bars does (ideally combined with 1)
3. Is a potion or bandage that (a) is of limited quantity and (b) has an action bar bind in case of replacement (such as a new kind of potion, bandage, etc.)

So as I mentioned in KeyBound, I use action bars only for displaying cooldowns and range. I also have a small section of the bar dedicated to consumables which is incidentally the only part bound through the default interface. Such flexibility is only available with an additional addon to bind individual skills or macros, such as BindPad. For more information on this setup and its quirks, it might be a good idea to read the KeyBound series.

Do note that hiding skills always requires you to remember them. I often find myself adding skills to the action bar as I play through a new alt, as I just don’t now the class well enough yet. This becomes less and less of a problem the more you play, of course.

Alternatives

If I’m only using the action bar for such limited purposes, why use an action bar at all? Good question. I have tried to completely do away with the action bar in the past and have been unsuccessful. My choice of addons at the time was less than optimal, so I may attempt this again at some point with a few things in mind.

Firstly I’d need a way to check range. There are addons available which display an estimation (based on skill availability) of your range from the target, which should do the job. The downside is that you really, absolutely have to remember the range of every spell you have. This is not so different from my usual setup.

Secondly a way to show cooldowns. The great thing about the action bar is that cooldowns are always where you expect them to be. Cooldown bars often show a list of cooldowns in the order that they begin, which means a lot of searching and thus lack of efficiency. I have seen addons which can place cooldowns in set positions, so this is possible.

Finally a display of consumables and an easy way to rebind new ones. The action bar could be used very minimally for this purpose. It could be shown/hidden on key press or a condition. An information display addon could alternatively show the number of available consumables. This is the easiest of the three to get around.

A similar idea I’ve been toying with is using the action bar together with some form of opacity changes. Each item would be invisible if it is on (or off) cooldown and switch to the opposite — in this case, visible — when available. I’m not sure if any addon currently does this, but I’ll be looking into it.

Doing away with the action bar is even less alt-friendly than my basic suggested setup. You really need to know your class and remember just about everything this way.

Extras

The basic cooldown display is bad. Get OmniCC and you’ll see an accurate, numeric display.

You’ll want a quick and easy way to check range. Most action bars offer a way to recolour skills based on range, so first check the options. If there is no such option, grab RedRange.

The next part of BaEI will focus on the big nasty: unit frames. This of course includes raid frames