Player, Pet, Target, Implied, Group, and Raid set
 

I am trying to design the most efficient UI possible. However, I don't want to overlook any severe aesthetic lackings of my design.

From top to bottom these are the windows:
Player
Pet
Target
Implied Target
Group
Raid (player's group collapsed)

• The super-tiny icon placeholders are for spell effects. The idea is that any resizing of the window only affects the flow of the icons (to the point of hiding them entirely). More icons could be displayed, but you'd need to resize the window still more.
  
• The blue box on the Target & Implied Target windows is where a symbol *will* go indicating if a target is solo, heroic, epic, or whatever.
  
• The idea is also that any group of the raid window can be collapsed so that the group window can replace it with seamlessness.
  
• The HP & power bars will be given indicators for each 20%.

Also, this is a rough, rough sketch.

What does everyone think? Efficient? Attractive? Does it look easy to use?

If anyone has any input they'd like to give, be it aesthetic, technical, or otherwise, please let me know!

Just a couple notes... Which effects are in the player portion? Maintained or Effects? The UI only shows 30 for any of those. The pet doesn't have any effects. I assume you're going to put the pet commands somewhere else? To get things to move around when you resize a window you need to use a VolumePage but they really just move in a simple grid pattern. I haven't done too much work with those windows so I'm sure there are other oddities you'll run into.

[Yup, unless that was recently added, you can only show effects for target and implied target, not for group members.]
EDIT: nevermind, was seeing things. ;)

He shows his group members just about the raid window.

Do you ever raid with 24 people? Is your group window covering up the first raid group?

Oh, you're right, should have read his post. Sorry. :o

Looks like 24 to me. 5 group members plus himself in the big box on top.

Edit: And to add something constructive as well: I like the design, although you should run into some trouble properly displaying this window if you're not in raid group one.

Thanks for the input so far!

The tiny icons on the player window are supposed to be the Effects, that way more tank-y people who use this can see how much junk has been cast on them. (If you think this is less-than-optimal, lemme know why---I would likely want to remove it if I understood your reasoning.)

Taking your point about the 30 maximum into account, Osethus, I decided to remove a slightly unnecessary part of the target & implied windows, and shortened all of the windows from side to side (the HP/power bars are now 130 px, and the con of the target will be displayed in the HP / Power bar).

As for the raid thing...
I thought it was possible to collapse one of the raid groups, like in this mod (from long ago).

Is it still possible to do this?

Sure, you can do that. You could even add code to do it automatically (maybe that mod you linked does that, I admit I had never seen it before). Your group will always display at the top, i.e. you won't know at a glance what group number you are in and your position in the raid (e.g. player #14). And you won't be able to drag people into your group our out of your group if you are the raid leader. You have to do that in the raid window. Probably no real issues for most people I admit.

And btw, you may want to make the power bars smaller than the health bars, thus saving some space.

Wow...This is looking more complicated to me (since I am just now learning how to change the EQ2 UI)...I made it a request, for now, since I am struggling so much with making it myself. If anyone can point me to more "tutorial" info besides the .doc included in the UIBuilder.zip, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks again!

It is complicated when you're first starting out. The best beginner guide is this one:
http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=858
The only information I would change is that you should only copy the eq2ui.xml file to your custom folder. You don't need to copy all the default files.

After that just start looking at all the other good mods that are available. Start with the simple single window ones and see how they work. The scripting is the most complicated and can take a lot of debugging and testing-- in the UI Builder and by loading up the game, checking something, quiting, fixing, loading, checking, quiting, fixing, about a hundred times.

If you want to edit the xml files directly I recommend using a text editor that understands xml syntax. I use Notepad++ with the xml plugin for all my editing and I don't think I could have survived using a normal text editor.