Hermes - a new cooldown addon

[Alge]

The above screenshot shows how I currently use Hermes. The bartender bars are set up in the same arrangement as my G13 and I monitor the cooldowns on my main (pally in this shot) using those. I too am not a fan of cooldown bars and have moved away from them in my UIs, preferring to use buttons.

Above the bartender bars is Hermes, tracking 6 cooldowns (although having Chain Lightning there is pretty pointless) on my 4 shaman slaves.

I see an immediate use for the drag and drop functionality in mirroring the key layout of my G13, but for my slaves. Of course this wouldn't work as simply for a mixed-class group.

Another use for the drag-and-drop might be to allow custom ordering of the spells being monitored.

I have some ideas for dragging-out spells. Will post again after I have played around with some mockups.

[Alge]

Above I have made a mockup of how I imagine a pulled out spell might look. You can use the same format as cooldown timers do with the text, appending "m" for minutes and a plain number indicating seconds, to save a little space. I would also abbreviate names but I do this already and am used to it. You would probably want to add some ability to select how the text was anchored to the button, particularly if you didn't limit the number of displayed cooldowns to some small number. Being able to make pulled-out buttons larger might also be useful.

I imagine this functionality would be most useful for a raid leader who needs to manage (or at least monitor) resources during a long, multi-phase boss fight. Most of my boss fights don't last long enough to warrant this.

[Paperplate]

I see an immediate use for the drag and drop functionality in mirroring the key layout of my G13, but for my slaves. Of course this wouldn't work as simply for a mixed-class group.

Another use for the drag-and-drop might be to allow custom ordering of the spells being monitored.

A few things.

1) I'm an investigating the ability to create more "frames" that hold the buttons. You would drag and drop the buttons between frames. This would solve your desire to mimic the G13 key layout, you'd create a frame for each row and only throw the buttons in there you wanted.

2) Drag and drop to set custom button orders seems like a great idea to me. I'll think about what it might mean to accomplish. I suspect it could be considerable effort and would require an "auto sort vs. manual sort" option. This would solve your secondary desire. I acknowledge that I currently have no sorting options and it's just sorted by spell name and anchor point. I've knew I'd have to tackle this eventually. Since implementing drag and drop, it opens up some options to for setting a custom order without some nasty config dialog.

3) Hermes lacks precise layout control, I hope to avoid it. But I see the need, especially for the button containers and especially when looking at your screenshots.

Edit: Thanks for the additional mockup. Here are my thoughts at the moment. Keep in mind, I'm interesting in something useful to all users, not specifically dual boxing:

1) Multiple button containers.
2) Buttons can live in a container or be free floating.
3) Free floating buttons can (optionally) show additional data (like your mockup)
4) Non free floating buttons might also optionally show additional data (like your mockup), but still reside inside a frame with other buttons.
5) The optional data would be expanded/collapsed by clicking on the button.
6) I concur with the need for options to customize the behavior.
7) How's Shadow Labs treating you? :P

I am trying to look at the big picture and start where the most value is. I have not decided what of the above I will actually do. But I wanted to share my current thought process.

One more note, I have added ability to track item cooldowns now (but still testing and not released). So Soulstones should work and other things like trinkets, Saronite Bombs, you get the idea. Support was more complex than I thought so I'm concerned about bugs. And I'm not done.

[Alge]

A few things.

1) I'm an investigating the ability to create more "frames" that hold the buttons. You would drag and drop the buttons between frames. This would solve your desire to mimic the G13 key layout, you'd create a frame for each row and only throw the buttons in there you wanted.

2) Drag and drop to set custom button orders seems like a great idea to me. I'll think about what it might mean to accomplish. I suspect it could be considerable effort and would require an "auto sort vs. manual sort" option. This would solve your secondary desire. I acknowledge that I currently have no sorting options and it's just sorted by spell name and anchor point. I've knew I'd have to tackle this eventually. Since implementing drag and drop, it opens up some options to for setting a custom order without some nasty config dialog.

3) Hermes lacks precise layout control, I hope to avoid it. But I see the need, especially for the button containers and especially when looking at your screenshots.

As it stands, Hermes is so much easier to use and nicer to look at than the other options we have for tracking cooldowns that I would continue to use it without any further changes. I'm also anal enough to manually align as many buttons as needed. Having said that, if you don't ask... Setting custom button order through drag-and-drop sounds like the way to go if you can manage to sort on some sort of button index.

It's also important to make your addon as easy to use as possible, so anything you can do to avoid complicated configuration dialogs will likely result in more users.

Edit: Thanks for the additional mockup. Here are my thoughts at the moment. Keep in mind, I'm interesting in something useful to all users, not specifically dual boxing:

1) Multiple button containers.
2) Buttons can live in a container or be free floating.
3) Free floating buttons can (optionally) show additional data (like your mockup)
4) Non free floating buttons might also optionally show additional data (like your mockup), but still reside inside a frame with other buttons.
5) The optional data would be expanded/collapsed by clicking on the button.
6) I concur with the need for options to customize the behavior.
7) How's Shadow Labs treating you? :P

I am trying to look at the big picture and start where the most value is. I have not decided what of the above I will actually do. But I wanted to share my current thought process.

One more note, I have added ability to track item cooldowns now (but still testing and not released). So Soulstones should work and other things like trinkets, Saronite Bombs, you get the idea. Support was more complex than I thought so I'm concerned about bugs. And I'm not done.

I completely understand your desire to make a widely-useful addon. All of the above sounds useful, particularly the item cooldowns. I'm already imagining where I'll put my trinket cooldown tracking bar.

However, I imagine the most useful to the widest audience would be to be able to pull out single spells and track their cooldowns with some sort of permanent tooltip-like info (which is the thinking behind the mockup). If I start mentioning particular spells though I'll just show my ignorance of WoW's raiding environment.

And since you asked, I'm enjoying going back and doing the BC content again. It's pretty easy with my current party and I love being able to AFK for 10 minutes in the middle of an instance if I need to without putting others out or to just stare at the dungeon dressing for a while.