The fact that the New Spellbook is oriented alphabetically downwards, then left to right, feels extremely weird. It’s also inconsistent with other UI elements, e.g. the Dungeons list in the Adventure Guide where items go left to right, then downward.
Another side effect is it seems to currently affect how the UI chooses to page, and feels odd when going form one page to the next. An example is for Ret right now, I can have Retribution spells on page 1, which has one row BoJ → Cleanse → DP from left to right (because it’s the only row on the page), but the second page you start going DS → TS → Imp CS, because on that page there are more items so the actives are going downwards.
Side note here: It feels off that you technically have 2 pages showing at once, but the “page” option at the bottom is more about “screens”. So you’re seeing two pages of a book, but you’re on “page” 1/3. Then you flip to the 3rd and 4th visual page of the book, but you’re technically on “page” 2/3. But if you open another menu at the same time so it truncates to showing one page at a time, then it filps to you being on Page 1/6, 2/6 etc., which actually feels right for what you’re seeing.
It’s also a screen that feels like it has a lot of wasted space, in a similar vein to the first iteration of the Dragonflight Professions UI.
It’s even more jarring since there’s an extra sorting layer, which is actives and passives. As Ret for example, which has a lot of passives, it’s particularly noticeable. You’re looking at Divine Storm, then next to it is Greater Judgment, then Sanctification. If your starting point is Greater Judgment, to find, say, Shield of Vengeance, your eyeball has to travel downward to the bottom, then move left, against a lot of instincts.
It seems like it’d be better to go alphabetically left to right, then downward, to match conventions. And of course, to be consistent with just about any other place in the WoW UI where items/tiles are listed.
Although I’d argue the best option for any UI is allow users to have a range of options. Sort alphabetically, choose horizontal or vertical orientation, separate or combine actives and passives (for true alphabetical sorting), maybe adjust items per row, icon only, stuff like that would be huge improvements.
Some extra nices would be the option to collapse/expand certain sections. Also perhaps a visual indicator for things that are talents, and things that are granted for the class - just like there’s a visual indicator between actives and passives on the icon.
A relevant thing to talk about here might be the screen size people have, and how it’s used. I have access to a 4k screen, which means the spellbook by default looks like this: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/l4necnjp864.jpg
Now it makes sense that that a UI needs to make consideration for people with smaller screen sizes, and we’d all want a minimum level of content to show on there. The advantage of having more screen real estate is that you should be able to fit more content. That means that a spellbook that shows nicely on 720p or 1080p should be taking up a tinier amount of space on my screen, and potentially more windows or even background are visible.
The way Blizzard seems to be handling the UI in these instances is completely contrary - essentially scaling up the UI so that no matter what your screen size is, your entire screen is equally blocked off. This means the fonts and icons are massively bigger than they need to be (for me), the gaps between things are ridiculous, and the wasted space is hilariously evident. With a well-designed UI, all those things visible in the screenshot could still be there, and taking up less than half my screen.