When I say minimal, I mean minimal in terms of look/clutterness. Not minimal in terms of function.
Your addon (from screenshot on Curse) is extremely minimal. It just have a map - that's it. It doesn't mean it doesn't have any more fuctions/tweaks. Compared to default UI, where you have strokes on top of strokes, you have those other minimal circles that live around the map, you have all these options. Your addon essentially removed those from the map UI (or hide them till user wants them/turns them on), hence minimalism. You have different skins, but they don't take away from the function of your addon. It's minimalism is constant. Hope that's not making it more confusing.
Thinking more about this, instead of having the players be compared to Twitter Bootstrap users, you (the add on developer) are the bootstrap user. You have all these options to use Blizzard's default UI and color, but you didn't. You made your own :)
Your example is too specific in terms of context. Add-ons in WoW are usually minimal in design, out of the way and not attract attention to itself (besides the info it is displaying). Unless your default skin has blinking lights, rainbow colors, detracting the user from actually gleaming the info the addon is displaying, a user has no reason to mess with it.
Bottomline, UI Addons in WoW are meant to be minimal in design (just look at all the popular unit frames, action bars addons, even yours - all minimal and functional). There's no reason to ever jazz up the UI for WoW - that'd be self defeating.
But Bootstrapping is different - it will depend on the function, which stage of the product is at and purpose of the site. Each scenario is different.
To be fair this is basically just a texture pack, which is already something you can use. The real problem is the highly consistent UI design, differing in things as simple as if you have to use a keyboard or mouse to navigate a list.
Toady is understandably disinterested in putting time into that element of the game, and I think he had a bad experience the last time he 'outsourced' it.
Minimalist as in the README does not specify that it refers to the UI though.. If I read minimalist software I would assume a more holistic interpretation unless otherwise specified.
Maybe replace minimalist with modern for a more correct description of software with 100s of dependencies? (Joke!)
Nitpicking aside, The app looks good and I do like this TUI trend!
That's not "less UI", it's just a different UI with fewer graphical elements.
I'm not arguing against it-- he's come up with a simple DSL, and exposed that to the users-- but what would it mean to have "less UI" and maintain a given feature-set?
Well it's open source dude, if you think you can do better at UI quality feel free to give it a try. And thanks for the advice... Also, theming is a good features, not all out users want to have the same UI. They can also fully customize the CSS. And for the matter, SO UI is far from perfect.
You can configure it to have an extremely minimal UI. I remove the side bar and menu bar and work in Zen mode full screen. People often ask me what editor i'm using.
Your addon (from screenshot on Curse) is extremely minimal. It just have a map - that's it. It doesn't mean it doesn't have any more fuctions/tweaks. Compared to default UI, where you have strokes on top of strokes, you have those other minimal circles that live around the map, you have all these options. Your addon essentially removed those from the map UI (or hide them till user wants them/turns them on), hence minimalism. You have different skins, but they don't take away from the function of your addon. It's minimalism is constant. Hope that's not making it more confusing.
Thinking more about this, instead of having the players be compared to Twitter Bootstrap users, you (the add on developer) are the bootstrap user. You have all these options to use Blizzard's default UI and color, but you didn't. You made your own :)
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