[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?
I think it feels like Jira and I'm really sad. Seems more like a MS
move than a GH move... Migrating to gitlab...
Author : verdverm
Score : 143 points
Date : 2020-06-23 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
| tmabraham wrote:
| GitHub what have you done?
|
| I feel GitHub is making a lot of changes in a short amount of
| time and as someone mentioned earlier, it really leads to
| additional friction in our workflow. When we get used to one
| layout and then they change it, there is time and effort required
| to get used to the new layout. It's fine if there is some clear
| benefit, but I don't see any such benefit in this case...
| sloreti wrote:
| Frustrating that it no longer shows the latest commit message at
| the top by default.
| recursive wrote:
| I'm not frustrated. In fact, I prefer the cleaner look. Now I'm
| not distracted by extra information I don't care about 99% of
| the time.
| jonathan-kosgei wrote:
| It feels designed for larger monitors.
| onnnon wrote:
| I like it. Wider content, improved IA, cleaner graphics, and
| mobile support. I can see people not liking the repo nav being
| fullscreen with very wide monitors. Maybe an option to pin it to
| the content width would be useful.
| nshm wrote:
| One very important positive thing is that the whole readme is now
| displayed on mobile version and that is the one which is indexed
| by Google.
|
| Previously they only shown few top lines and thus all README was
| not visible in the search engine. Something that
| awesomeopensource took huge advantage of.
|
| I wish they can enable google analytics on Github pages.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is getting cliche. With any modern UI redesign you can
| immediately guess what's changed: *
| Removed/reduced visual separation between elements *
| Flattened things more * More padding
|
| Modern UI designers are strikingly unoriginal.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I _want_ UI designers to be unoriginal. I wish they were _less_
| original. I don 't like learning new visual languages every 5
| years; I want intuitive interfaces, which mostly means familiar
| interfaces.
| eyerony wrote:
| I never thought trendy modern GUI design would get so bad
| that looking at screenshots of programs running on Windows 98
| would feel instantly and overwhelmingly relaxing, like
| settling into a warm bath, as if parts of my brain being
| taxed for no reason could finally just _chill_. Yet, here we
| are.
| seumars wrote:
| I agree, but there's levels to it though. A redesign almost
| never means learning new visual languages, whatever that
| means. Low-level elements like hyperlinks will always be
| presented as underlined text, buttons as boxes with centered
| text, and so on. Then there's low-level structures such as
| sidebars, tabs, collapsible menus, etc. which again rarely
| change and that's a good thing. I wouldn't call it unoriginal
| but conventional.
|
| A "proper" redesign then becomes finding the right and
| intuitive structure for the right type of content. Changing
| the appearance of the same content in the same structure is
| more of a reskin, which is what we see most of the time. And
| yes, sadly in the last years the trend has been: low contrast
| body text against an obligatory bright color for
| elements/illustrations/icons, rounded corners, and padding
| everywhere.
| verdverm wrote:
| I want boring interfaces that work, make information easy to
| find, and help me get my job done.
|
| Designers have boring jobs under this regime, this their need
| to create unnecessary work and pain for users.
| holler wrote:
| What if that interface is garbage?
| knoebber wrote:
| Don't forget:
|
| * Added dark mode
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think dark mode was a harbinger of dumbed down UI. Instead
| of spending time on one good UI, designers and developers
| were forced to make 2 mediocre ones instead. Plus dark mode
| is easier if you remove all detail and depth from control
| elements.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| There isn't a color scheme you can pick where you won't get
| users asking you for a dark-on-light vs light-on-dark
| version, whatever is the opposite of whatever color scheme
| you thought would be one-size-fits-all.
|
| Though you seem to be suggesting that's somehow a bad thing
| and I'm not sure why. Dark mode is so popular that
| operating systems have even started supporting a native
| toggle.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I don't think they built the dark mode version as an
| entirely new UI, it's just some css and a class you toggle
| on the body, making it perfect would require some elbow
| grease but it's not a complex feature really.
| baq wrote:
| I always look for the light mode button in this new hipster
| software.
|
| Next thing I know, books will printed white-on-black.
| sidpatil wrote:
| There should be a Wirth's Law for UI:
|
| UI design is getting whitespace padding more rapidly than
| screen resolution is increasing.
| hartator wrote:
| I don't like it either. White spaces and margin added for the
| sake of clarity when it makes it less readable. No more strict
| centering anymore. Avatar being rounded makes them loss
| information.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| Needing to scroll horizontally on a phone is an intolerable
| regression.
| bconnorwhite wrote:
| This is the MacOS 11 thread all over again. Apparently no one on
| HN has been through a redesign...
|
| For those of you complaining, congratulations, you've discovered
| ~ nostalgia ~
|
| In two weeks you'll inevitably find the old design ugly, and
| forget GitHub ever looked any other way.
|
| In 5 years, each will get another round of improved designs, and
| there will be a thread on HN full of people complaining about how
| the new design sucks and how 5 years ago was "the good old days."
|
| The new GitHub design is _objectively_ better. The new MacOS 11
| design is _objectively_ better.
|
| "Low information density" means less clutter. You find the
| information that matters quicker. Changes to padding/visual
| separation/sizing/etc. all provide similar context to which
| information is important, and how items relate. "Flat design"
| isn't some trend, flat icons are just easier to quickly
| recognize, and look far more crisp.
|
| In both threads the degree of negativity is disappointing. Can we
| not have one or two positive comments on how crisp the new commit
| graph colors look, how nice the transparent pin dragging
| interface is, or how the action buttons are more prominent? Not
| to mention the entire code/README page. The flat rounded corner
| borders are very clean!
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Why is there so much wasted space?
| dugmartin wrote:
| A little weird that the top nav in a repo is flush left instead
| of using auto margins and a max-width like the rest of the page
| under the nav.
| MikusR wrote:
| They destroyed the one thing Github had over alternatives (like
| gitlab). An easily findable releases section.
| internobody wrote:
| This is my largest complaint (so far), since it was something I
| was looking for on a project just after the release.
| jolmg wrote:
| I don't really use the releases section (don't recall it
| existing, to be honest), but right now it's among the first
| things I saw when going to a repo. It's in the new sidebar.
| driverdan wrote:
| There's are large release section at the top of the right
| column. It's given more real estate now than the simple link
| that was there before.
| MikusR wrote:
| Previously it was at the top in the same row as Code, Issues
| etc. Now without scrolling it is at the bottom right corner.
| tom_ wrote:
| It was a sub-heading in the Code section. See, e.g., https:
| //web.archive.org/web/20200320205539/https://github.co...
| rvz wrote:
| They also placed the 'About' on the side bar which of course
| messed up the mental model for lots of Github users, judging by
| the comments here.
| est31 wrote:
| The worst part for me is the rounded avatars (the other rounded
| stuff is okay). So many pictures on github weren't built for
| rounding. My own avatar is cut off as well. I hope they revert
| it, but if it sticks around for a while I guess I'll have to
| update my avatar.
| wnevets wrote:
| I kinda dislike it. I was part of the beta earlier this month and
| I switched back.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I thought you all were exaggerating. So sorry not.
|
| The commit list looked like it was doing some sort of eventual
| consistent update, then I realized that hovering over different
| commits expands that one shifting rows up/down as you hover on
| different items.
|
| GitHub: under new management. My theory about management is like
| my theory for bad music at venues. The management greenlights
| which acts will play, unfortunately most owners don't have a
| clue, they themselves are not the target audience. There are also
| legendary venues where obviously they were 'in the know'.
| jamespetercook wrote:
| > " There are also legendary venues where obviously they were
| 'in the know'."
|
| Could you elaborate on this?
| rurp wrote:
| I took it to mean that most music venues are managed by
| people who don't know or care much about the music they book;
| however the best ones are run by competent people who are
| also passionate about the music.
|
| It seems like a pretty good analogy to me. A lot of UI
| redesigns (including this one) seem like they were approved
| by people who liked the look of some static mock-ups, but
| weren't regular users of the site. Lots of layouts look great
| in a demo but are awful to use.
| verdverm wrote:
| Another concurrent thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23616422
| dang wrote:
| We've merged it hither.
| dvno42 wrote:
| Looks terrible. Figures MS would make it look FisherPrice like.
| GL it is.
| brailsafe wrote:
| You'd switch platforms just because you don't like the layout?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Wow, they rolled that out quick! I think they were pushing the
| beta just a week or two ago...
| verdverm wrote:
| Yeah, I think they forgot to take the time to listen to their
| users
| blondin wrote:
| yea, i activated it in feature preview for about about a week
| or so. i love the new UI! i honestly don't mind the flat design
| and the spacing.
|
| the UI is truly responsive now. that's what i care most about.
|
| they finally made it possible for me to read code at my
| specified zoom level. it's something that i struggle with on a
| daily basis on many websites.
| ljm wrote:
| I submitted feedback over it but, aside from the over-reliance on
| rounded corners, and making pills and buttons hard to separate,
| the single worst change is that you can't see the latest commit
| status from the repo screen. Instead, you get the commit hash,
| and have to click a tiny ellipsis button to get the commit
| message and the status indicator.
|
| When I'm browsing on github and not using git directly, the
| commit short-hash is the last thing I care about. You cannot see
| if your default branch has passed CI/status checks now. Those
| things should be first class citizens, that's why we put status
| badges all at the top of our readmes to make that info more
| visible with what we have.
|
| It follows the trend of designing with lower information density.
| This trend IMO is not appropriate for developer tools.
| pbreit wrote:
| Wow. I don't get it. It's still very similar just a bit worse
| all the way around.
| blueline wrote:
| yep. this and the change to the file browsing, where the lines
| that delineated files/folders are now gone, causing me
| accidental misclicks of the wrong file, are two very glaring
| annoyances. everything else i feel neutral on
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > the single worst change is that you can't see the latest
| commit status from the repo screen. Instead, you get the commit
| hash, and have to click a tiny ellipsis button to get the
| commit message and the status indicator.
|
| Omitting the commit message is a net improvement to me; I've
| found that the commit message of the random commit that happens
| to be at top of tree is completely unhelpful for someone
| browsing the repository, and especially someone new to the
| project.
|
| However, showing the status indicator inline does indeed seem
| like a good idea.
|
| That said...
|
| > You cannot see if your default branch has passed CI/status
| checks now.
|
| If it hasn't passed CI and status checks, it shouldn't be in
| your default branch.
|
| (There are cases where periodic status checks may get re-run
| after merging, such as checking if your default branch builds
| with more recent versions of software than it was originally
| tested with. But the normal CI and status checks should run
| _before_ merging.)
| ljm wrote:
| It's not so clear cut. Most places I've worked, we don't
| build artifacts (docker images, whatever) until there's a
| merge to master or a tag has been pushed. This automatically
| means that even though your tests remain green, you still
| want the status check for the stuff that isn't relevant
| inside a PR.
|
| For us, if the status is red in master, it doesn't mean the
| code is wrong, it means something went wrong in the deploy
| pipeline.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Most places I've worked, we don't build artifacts (docker
| images, whatever) until there's a merge
|
| The projects I've worked on have used a bot for merges, and
| that bot handles building artifacts. In some cases, there's
| a lighter CI for "this looks reasonable", and then the full
| CI (including building artifacts and running more extensive
| test suites on every supported platform) runs before
| merging.
| als0 wrote:
| > If it hasn't passed CI and status checks, it shouldn't be
| in your default branch
|
| The number of broken master branches I've seen on Github is
| astounding. So I find the CI status indicator to be very
| useful.
| als0 wrote:
| There's also the issue of the huge amount of white space within
| the files table. And the lack of centre alignment of the table.
| thegabez wrote:
| Worst UI update to GitHub I've ever seen. Reminds me of GitLab.
| Who thought this would be a good idea? Shame, they could have
| used the resources for updates that would actually make GitHub
| better.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| This looks nothing like GitLab.
| [deleted]
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I don't see what's wrong with it. One thing I love about it is
| that I can now finally read readmes even if the window is only
| half or even a third of the width of my screen. Other then that
| it just looks a bit more modern.
|
| One thing I just slightly dislike is that the width of the body
| is limited, but not the width of the header. Looks inconsistent.
| verdverm wrote:
| wait, how do you find readmes easier now?
|
| They used to be full width no matter how wide your window was
| (I put to 1/2 for browser). Now they only occupy 70% of that
| space. So I just lost 30% of my readme width to empty space.
| This is just terrible UX
| WorldMaker wrote:
| GitHub never had full width pages before of the Repo
| interface. They used a giant gutter on both sides on
| widescreens in classic Web 1.0 blog template fashion. That
| ~30% empty space has always been there beside the README,
| it's just now consolidated to a single side and used to bring
| a few more bits of information "above the fold".
| llacb47 wrote:
| Too wide and spacious
| agustamir wrote:
| Okay, is just me or does anybody else reduce the screen
| magnification by 10-20% when companies "refresh" their UIs?
| vaccarium wrote:
| Not just you. I have to use Google search at 80% magnification
| tops, otherwise the results don't really fit on the screen.
| juliendc wrote:
| They are following the trends of flat design and rounded corners,
| which I don't really mind. I'm more bothered by the fact that
| nothing is aligned: the GitHub logo, the breadcrumb, the
| horizontal menu and the issue title are all on different
| verticals. Looks messy.
| rowanseymour wrote:
| We'll all get used to it, but it's harder now to see what is a
| button and what isn't, e.g. only 2 of these are clickable
| https://imgur.com/a/wR9xsvT
| rurp wrote:
| Wow, that's pretty bad. Logical consistency was clearly not a
| guiding principle of this redesign.
| verdverm wrote:
| The grayscale reduction and loss of contrast is a modern design
| anti-pattern they have adopted. Makes reading things more
| difficult
| whalesalad wrote:
| I've been previewing this for a while. My biggest gripe is the
| treatment on all of the buttons. They look like they are
| depressed when they aren't and don't stand out as remarkably as a
| call-to-action the way the old buttons did. The easing on the
| hover animations is way too slow, as well. It just feels half-
| assed.
| NuSkooler wrote:
| This feels like a huge step back. One of the first very obvious
| bits has been pointed out numerous times in this thread already:
| The main panel is shrunk down while various navigation is off in
| no-man's land.
| math0ne wrote:
| The number one thing I do on github is read README files and
| adding a right column just makes the area I use to do that
| smaller.
|
| The header thing must be a bug, I can't imagine that won't get
| fixed.
| carlosdp wrote:
| I think it's fine, nothing much actually changed...
| azangru wrote:
| I agree. I was afraid I was gonna hate it, but it left me
| largely indifferent. More white space, rounder buttons, round
| avatars, wider and more centrally positioned content area, new
| icons, slightly different colors. Whatever.
| efiecho wrote:
| Ugh, that's not good. Latest commit message and date will not
| display under <> Code without Javascript enabled, but if I click
| around in the repository and go back to <> Code or keep
| refreshing the page, they suddenly show up, still with Javascript
| disabled. Can anyone explain this?
|
| However, I do like the visual part of the new layout.
| recursive wrote:
| I don't see commit messages inside the "Code" menu item
| anywhere, with or without javascript or reloading. You have to
| click a commit hash to see its message. I think this is an
| improvement.
| [deleted]
| riccardogiorato wrote:
| A list of feedbacks on the new UI here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/heknhd/some_real_fe...
|
| Personally I would love to see some fixes to the project page
| where with the new Design you waste ton of space on the screen
| for things that you could see before just in a small row now they
| take 20/30% of the right part of the screen just if you don't
| scroll and if you scroll down you get 50% of the screen or more
| just white...
| Stevvo wrote:
| I'm not sure yet, 30 minutes isn't long enough with it to form an
| opinion. My initial reaction was, What? Why has this changed? I
| didn't see anything wrong with the old one.
|
| I do like that sponsors appears more prominently; for a very long
| time financial incentives have been an unsolved problem in open
| source.
| dandep wrote:
| I really can't look at a list of items without separating lines,
| i think it's a basic need.
| alfg wrote:
| Not a fan of the new rounded corners on everything. Also, don't
| like how a repository's navigation is no longer aligned with the
| content of the repository itself. Just seems off.
|
| Other than those two, everything else seems OK.
| duderific wrote:
| Agree re the rounded corners. I think they were rounded before,
| but only two or three pixels maybe. Now with the greater
| rounding (which also forced them to increase padding to
| accommodate the rounding), it looks kind of cartoonish, rather
| than crisp and polished as before.
| yboris wrote:
| I love it -\\_(tsu)_/-
| a_bored_husky wrote:
| A small bookmarklet that improves the design in my opinion
| javascript:void(document.getElementsByClassName("gutter-condensed
| ")[0].childNodes[3].after(document.getElementsByClassName("gutter
| -condensed")[0].childNodes[1]))
| kapilvt wrote:
| new ux sucks, on a wide screen content is no longer properly
| centered, horrible left float, right float on different elements
| of ux vs center box previously on core content elements. ie, it`s
| a bug not a feature.
| greatgib wrote:
| Indeed, that is shitty cloggy. Yes a MS or Google move where you
| break something that works well because of product managers that
| want "new things" to sell.
| t0astbread wrote:
| A few months ago I think there were some fan-made "GitHub
| redesigns" floating around that sorta looked like this. It kinda
| reminds me of those crazy futuristic video game console "leak"
| videos (a la "This will be PlayStation in 2020!!") followed by
| the reveal of the actual new PlayStation design.
| tomklein wrote:
| I actually like it but I miss the small bar at the top containing
| the links to the releases, commits, language information etc. in
| a single place. However, I have a quiet big display with great
| color settings and didn't try it yet on my smaller laptop
| displays.
|
| I guess if your display doesn't show the light grays and shadows
| as well it may suck.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Fullscreen on my large monitor it looks ridiculous. On my phone
| it seems ok, except firefox crashed at one point.
|
| Developer tools should really be desktop first, instead of mobile
| first. I always wonder why we all use bootstrap as our goto so
| the site works on mobile, but then twitter barely works on a
| mobile browser.
| taylorlapeyre wrote:
| I really like it!
| verdverm wrote:
| what about it?
| martinesko36 wrote:
| I hate it. It nixed any contrast.
| verdverm wrote:
| Right, like this is such an obviously bad design pattern and
| yet they still do it. I just don't understand where design is
| as a science or art anymore...
| misnome wrote:
| Ugh, they've gotten rid of the commit message, because they
| merged "commits" "branches" "tags" into the header bar. If you
| want to see what the latest commit was you need an additional
| click.
|
| Turns out that glancing at the header was useful to tell what was
| going on!
|
| On the plus side, GitLab's repo view (which I disliked because it
| felt cluttered and always hard to find what I wanted) is now
| easier to use and read than GitHub's, so that makes changing
| easier.
| misnome wrote:
| Also, I'm noticing a lot more "preload" pages ... e.g. the page
| loads with blank placeholder fields for the commit and text
| information that's then replaced live after loading the page.
| Maybe it did this before and is just slower now?
| verdverm wrote:
| yup, this is a Jira move, GitHub sounds like it's on it's way
| down fast
| misnome wrote:
| My cynical guess is that they used "page load time" as a
| metric to prove their new system was "faster".
|
| And maybe only tested internally on a faster system, or
| with hot-cache repository loads? It doesn't seem to do it
| on reloads, though going away for a bit and coming back
| seems to cause it again (and, visibly, different parts of
| the page load at different times).
|
| Anyway, It definitely reeks of "enterprise" so I guess
| Microsoft finally got enough people into github to steer
| the ship towards the iceberg.
| verdverm wrote:
| > reeks of "enterprise"
|
| you made my day! thanks
| Dowwie wrote:
| I've been really happy with Github Dark:
| https://github.com/StylishThemes/GitHub-Dark
|
| I can't relate to the OP's preference for Gitlab's UI. Gitlab UI
| is the reason why I don't use Gitlab.
| verdverm wrote:
| I don't have preference for GitLab.
|
| I do not like Jira, and if GitHub starts to be Jira, definitely
| looking elsewhere.
|
| GitLab seems like the next best option. Any other suggestions
| welcome too!
| amedvednikov wrote:
| I think the old github design was perfect.
|
| Upcoming https://gitly.org is going to have a similar design,
| even simpler.
|
| It's written in V, so it's very light and fast. Open source
| release this week.
|
| Other features (from the readme):
|
| - Minimal amount of RAM usage (works great on the cheapest $3.5
| AWS Lightsail instance)
|
| - Easy to deploy (a single <1 MB binary that includes compiled
| templates)
|
| - Works without JavaScript
|
| - Detailed language stats for each directory
|
| - "Top files" feature to give an overview of the project
|
| https://github.com/vlang/gitly
| ajoseps wrote:
| why is there so much dead space when you scroll down past the
| footer?
| [deleted]
| jolmg wrote:
| Lots of hate here. I probably don't use GitHub as much as others
| here, so I can understand that any change adds friction and
| people are going to hate that. Having said that, I'm comparing
| using the Wayback Machine:
|
| new:
|
| https://github.com/torvalds/linux
|
| old:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200619163555/https://github.co...
|
| and I can't find it in me to dislike the changes they've made.
| They've removed the double repo navbar in favor of just 1.
| They've added a right-sidebar that shows various info about the
| repo in general, like what the last release is. Before, I would
| open the branch/tag list to look at the versions; now, it's plain
| as day in the sidebar. For the main contributors, I no longer
| need to go to insights > contributors. They're shown in the
| sidebar. For the main languages, I no longer need to click on the
| thin color line. I find that the most common bits of info about a
| repo that I sought are now displayed in the main repo page.
| That's an improvement.
|
| I don't understand why people are complaining like it's an
| absolute disaster. It's not perfect, sure, but this seems to
| bring significant improvements.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| > I don't understand why people are complaining like it's an
| absolute disaster
|
| what website did you think you were on?
| treve wrote:
| Also fun to go back to a much earlier version:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130807124247/https://github.co...
| granzymes wrote:
| Hah. I think we can all agree that the UI has been improved
| since then.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Hah. I think we can all agree that the UI has been
| improved since then.
|
| What was so laughable about it back then?
| nfoz wrote:
| I....... have to disagree, though I'm not sure why, but
| that old one looks much better to me. Like it's simpler and
| more clear.
| jolmg wrote:
| The sidebar it had seems to waste too much space, though.
| It's just 5 links meant for navigation. They'd be better
| arranged horizontally. I can agree that it's clearer than
| what we had a few days ago, having only 1 navbar instead
| of 2, but that's also because it has a lot less features
| than GitHub has now.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| It seems fine to me in that I'm using it and have barely noticed
| apart from I have to scroll a bit more. It always amazes me
| somehow everyone thinks of the same ideas at the same time. MacOS
| Big Sur feels very reminiscent of some of these changes...
| matterhorn2000 wrote:
| Contrary to everyone else I really like the new design.
|
| The metadata is placed to the right as it should have always
| been. The languages are in the sidebar and are visible without me
| remembering that typescript is somewhat dark blue.
|
| Also the new look is more modern and unlike most people here I am
| not afraid of change.
| microcolonel wrote:
| > _...unlike most people here I am not afraid of change_
|
| Not every preference is a fear, except I guess the fear that a
| lot of people will now waste a lot more time learning things
| that used to be obvious at a glance.
|
| The tables are somehow less dense and less readable at the same
| time; adding line spacing should help with this, but overall
| it's worse. The controls are needlessly stretched across the
| entire width of the screen, which is most likely wide, so
| reading and moving your mouse between controls is inherently
| more laborious (it's also just ugly).
| notdang wrote:
| Did you check it on mobile or desktop? I like the mobile
| version, however I dislike the desktop version with elements
| scattered all over the screen.
| thex10 wrote:
| > and unlike most people here I am not afraid of change
|
| Hear, hear!
|
| I like the new design too. It overwhelmed me at first (somehow
| it felt really 'big' to me), and I'm still getting used to it
| on a visual level, but I appreciate all the new bits of
| information that I can much more easily access now (mostly in
| the repo sidebar).
|
| I also appreciate that the new design doesn't actually change
| that much. Overall, it still feels like... GitHub.
| rurban wrote:
| Like it. More important links upfront.
| verdverm wrote:
| Determining which language the repo is now requires scrolling,
| as now the readme is only 70% width instead of 100%
|
| So much wasted space and loss of information if you ask me.
| rozab wrote:
| Yep. The languages used in the repo is the first bit of
| information I look for. That little visualisation was a very
| clever feature and a highly efficient use of space.
| DenseComet wrote:
| This is my biggest gripe with it. The sidebar only extends
| down for a short length, but causes the entire readme to
| shrink and results in a lot of empty space. I'm indifferent
| to all the other changes but the readme shrinking for no good
| reason is quite annoying.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Which of these changelog entries are you referencing?
|
| https://github.blog/changelog/
| joelkesler wrote:
| I also submitted feedback. I am not a huge fan. The layout of the
| repo screen is decent, but the new, overly-smooth UI components
| are too much of a departure from the previous well done UI
| components.
|
| The way the top tab/nav bar stretches across the screen, while
| the content is centered feels broken to me.
|
| I mocked up what the repo screen could look like if it used
| Github's previous UI with the new layout (and fixed the fluid tab
| bar!):
|
| https://twitter.com/joelkesler/status/1275557934290755584
| phillipcarter wrote:
| I'm completely neutral. They've changed their UI many times over
| the years and this is no different. Products usually change UI
| and that's just a fact of life.
| gruez wrote:
| >They've changed their UI many times over the years and this is
| no different. Products usually change UI and that's just a fact
| of life.
|
| Your justification for bad redesigns is that... other companies
| do it too? That's a very apathetic/defeatist attitude.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Most of the time it isn't bad UI but a vocal minority that
| just hates any change.
|
| It's not like these companies release these changes without
| doing significant user testing and AB testing. If you design
| based on the opinions of HN/Twitter, every site would look
| like Craigslist (or HN's favorite abomination of a design,
| the Berkshire Hathaway site).
| verdverm wrote:
| This is different because there was a major change to where
| (formerly header) information is displayed now on the side.
|
| The top-level hierarchy is different and causes much more
| wasted space
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Honestly, I don't care about any of these things. UIs change
| and I just have to deal with it.
| threeseed wrote:
| I will never understand people who take the time and effort
| to post comments saying "I don't care".
| pan69 wrote:
| Overall this design change doesn't matter to me. The only thing
| that really stands out and that annoys the hell out of me is the
| circular profile images. It looks completely out of place
| compared to all the other elements on screen, even their
| generated profile images don't fit in it correctly. It seems that
| this decision was made not from "add value" point of view but
| someone just really liked Instagram or the look of some other
| social network and shoehorned it in there.
| jomar wrote:
| I dislike large swathes of the new repository view, and I also
| especially dislike the circular profile images.
|
| Fortunately it's easy to use a little custom CSS to revert them
| to square images, at least for now:
|
| https://gist.github.com/jmarshall/a880c93725ee727abb54473582...
| DreamScatter wrote:
| The new web design layout on GitHub is awful and has less
| accessibility.
|
| For example, the repository languages used to be at the top
| center of the page, while now I need to scroll past the bottom of
| the screen and find the information off centered in an awkward
| place.
|
| The stars and other top bar links are off centered in an awkward
| way for the mouse and the eyes. Also, the profile tabs are less
| accessible because followers are now on the other side of the
| screen instead of in the convenient tab location.
|
| Please contact GitHub with your feedback if you also think it's
| less accessible design.
| duhi88 wrote:
| I wouldn't consider any of your criticisms as being "less
| accessible".
|
| To take your example of the languages, the new design is more
| accessible. It has a clearly labeled heading, and I can see the
| names of the languages are being used without clicking on the
| bar. The old design has no hints that the striped bar (or in
| the case of `linux`, grey) is supposed to be informative. We're
| all just used to clicking that bar if we're curious.
|
| It's clear they've optimized the layout around productivity,
| and making it more approachable to new visitors. Everyone has
| their preferences, and new designs are always tough to get
| right for everyone. "Less accessible" is the wrong way to
| phrase your criticisms, though.
| DreamScatter wrote:
| They could have left the languages in the same place where it
| was before. Now it requires extra input and mental effort to
| find the languages section. This is definitely a step
| backwards.
|
| Not complaining about the design of the new languages
| section, but the layout is just completely terrible and
| useless.
| jakebellacera wrote:
| I rarely found the list of languages useful, and never really
| appreciated the description and the "stats" bumping down the
| list of files and readme, which are arguably much more
| important than the former. I think moving the secondary
| information to the side is a bit better use of space and visual
| hierarchy.
| eyerony wrote:
| Oh man, they've made it _way_ harder to quickly evaluate the
| state of a repo, which has always (for me) been about 90% of
| the appeal of Github. Moving releases out of the tab list
| hurts, too.
|
| Does it also feel "heavier"/slower to anyone else? Like there's
| more JS running or something? That'd already gotten a little
| worse but I hope it's not trending even farther into feeling
| "webappy". Ew.
| s9w wrote:
| Where did releases go?
| Dunedan wrote:
| To the right side of the code between "About" and
| "Contributors".
| s9w wrote:
| Nothing there for repos without releases. That's pretty
| implicit.
| MikusR wrote:
| Same place gitlab has them: somewhere.
| deposition wrote:
| There's not enough contrast compared to the old design.
| elchin wrote:
| I like it, better use of horizontal space.
| verdverm wrote:
| How is it better when there are large swaths of empty space?
|
| Like scroll down a readme, is all that space on the right
| better usage?
| lukeramsden wrote:
| I generally liked the new design in the feature preview, except
| for the new repo page, which I immediately opted back out of.
|
| The "About" being moved to the right side is a good move, but the
| top bar being full-width is incredibly annoying.
|
| If this is any taste of things to come, then I imagine I'll be
| moving to Sourcehut permanently earlier than I thought.
| verdverm wrote:
| I've actually been thinking about GitLab since Sid interviewed
| Joe Jacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk_DNX8LGuM
|
| I'm thinking of moving just to support another COSS (Commercial
| OSS) company. https://coss.media
| achr2 wrote:
| What a poor design, yikes. Did they seriously just use an off the
| shelf 'responsive' template and not think twice? We are
| programmers, this is code - give me information density!
| atarian wrote:
| It looks OK, but I hate how the header is now justified to the
| edges instead of being centered.
| eyerony wrote:
| Oh is that what it is? I was trying to figure out why it looked
| so bad when not zoomed uncomfortably far "in", when I didn't
| recall that ever being a problem before. I think that's it.
|
| Ugh now I can't un-see how much farther it is to mouse from the
| repo "body" to menu items (including those associated with the
| repo, which are now, confusingly, disconnected from it
| visually) now. Thanks for that.
| saghm wrote:
| Ditto, and doubly so for the README. If I'm scrolled down
| further than the end of the sidebar, the README, suddenly 40%
| of my screen is empty, and not even split evenly on each side.
| rvz wrote:
| It's never been a good time to try something else. That something
| new is GitLab.
|
| GitHub however, capsized one of its servers yesterday resulting
| in downtime for some including me and today I wake up to this
| horrific eyesore that Github has blasted onto my screen, which I
| can't revert or disable.
|
| It now looks like a shameless rushed copy of the GitLab look. I'd
| rather use GitLab for real instead.
| bluefox wrote:
| I've been using GitHub since 2008. My default browser has
| JavaScript disabled for various reasons. It was not long after
| Microsoft acquired GitHub that the UI changed for the worse, but
| it was minor and still very functional. Now, it's terrible: the
| dates and commit information is missing, for example. I expect
| soon it will reach GitLab "quality": unable to view source code
| without JavaScript enabled. I'm still on the fence on whether to
| act on it now, for my own projects, or wait for the fatal blow.
| Since much of the programming world is on GitHub, this looks
| pretty bad for me.
| efiecho wrote:
| > I expect soon it will reach GitLab "quality": unable to view
| source code without JavaScript enabled.
|
| I also hate GitLab for this, but I learned today that they are
| actually working on fixing this, by shifting some components to
| server side rendering. Awkward for me if GitLab suddenly will
| become the better choice.
| j-james wrote:
| That's cool, I'm looking forward to that.
|
| Since many different organizations self-host GitLab instances
| (which is great!), having to enable Javascript for each one
| can be a bit of a pain.
|
| https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/215365
| bluefox wrote:
| The way it looks now, a self-hosted gogs with a nojs patch
| may be the way forward. The application-specific part
| (gogs.js) is <2kloc and it's already rendering stuff on the
| server. I'm giving it a few weeks before I've had enough...
| j-james wrote:
| You could also try out Sourcehut, which seems to fit your
| use case well.
|
| https://sourcehut.org/
| arghblarg wrote:
| I selfhost gogs and like it. And the releases link is at
| the top like many ppl wish here :)
|
| Only thing I really miss vs. github is there's no code
| review built-in.
| sdinsn wrote:
| I don't like it. I thought the old layout was pretty much
| perfect, no need to change anything.
| yadco wrote:
| Reminds me of gitlab
| rowanseymour wrote:
| It's not the layout I dislike but the styling which makes it
| harder to see what is a button and what isn't, e.g. only 2 of
| these are clickable https://imgur.com/a/wR9xsvT
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| Reminds me of sr.ht who just straight up make every link blue +
| underline, on the scale of design effectiveness it already
| beats 99% websites
| gscho wrote:
| When I logged in today and saw the redesign I thought to myself,
| "how long until there is a hacker news post full of comments
| blasting this"?
|
| Thank you for not disappointing.
| diob wrote:
| I think I dislike the new repo view because the two main columns
| are reversed from what my brain thinks they should be.
|
| Did a quick jumble of the html and css to things I would prefer:
| https://imgur.com/a/1HEROxa
|
| Not perfect but I like it more than what they went with.
| Sachaniman wrote:
| Sign up for the developer feature previews, so you can give
| feedback to these changes before they're published.
|
| I gave some negative feedback about it earlier regarding this
| change, but it seems I might have been a part of the minority.
| holler wrote:
| I gave feedback too and never heard anything. The rounded
| corners look cartoonish, the header is terrible, moving
| releases and using a new column at the right is terrible.
| Seriously w-t-h are they thinking? there was literally nothing
| wrong with their existing UI.
| matteocontrini wrote:
| I gave negative feedback as well.
| avery42 wrote:
| Same here - but it also feels like I got the feature preview
| notification maybe a week before the feature actually launched,
| two weeks max. Didn't feel like enough time for me to properly
| test the new interface, or for them to properly evaluate
| feedback.
| threeseed wrote:
| The feature preview process is a joke.
|
| I was only given at most a couple of weeks to provide feedback
| which like everyone else here was negative.
|
| But to have it launch now means that they never had any
| intention of listening to real feedback. They just wanted to
| see if there were any showstopper bugs.
| t0astbread wrote:
| I gave some feedback on this as well but unfortunately I only
| saw the preview like, two days ago. Have I just missed it or
| did they not roll this preview out earlier?
| leegraham wrote:
| I got it on 19th June (I remember because it was the day
| GitHub went down). I left feedback, but it feels like it
| would've been a foregone conclusion at that point.
| verdverm wrote:
| I gave negative feedback as well during the preview.
|
| Really love that they ignored it...
| ithkuil wrote:
| Perhaps they got more positive feedback from people other
| than you?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Not necessarily. I've seen the concept of "vocal minority
| vs silent majority" used as justification to push through a
| change. So even if you get only bad feedback, it still goes
| through because most people said nothing, which means most
| people like it.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Or most people hated it but didn't love the product
| enough to care to comment. Perhaps the design of the
| feedback form matters. I wasn't part of the beta so I
| don't know how they asked.
| DreamScatter wrote:
| I definitely gave negative feedback on the preview and also now
| afterwards.
| microcolonel wrote:
| I guess the upshot of GitHub burning their design advantage is
| that I no longer have to justify that when using GitLab. As a
| relatively long-time GitLab user, my feedback every time they
| change the design (often for the worse, in the same way as GitHub
| has now done) has been "make it more like GitHub". Now what do I
| point at? SourceHut?
| Rochus wrote:
| The number of repositories is no longer displayed, or did I miss
| it?
| zowanet wrote:
| I don't like change.
|
| I don't like the circular avatars - I don't need the place I
| store my code to feel like a social network.
|
| But the worst change for me is that the 'Languages' section is
| now below the fold. Now I have to scroll to find out if I should
| ignore the latest compiler, package manager or system tool
| because it was written in JavaScript.
|
| Edit: Gah! I only noticed this by directly comparing old and new,
| but the filenames in the main list are no longer blue, so now on
| each row, the filename, commit message and timestamp are in three
| subtly different shades of gray. That, combined with the lack of
| gridlines just makes the whole thing look like word soup.
| thex10 wrote:
| > the filenames in the main list are no longer blue, so now on
| each row, the filename, commit message and timestamp are in
| three subtly different shades of gray
|
| Shoot, now I notice it too. I like the redesign but that is
| just.. bad.
| mscdex wrote:
| Quick hack for Ublock Origin users to get everything lined up
| again (add this to your filters): github.com#$#body{ max-width:
| 1280px !important; margin-right: auto !important; margin-left:
| auto !important; }
| Kyrio wrote:
| That's perfect, thanks! I usually resort to Firefox's
| userContent.css file, but the feature is now disabled by
| default, so I'm glad to hear uBO can do it too.
|
| Did GitHub only test their new layout on 4/3 screens? It looks
| so odd when the project header is fluid but the project itself
| is still centered and 1280px wide. Especially if you log out of
| GitHub, in which case the GitHub banner is no longer fluid and
| makes the project header look really out of place[1].
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/3wOE7Nr
| gadrev wrote:
| They could use some alignment. It's one of the basic rules in
| design, and it really seems a bit off when the files are centered
| but the hmenu with Issues, PRs... is left-aligned. Maybe they had
| some cramming issues when there are many extra buttons in that
| row, since some only show up in certain cases, like the Settings
| button.
|
| Other things aren't so bad but I don't think they make up for
| breaking the general alignment in such an obvious way.
| 7ewis wrote:
| I know obviously files are important in GitHub, but for the
| opening page of a random repo I think I would actually prefer to
| see the README first.
|
| I just went to the Explore page and picked the first repo:
|
| https://github.com/johannesboyne/gofakes3
|
| You have to scroll so far down to find out what the project
| _actually is_. I know there's an about message on the right, but
| it's not great.
|
| The new UI does look more modern, but there could definitely be
| some improvements.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That seems like a tradeoff between people discovering a project
| and people developing that project. People initially
| discovering a project usually want the README; people
| developing a project may potentially want either.
| gregmac wrote:
| Agreed!
|
| Related: I was updating a bunch of dependencies yesterday, and
| so was going through looking at what's new in a handful where I
| was behind a major version or more. "Releases" is even harder
| to find now (it's in the sidebar). I've never understood why
| it's relegated to a being a sub-item of "code" when it seems to
| me it should be on the same as information hierarchy level as
| "issues" "wiki" etc.
|
| I'd really like to see Releases on the top nav bar, and
| possibly even Readme should be the first item, Code second.
| geori wrote:
| It looks like Gitlab. I wondered if i was on the correct site.
| acemarke wrote:
| As I just said on Twitter [0]:
|
| > Hrm. I just got switched to Github's new look and feel... and
| tbh, I _don't_ like it. I liked the 3D depth of the prior
| buttons. The new ones are too flat, the text is thinner, and
| they're too rounded. I appreciate that people worked on this,
| but... why was this change needed?
|
| (See tweet for a screenshot comparison of the "New Issue" and
| "Edit" buttons before and after)
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1275465823403020288
| jventura wrote:
| It looks more like gitlab!
| verdverm wrote:
| I don't see this sidebar on the repo page in GitLab.
|
| Jira has this, thus my association and triggering ;]
| traverseda wrote:
| I don't like change.
|
| ---
|
| Alright, that's a big of an exaggeration but I don't feel like
| this change is nearly good enough to warrant significant changes
| to a professional tool I use. Like if you want to completely
| change my user-experience you better at least have a reason, not
| just do it for-the-lulz. After trying it out for a while under
| the feature preview I really don't get why they did this.
| exochrono wrote:
| I haven't had too much time to play around with it yet today, but
| Github is core to our development workflow and productivity
| workflow. Everything for our small team is tracked in GH issues
| and tagged with labels, and of course all our code goes through
| GH PRs. IMHO the features I use most (issues, pull requests, code
| browsing) didn't take any discovery to continue using normally
| and the interface was much faster, so I am a fan.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the repo being center contained, but the
| navigation being full width. Things don't line up like they
| should and it just looks weird. Otherwise no real complaints
| about it.
| feikname wrote:
| I think it's way more responsive, which is good.
|
| Hoowever, the increased use of horizontal space makes it _harder_
| to read (imagine HN without the blank sides) and I believe the
| information density has been lost a notch way too much.
|
| All in all I think I prefer the previous design because to me
| information readability comes first.
|
| It actually becomes pretty decent if you zoom out to 80% in
| Firefox although the text becomes a tad too small. I believe
| making an extension to increase information density shouldn't be
| too hard.
| arch-ninja wrote:
| Tools which change like this never stand the test of time. A far
| better move would have been to standardize GH APIs and provide
| native clients, guaranteeing long-term utility on many platforms.
| Git passed the test of time, but github likely will not.
|
| Edit: today I learned a lot of young people sound like old
| people. Interesting perspective.
| scottoreily wrote:
| Okay boomer
| yogthos wrote:
| It feels like change for the sake of change to me. There doesn't
| appear to be any actual improvement in terms of UI or
| functionality as far as I can tell.
| kostarelo wrote:
| I really like it, it's much more cleaner and despite all the
| comments in here, I find it to be a very smooth transition. I
| wondered around for a few minutes and pretty much mapped the
| whole changes.
|
| I really don't get what's all the fuzz about.
| granzymes wrote:
| Looks like nothing I use regularly moved too far away. I like
| the new top bar (I'm sure this will make it more mobile-
| friendly). One change I would make is to give the README
| section a header so it is easier to see where to stop scrolling
| if you are trying to get to it.
|
| Overall a positive change since the pages are loading faster
| for me.
| stanislavb wrote:
| I think it will open a lot of work to many people that are
| scraping Github :)
| withinboredom wrote:
| Why would people do this? https://repo.git and shallow clone...
| rychco wrote:
| I really wish the top half of the screen were centered (where the
| code, Issues, Pull Requests, etc buttons are).
| somerandomacc wrote:
| Like many others, I use Github every day. Changes like this add
| friction to our workflow.
|
| There better be a damn good reason for these changes, otherwise
| it's a pointless redesign that looks no better than it did
| previously while simultaneously adding a slight overhead as users
| "learn" the new layout.
|
| Does anyone know of an option to revert this update?
| verdverm wrote:
| My hypothesis is the point is to compete with Jira. That would
| be MS's biggest competitor in this space, and the changes make
| it look a whole lot more like that.
|
| I wonder if MS has gone back on their word to leave GitHub to
| it's own devices...?
|
| I have been unable to find a method to revert. Best option
| might be to make a bunch of noise. Other than that, it's
| migration time.
| eyerony wrote:
| > My hypothesis is the point is to compete with Jira.
|
| When they start making everything drag & droppable at a huge
| cost to UI latency and bundle size (plus, for some reason,
| idle resource use), we'll know _for sure_ that 's what
| they're doing.
| jakebellacera wrote:
| I'm curious, what exactly has broken in your workflow? The
| biggest issue I see is that you are unable to see build status
| on a commit (above the file list), but otherwise nothing really
| has changed too much in my opinion.
| Hedja wrote:
| I have a single major problem with all of their new layouts. They
| place content at extreme ends of the screen, completely stretched
| out like a rubber band with No Man's Land in the middle. In this
| case, the top half is stretched and the bottom half is centred.
| Completely inconsistent and tiring for your eyes darting around
| corners of the screen.
|
| Example: https://twitter.com/JahedDEV/status/1275532988772683776
|
| I don't know why they think it's good design, it would be nice to
| know. All of their previews for it squash the window so it looks
| perfect, like their mockups I assume. Similarly, I have to have a
| dedicated, half-width window just for GitHub to workaround this.
| dgellow wrote:
| Yep, I have the exact same issue. I started to use the new
| design via their beta program, I had to stop after a few days
| because the content stretches from one side of my screen to the
| other. I hoped they would fix it before release.
| AOsborn wrote:
| Agree completely. Feels like a huge step backwards. Maybe usage
| metrics show most users are using a much smaller window size,
| but the layout is all over the place on my 27" monitor
| (2560x1440).
| d0m wrote:
| Seems like a bug or probably an oversight. Don't think that was
| intended
| mikaelsouza wrote:
| I hope so. I just noticed their beta period ended.
|
| I am not sure if they changed anything from how it was
| previously in the beta.
|
| I don't think the new design is bad, it's just different.
| It's fine tbh, but these top bars are pretty bad on a big
| screen.
|
| Hopefully they'll change that soon enough.
| SenHeng wrote:
| I remember this happened before several years ago in a previous
| redesign where the top menu would just stretch to fill the
| entire screen. It was later changed to one with a proper max
| width. I guess they forgot that lesson.
| humblebee wrote:
| Ya, I didn't understand this design choice. For a while I've
| had some custom css which also extends the width of the main
| content on github as well because I've always found reading
| some github issues with logs in them challenging.
|
| This is the css I'm running now to fix this, as well as extend
| the width of the main content. The 1600px is such that when
| using i3 and having my browser be half the screen it consumes
| most of the screen space on my 4k monitor.
| :root { --width: 1600px; }
| .container-xl { max-width: var(--width); }
| .pagehead { padding-left: calc(50% - (var(--width)
| / 2)); padding-right: calc(50% - (var(--width) /
| 2)); }
| bergwerf wrote:
| I like that GitHub is one of the few websites that kept roughly
| the same design for years. Design is something that gets
| familiar, and I believe it helps your brain when it is not
| changing all the time. I would like to see an explanation from
| GitHub's side as to why this change was needed.
| Kiro wrote:
| Like with every redesign everyone will eventually get used to it
| and completely forget how the old one looked. When the next
| redesign happens everyone will rage the same way and say they
| want the "old" design back.
| DreamScatter wrote:
| Wrong, this redesign is awkward. If it was a good design, then
| people wouldn't complain about it. However, it really is a step
| backwards.
| recursive wrote:
| > If it was a good design, then people wouldn't complain
| about it.
|
| In that case, I submit that good design doesn't exist. I've
| never seen a major redesign that wasn't widely complained
| about.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| It doesn't look good, but it's not that bad either. But I don't
| think GitHub needed a layout change on desktop screens. They
| should increase the margins a bit.
| carlosdp wrote:
| Honestly, it's a positive improvement. Better information layout,
| and the code is still front and center. None of the core
| functions really changed place, just changed padding a little.
| verdverm wrote:
| What about determining the language and license?
|
| That used to be front and center and two of the most important
| things when I land on a repo page.
| thex10 wrote:
| For the license, it's right there near the stop of the
| sidebar. For me it's actually easier to notice now.
|
| As for language, it's true, it's below the fold in the
| sidebar. Maybe it'd be better above the contributors. But for
| me the most important place for me to see language is when
| searching/browsing through lists of repos - and that hasn't
| changed.
| carlosdp wrote:
| I highly doubt that's the case for most people when using
| Github on a daily basis though.
| t0astbread wrote:
| Really? I found that I only really look at the code when I
| look at projects I'm involved in. Usually though I use
| GitHub for discovery and then I care much more about the
| languages, commits, releases and Readme.
| DreamScatter wrote:
| The language/license are the first things I look for in a
| repository. New design makes all that information awkward.
| justaj wrote:
| Another benefit is that the project pages seem to load faster
| than before (and _much_ faster than GitLab's project pages)
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Yeah it's clear that they're setting things up to be used more
| frequently on touch-based devices. Combine that with the hosted
| IDE, Visual Studio Code, Azure Devops, etc and it's more or
| less strategically obvious that the goal is to enable a shift
| in that direction.
| [deleted]
| verdverm wrote:
| Actually, I think I'll just do everything from the terminal from
| now on. Anyone familiar with a great CLI? (that is not by GitHub)
| qqii wrote:
| Example repository of a project that's invested in using GitHub:
| https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
|
| Discussion on /r/github:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/hei81f/
|
| Personally I think it's an improvement on mobile - finally the
| entire README is readable by default.
|
| That being said was there any warning/reasoning behind the
| change? I cannot find any announcements.
| Kyrio wrote:
| It's indeed much better on mobile, since the old design not
| only hid most of the README, but also lacked many useful
| indicators from the desktop version (languages, releases, etc.)
|
| The thing is, they just released an excellent app, which was
| seemingly meant to solve the problem of browsing GitHub on
| mobile. It's a bit surprising that this design, by many
| aspects, seems targeted towards mobile users and is already
| displaying more useful info than the app.
| misnome wrote:
| > That being said was there any warning/reasoning behind the
| change? I cannot find any announcements
|
| I had a "Preview: Try the new layout and give us feedback"
| notification for about an hour, then it switched on
| permanently.
|
| Optimistically, maybe they accidentally flipped a trial feature
| flag globally and it wasn't intended?
| verdverm wrote:
| I tried out the preview several days ago and let them know
| what I thought.
|
| It's more telling that they didn't listen and pushed it out
| so quickly anyway.
| h91wka wrote:
| > Personally I think it's an improvement on mobile
|
| ...because usage of Github from mobile is so important /s
| verdverm wrote:
| This was one of my biggest complaints, mobile was awful.
| Readme not fully visible.
|
| Still prefer that to this update
| qqii wrote:
| Since some projects use their github README as a landing page
| and the rise of termux, yeah I think it is important.
| blondin wrote:
| yes it an improvement. and not just mobile!
|
| i always find it hard to read tiny text so my zoom level is
| always between 120% and 150%. they fixed all my issues with
| this update and that made me happy.
| conradfr wrote:
| The picture on the profile page is so comically big.
|
| I'm not sure what was wrong with the old design. Now everything
| is too rounded and flat and there's not enough contrast.
|
| I also liked GitHub better years ago when the top bar was not
| black, so yeah I can hold a grudge :)
| h91wka wrote:
| Looks absolutely horrible. I use a laptop as my main dev machine,
| and all these 16px and 30px paddings that they added everywhere
| create real tunnel vision experience. I guess people with huge
| displays don't mind... But I absolutely do.
|
| Looks like another case when a frontend team does something to
| justify their existence.
|
| But let's look at the positives: the last redesign of that sort
| helped me to completely migrate away from gmail.
| verdverm wrote:
| Yeah, maybe I am a minority in viewing web pages in 1/2 1080P?
|
| The only screen that is full screen is the code.
|
| But really, I want to look at two windows without issue on the
| same screen. Is that so much to ask? Can we have better layout
| on 1/2 1080P screens please?
| verdverm wrote:
| So much of modern design seems to be more about / for the
| designers than the users or UX.
|
| Maybe they need a good introspective period in their art, or
| some psychology classes?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't understand the appeal in this for the designers
| either. Back in the old days (~2010s) every UI had some
| personality and very intricate details that the designer
| would be proud of and that will differentiate them from the
| competition. Nowadays it's the same flat, white and empty UIs
| everywhere - there is no significant difference. Would a
| designer really be doing their personal brand a favour by
| putting one of these new "designs" on it?
| eyerony wrote:
| The appeal is that they need something on-trend to put in
| their portfolios for career advancement. It's their version
| of resume-driven development. Project managers have similar
| incentives (screenshots are very powerful, in many
| settings) so at least don't stop them, if not actually
| encouraging them.
| rochacon wrote:
| > I guess people with huge displays don't mind...
|
| I use a ultra-wide (2560x1080) monitor and it looks terrible
| [1]. The repository header being "fluid" put the repository
| name and watch/star/fork buttons so far out of the rest of the
| repository info, like branch name, commit info etc., that using
| GitHub maximized feels very weird and tiring.
|
| I get using the whole resolution for the menu bar, since its
| content is disconnected to the rest of the page content. But
| having part of the repository info in different "aspects" don't
| make sense for me
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/FNs1qb6
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| This was my first thought as well.
|
| A menu that uses the entire space, but then something in the
| middle.
|
| It's just weird.
|
| I really don't like this change and I'm pretty open to it
| normally
| andrethegiant wrote:
| The fluid width makes text harder to read. There's a reason
| why newspapers print in skinny columns. I wish they would at
| least let me set a max-width on the body.
| ttymck wrote:
| I knew there was a reason I prefer skinny column text! I
| presume the reason is because it's a smaller leap from end-
| of-line to beginning-of-next, much less likely for your
| brain to miss.
| anonymousab wrote:
| I'm not the biggest fan, but the site seems functionally much
| faster on the massive repos I'm working with. Overall a net
| benefit.
| azangru wrote:
| Wonder how it performs on definitely_typed :-)
|
| UPD: Nah, it can't handle it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-06-23 23:00 UTC)