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Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

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151–160 of 590 posts

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#151
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.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#152
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 (à la "This will be PlayStation in 2020!!") followed by the reveal of the actual new PlayStation design.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#153
post #146

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 fol…

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 i…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#154
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 - Works without JavaScript

- Detailed language stats for each directory

- "Top files" feature to give an overview of the project

https://github.com/vlang/gitly

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#155
post #107

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.

>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.

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).

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#156

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly, I don't care about any of these things. UIs change and I just have to deal with it.

I will never understand people who take the time and effort to post comments saying "I don't care".

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#158
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.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#159
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.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#160

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.

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.

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.

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