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Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

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Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#261

Post by verdverm »

ithkuil wrote: post #147
bcrosby95 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

They didn't ask, you have to go into the feature view menu (under profile) and then click a link there to go to another page and then have a form to fill out.

They know UX for sure!

Maybe we should send them a copy of Don't Make Me Think

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#262

Post by csallen »

jolmg wrote: post #134

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 na…

> I don't understand why people are complaining like it's an absolute disaster.

Partly because the ethos of HN is to reward whoever is the best at disagreeing or pointing out flaws in the original post (or in the comment they're replying to). Which is actually kind of useful, because it allows you as a reader to rapidly see both arguments and counterarguments.

Partly because the most impactful and thus most-upvoted commentary is usually going to be whatever is most extreme. Readers love certitude and are bored by nuance. And if you're expressing a grievance to someone who can make a change, outrage is the best method to get them to prioritize your desires, even if you aren't actually outraged.

Partly because it's in our DNA to ignore the good and focus on the bad. Problems tend to jump out at us, whereas benefits are often invisible by comparison, and we easily take them for granted or consider them merely part of the status quo. For example, we live in a world with the magic of cell phones, air travel, personalized advertising, and social media, yet 99% of what you hear about any of these topics is the negative stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#263

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

It’s a good redesign. Not great but that’s ok. What we need to talk about is the quality of the criticism. It on par with the “why would anyone use Dropbox when rsync exists”

People hate websites that look like they were designed by a programmer. Programmers hate websites that look like they were designed by a programmer

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#264

Post by charlesdaniels »

I don't much care for it. It seems to make much less efficient use of screen real-estate. Information that used to be clustered tightly together is now spread all over.

It seems to me like someone who doesn't actually use git professionally just arbitrarily move things around for no discernible reason. The UI elements that have moved don't seem to have any particular rhyme or reason. For example, apparently the "security" tab is worth being in the tab bar, but the releases aren't?

Frankly, I think it's inappropriate for a professional tool to change it's UI arbitrarily, or even for a marginal benefit, since all of the great many existing users now have to learn the new UI. These things should only be modified if there is a clear and significant benefit that justifies the trouble.

This makes me glad that I'm a Sourcehut user ( https://sr.ht/ ), since it's UI is much more sensible, and faster to boot.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#266

Post by bconnorwhite »

DreamScatter wrote: post #251
bconnorwhite wrote: post #234

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 d…

The new design is terrible. If it actually made the website easier to use, then I would be all for it. Unfortunately this is an actual step backwards in functionality and information layout design.

Let's take the simplest action - cloning a repo.

Old: https://web.archive.org/web/20200619163555/https://github.co...

New: https://github.com/torvalds/linux

It was always strange to have all the language info at the top

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#267

Post by systemvoltage »

eyerony wrote: post #194
spenczar5 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

One of the arguments by Designers is that they make the UI more approachable - they don't realize that they are biased by their personal aesthetic taste, their friends like the same type of flat sleek modern UI designs, and they like going to minimal galleries, subscribe to itsnotthat and read the colossal blog.

This is a cultural imposition, not something a professional would do. Yet, we have modern designers injecting their personal taste of modernism into UIs, in this case, Github developers are not the average Joe - they are familiar with complexity, highly dense information screens (code!) and don't need any of this non-sense.

Non-designers I've met actually have a better more grounded and functional approach to design, which is what I think design is. Yet the general opinion amongst designers is that the engineers are like Milton from Office Space - they don't understand fashion, current trends and aesthetics.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#268

Post by JoshTriplett »

7ewis wrote: post #243
JoshTriplett wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is true, I don't really know what the answer is. You could do something like show half code/half readme, with extra code hidden behind a fold.. but I'm sure that would annoy devs working on those additional hidden files.

I'd be happy with a README-first design that had a link to move the README below the code, and that remembered which one you want on top for each repository. (Along with a preference for logged-in users to decide what they want.)

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#270

Post by DreamScatter »

recursive wrote: post #233
DreamScatter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

So you're going to ignore all criticism when you make a huge redesign?

There are valid complaints about this. I rarely complain about website design, and this time I am compelled to criticize it.

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