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Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

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Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#501

Post by ljm »

natfriedman wrote: post #284
ljm wrote: post #126

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 sho…

Thanks for the feedback about the latest commit status. This is something we should definitely fix. Also – I don't think there is a principle of lowering information density at work here. I think it's just a design that we will keep iterating. We are pro information density at GitHub.

Wow, already fixed! That's fantastic :)

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#502

Post by roryokane »

rurp wrote: post #224
rowanseymour wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wow, that's pretty bad. Logical consistency was clearly not a guiding principle of this redesign.

There is a consistent principle behind those choices: rectangles with slightly rounded corners are clickable, while rectangles with semicircular sides (“pills”) are not clickable. It's confusing because I've never seen another site that distinguishes clickable elements in that way, but I can imagine we'll grow to find it intuitive with enough usage.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#504

Post by vimslayer »

niutech wrote: post #492
natfriedman wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback about the latest commit status. This is something we should definitely fix. Also – I don't think there is a principle of lowering information density at work here. I think it's just a design that we will keep iterating. We are pro information density at GitHub.

There are bugs in IE 11 (which has 5.88% usage on desktop according to NetMarketshare and is still supported by MS) - dropdown buttons and other interactions do not work due to JS errors: SCRIPT1053: Const must be initialized SCRIPT1014: Invalid character SCRIPT1010: Expected identifier SCRIPT1003: Expected ':' Please fix them.

How much of those IE users are also users of GitHub?

Shipping more modern EcmaScript versions than what's supported by IE has lots of advantages for users whose browsers can support it, so I'd hate it if the IE support came with the expense of everyone else's experience. There are ways to serve different JS bundles for different browsers, of course, but that comes with a maintenance cost for them.

Weird though that some buttons wouldn't work at all, because at least most of the basic functionality seems to work fine with JS disabled even. Maybe they should just disable JavaScript altogether for IE and it'd work better. That should be easy to implement too.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#505

Post by jmcvetta »

tarboreus wrote: post #419
natfriedman wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback about the latest commit status. This is something we should definitely fix. Also – I don't think there is a principle of lowering information density at work here. I think it's just a design that we will keep iterating. We are pro information density at GitHub.

Really hate the second column on the right, which for a long README or documentation does nothing but make it so that there's less room for the text. I frequently use GitHub to store and read notes or to create larger docs, this essentially kills my desire to do any of that and makes me want to move what I have. The information in that column is also extremely low value.

Agreed - the right column is a waste of screen space and makes the reading experience generally unpleasant.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#506

Post by vimslayer »

drey08 wrote: post #343
humblebee wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mos…

How can I use this code snippet? Apologies if it's obvious to everyone.

People have suggested extensions here, which is fine, but Firefox also supports this natively via custom css files that it can load for you on startup. They can be used for both styling Firefox itself and for modifying websites' styling.

https://superuser.com/a/319322/1173126 (be sure to read the comments of that answer too, these days you need to switch a flag in Ff settings to enable this feature)

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#507

Post by RNCTX »

7ewis wrote: post #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 moder…

Highly dependent on how I got to the repo.

If I know what repo I want and am going directly to it, sure. If I'm looking at lots of repos that match a search (either on GH or somewhere else), say... looking for a library that does a thing and there are many choices, the first thing I'm going to look at probably isn't the readme. More important in those cases for filtering out the chaff are date of last commit and the issues board, looking for signs of life rather than signs of abandonment.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#508

Post by ljm »

lostmsu wrote: post #293
natfriedman wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback about the latest commit status. This is something we should definitely fix. Also – I don't think there is a principle of lowering information density at work here. I think it's just a design that we will keep iterating. We are pro information density at GitHub.

Why aren't you doing A/B?

I had access to the design by flipping a switch under the 'feature preview' section of my profile menu. Had a little notification blob prompting me to see what was in there.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#509

Post by b3kart »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #274
the-pigeon wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JUST STOP CHANGING THE UI FOR NO REASON! You wouldn't re-write a whole app without a very solid engineering reason. But site after site re-does their UI without any stated reason. For companies I've worked for we did new UI designs because they thought it would increase sales, even though it threw out all the sales optimizations we made in the last design. So, it was always a negative for sales. It's just a big waste…

My theory is that, at these big companies with large, established products, they're just looking for stuff for designers to do. I mean, you do need designers for whenever you add new features, and you want really great ones for that. But those really great designers want to do something , and there just aren't enough new features to keep them busy. I mean, I don't dislike the aesthetics of the change, but yeah, I jus…

Yep, I think that’s (at least partially) true, even if it’s not explicitly acknowledged in the company. Same with Google and their endless new projects: what else would all those smart engineers do? Support existing projects? Yeah, let’s see how many of them won’t leave to build new things in some startup in a few months. It’s a balancing act on the part of any company employing creative people, I imagine.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#510

Post by [deleted] »

tarboreus wrote: post #419
natfriedman wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback about the latest commit status. This is something we should definitely fix. Also – I don't think there is a principle of lowering information density at work here. I think it's just a design that we will keep iterating. We are pro information density at GitHub.

Really hate the second column on the right, which for a long README or documentation does nothing but make it so that there's less room for the text. I frequently use GitHub to store and read notes or to create larger docs, this essentially kills my desire to do any of that and makes me want to move what I have. The information in that column is also extremely low value.

[deleted]
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