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Designing GitHub for Mac

warpspire.com

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Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#51

Post by cageface »

tptacek wrote: post #4

What a f'ing fantastic article. Thank you so much for writing this. I spent a decent chunk of time last year building up a somewhat large Cocoa application (a telling synecdoche of how ambitious the app is: it integrates libevent with the Cocoa loop and involved writing a whole new evented Redis-backed HTTPS cache in ObjC). But unfortunately, I got to the UI part of this project ("UI part", heh) thinking "this is goi…

I've had a similar shock getting into iOS development. I'd never done any Cocoa coding before but had heard it praised so highly over the years that I assumed it was going to be all rolling fields and sunshine. But it really does feel primitive in many ways compared to the modern web. Apple will address some of the biggest pain points (layouts, styling) in their next set of OS releases but it's made me appreciate what I've taken for granted for so long in web UI.

I haven't written any apps in Android yet but I've been studying their UI docs and it's clear that their UI kit was informed by the web. If you squint at their code samples they don't look all that different from HTML5 apps: layout in markup, wireup event handlers, go.

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#52

Post by cageface »

kevingadd wrote: post #22
tptacek wrote: post #4

What a f'ing fantastic article. Thank you so much for writing this. I spent a decent chunk of time last year building up a somewhat large Cocoa application (a telling synecdoche of how ambitious the app is: it integrates libevent with the Cocoa loop and involved writing a whole new evented Redis-backed HTTPS cache in ObjC). But unfortunately, I got to the UI part of this project ("UI part", heh) thinking "this is goi…

When confronted with porting a previous Win32 app to the Mac, we ended up just rewriting every piece of UI we could in HTML+CSS. It was literally easier to embed Gecko into our app than it would have been to get the UI up and running in Cocoa. HTML+CSS being easier and more expressive than Win32 didn't hurt either. Shared codebase!

Absolutely. This is why I think native apps are going to hit an asymptotic growth limit eventually. Native will have its place but it's already so much easier to build a typical data-centric UI in HTML5.

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#53

Post by cageface »

As an aside, I really feel like Apple is losing the plot with their latest batch of UIs. Wooden end panels, birch bookshelves, the glossy reflective dock, leather-bound notebooks etc, all smack of a lack of imagination and an timid need to convey value in outmoded terms.

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#55

Post by vladocar »

This is so unfair. I finally mastered the GIT console pushing and pulling stuff around. And this awesome product comes and the console is now obsolete. Jokes apart, this is super tool that will bring new users that are still not familiar with the console. Great job guys!

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#56

Post by kneath »

dolinsky wrote: post #49

Could someone elaborate on the difficulties encountered managing branches of an iOS project in XCode using git?

Xcode tracks files with an XML "project file." So if you add files in one branch and remove files in another branch, it often puts this project file into a conflicted state. Resolving conflicts in this file is really difficult — lots of confusing paths and SHAs all mixed together. If you don't resolve conflicts correctly, the entire project refuses to open.

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#57

Post by statictype »

tptacek wrote: post #4

What a f'ing fantastic article. Thank you so much for writing this. I spent a decent chunk of time last year building up a somewhat large Cocoa application (a telling synecdoche of how ambitious the app is: it integrates libevent with the Cocoa loop and involved writing a whole new evented Redis-backed HTTPS cache in ObjC). But unfortunately, I got to the UI part of this project ("UI part", heh) thinking "this is goi…

I had pretty much the same experience you did, except with Windows (and later on, iOS). It's jarring how, to get really good looking UIs, you often have to do custom pixel positioning and painting in code. It's almost offensive after doing expressive layouts with html and css.

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#58

Post by leviathan »

oscardelben wrote: post #36

On a related note, i've built a simple github browser for ipad that will never get approved on the AppStore due to paid accounts. If someone wants to play with it here's the link https://github.com/oscardelben/GithubBrowser

You can still create an account and provide the Apple reviewers with credentials to try it. This is what we did for an iPad project that uses Facebook photos, we provided Apple with login credentials to a facebook account with lots of photos in it so that they can test it, and the app was approved from the first submission.

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#59

Post by dolinsky »

kneath wrote: post #56
dolinsky wrote: post #49

Could someone elaborate on the difficulties encountered managing branches of an iOS project in XCode using git?

Xcode tracks files with an XML "project file." So if you add files in one branch and remove files in another branch, it often puts this project file into a conflicted state. Resolving conflicts in this file is really difficult — lots of confusing paths and SHAs all mixed together. If you don't resolve conflicts correctly, the entire project refuses to open.

Thanks, that makes sense. Is it often that these conflicts arise during development on a team of 1-3 developers? I'm also assuming you're referring to the package contents of the .xproj file (specifically project.pbxproj), correct?

Re: Designing GitHub for Mac

#60

Post by theatrus2 »

natesm wrote: post #42

On the images/code drawing points: are there any benchmarks for this? I've been writing meticulous CGGradient type stuff recently, should I just make a gradient in Photoshop and call it a day instead?

Depends on how you handle the gradients - CG has some neat tricks about reusing gradient rendering if you don't instantiate the same one over and over.
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