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Redesigning GitLab's navigation

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Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#11

Post by svesselov »

allan_s wrote: post #9

Something I found missing is the missing shortcut to easily go the page of "merged request assigned to me" (which is the link 'merge request' in the global menu) as it's the single page I visit the most every day at work, to see across all projects , the merge requests that i need to check.

The third icon from the right is a quick link to "Merge Requests Assigned to Me" and it is the same as in the old version of the menu. The quick link in the hamburger menu was simply a duplicate place to find this action.

To see all "Merge Requests" in a project, you will find that option in the sidebar now, as that is contextual to the Project you are in.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#12

Post by JonathonW »

Karunamon wrote: post #6

Bloody hell, this looks like Bitbucket, but purple. Compare: Gitlab final prototype: https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/redesigning-gitla... Bitbucket server: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/files/304578655/5... The resemblance is uncanny.

In practice, it comes across as something of a hybrid of Github and Bitbucket's UI-- the top gobal navigation bar and sidebar navigation structure are very similar to Bitbucket's, but they take Github's "code first" approach to displaying repositories (the first thing you see when opening a repository in Gitlab or Github is the source tree; on Bitbucket the first thing you see is the readme and a summary of bug reports).

It's probably also worth mentioning that Bitbucket's also in the process of a massive navigation redesign; the "new" Bitbucket eliminates the top global navigation bar, moving some of its elements to a new sidebar (beside the context-specific sidebar) and eliminating much of the global navigation elements completely from repository pages (want to go directly from a repository page to a team or project page? You can't unless it happens to be in the repository's breadcrumb bar.). This is about as much of an improvement as it sounds like.

(Sorry, no screenshots of the new Bitbucket UI since I can't quickly produce one that doesn't have private info in it.)

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#13

Post by svesselov »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #7
bau5 wrote: post #2

You can tell someone is copying someone else's work when they copy the bad stuff. The search box on GitHub and now GitLab wastes space with "This repository" spelled out. It's also odd that you get more space to type when you're not searching inside of a repo, and that backspace is how you switch to a more general search. Pity. I thought that GitLab had learned their lesson and stopped copying GitHub. Aside from that…

>You can tell someone is copying someone else's work when they copy the bad stuff. Once people learn a UI, they really hate deviations from it. It doesn't matter whether githubs UI is good, and it doesn't matter whether gitlab's UI is better. People are used to github, and the peanut gallery will bitch if things are different. The trick for gitlab will be in finding the UI differences that give the maximum improvemen…

"The trick for gitlab will be in finding the UI differences that give the maximum improvement for the minimum change."

This is the holy grail of UI for sure. We are striving for this in all of the decisions we make on the UX team. This change required a lot more change than we would have liked but we are implementing it in a way that we hope will bring maximum effectiveness and longevity.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#14

Post by viraptor »

carussell wrote: post #10
svesselov wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the heads up, we are investigating this now.

GitLab should make it so that anyone who reaches a 4xx or 5xx error page should be able to trivially (as in one click from the error page) file a bug about it on the GitLab tracker. Make sure to pre-populate the template with URL, status code, and referer.

You're assuming they're not doing that automatically in the background. I'd rather assume that they're already getting at least all 5xx reports. (it would be a big failure otherwise)

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#15

Post by leipert »

This looks nice, but hopefully this is a "stable" release for a while, in the last versions so much stuff moved around navigation wise. I especially like that the three vertical navigations (http://imgur.com/UN1TDkw) in a repo are gone.

Thumbs up for creating such an awesome product and involving the community in your thought process!

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#16

Post by svesselov »

leipert wrote: post #15

This looks nice, but hopefully this is a "stable" release for a while, in the last versions so much stuff moved around navigation wise. I especially like that the three vertical navigations ( http://imgur.com/UN1TDkw ) in a repo are gone. Thumbs up for creating such an awesome product and involving the community in your thought process!

Thanks! We would love to hear your feedback as you use the new navigation. Our goal here is to get as much input from the community as possible to make improvements over the next few weeks. You can leave thoughts on the issue here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34917

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#17

Post by viraptor »

Karunamon wrote: post #6

Bloody hell, this looks like Bitbucket, but purple. Compare: Gitlab final prototype: https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/redesigning-gitla... Bitbucket server: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/files/304578655/5... The resemblance is uncanny.

Apart from a basic 3-parts layout, I can't spot too many differences. BB is organised around actions first (actions in the menu, big "create" buttons, etc. even the access level has easily reachable "revoke" for some reason), GL is more about notifications and exploring. (shows the files instead of "you didn't create README" by default) The layout they put it in seems like the least interesting bit to me.

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#18

Post by clemmakesapps »

svesselov wrote: post #5
prh8 wrote: post #4

Heads up for the Gitlab people here-- The user preferences link under try it yourself 404s for me, both when logged in and out. Excited to try out these changes though! Edit: Appears to be the same path but with `about` subdomain

Thanks for the heads up, we are investigating this now.

A fix has been made, the website should auto update with the correct link soon. Thanks for reporting this!

MR with fix: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#19

Post by [deleted] »

viraptor wrote: post #14
carussell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitLab should make it so that anyone who reaches a 4xx or 5xx error page should be able to trivially (as in one click from the error page) file a bug about it on the GitLab tracker. Make sure to pre-populate the template with URL, status code, and referer.

You're assuming they're not doing that automatically in the background. I'd rather assume that they're already getting at least all 5xx reports. (it would be a big failure otherwise)

[deleted]

Re: Redesigning GitLab's navigation

#20

Post by svesselov »

JonathonW wrote: post #12
Karunamon wrote: post #6

Bloody hell, this looks like Bitbucket, but purple. Compare: Gitlab final prototype: https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/redesigning-gitla... Bitbucket server: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/files/304578655/5... The resemblance is uncanny.

In practice, it comes across as something of a hybrid of Github and Bitbucket's UI-- the top gobal navigation bar and sidebar navigation structure are very similar to Bitbucket's, but they take Github's "code first" approach to displaying repositories (the first thing you see when opening a repository in Gitlab or Github is the source tree; on Bitbucket the first thing you see is the readme and a summary of bug repor…

" the top gobal navigation bar and sidebar navigation structure are very similar to Bitbucket's, but they take Github's "code first" approach to displaying repositories (the first thing you see when opening a repository in Gitlab or Github is the source tree; on Bitbucket the first thing you see is the readme and a summary of bug reports)."

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you spotted the differences between BitBucket's Design and our own. While we would love to design with a blank slate, we are not. Our users arrive with expectations and deeply implanted ideas of how things should look, feel, and behave. We have to temper exploration with practicality. The downside of that can be that the UI has a similar appearance to other platforms.

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