Redesigning GitHub Repository Page • Hacker News Board

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#101

Post by zanny » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 1:54 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #84

But maybe it’s time to fresh it up a little? Get rid of gradients, dirty washed-out colors, unnecessary separators, add a little more air. No, no, no , NO!!!11 I've had it with these "sea of floating text on an expanse of white" redesigns, seeing yet another one follow this mindless trend just disgusts me thoroughly. The lines, subtle gradients, and other affordances of the old design serve to organise and direct you…

Theres usually some value in design trends, but the OP's github revamp where you can't tell non-interactive text from buttons is painful. The whole point of a button is to indicate interactivity, if your idea of an interactive control is text with maybe a bar under it don't be surprised when users are totally lost.

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#102

Post by Quiark » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 1:55 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #84

But maybe it’s time to fresh it up a little? Get rid of gradients, dirty washed-out colors, unnecessary separators, add a little more air. No, no, no , NO!!!11 I've had it with these "sea of floating text on an expanse of white" redesigns, seeing yet another one follow this mindless trend just disgusts me thoroughly. The lines, subtle gradients, and other affordances of the old design serve to organise and direct you…

_If you feel disoriented, give it a minute._

The guy spends a very long article explaining how things could be laid out easier to orient yourself in and then asks you to give a minute to get used to his color scheme.

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#103

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #84

But maybe it’s time to fresh it up a little? Get rid of gradients, dirty washed-out colors, unnecessary separators, add a little more air. No, no, no , NO!!!11 I've had it with these "sea of floating text on an expanse of white" redesigns, seeing yet another one follow this mindless trend just disgusts me thoroughly. The lines, subtle gradients, and other affordances of the old design serve to organise and direct you…

I haven’t used the gui or windows as primary os for over a decade but that was instantly grokkable, they really nailed the gui in win2k been downhill ever since.

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#104

Post by modzu » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

classic example of big company with too many employees who need to find "something to do". its not broken dont fix it something something.. /end rant

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#105

Post by zanny » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #21

The tabs especially looks like a terrible idea. Something that had more than enough space on every screen has now become a huge, long list of options that you have to scan every time to find the one you want. Removal of icons also plays into that since they were the visual hooks you could use to navigate after a little while of usage. Then the final redesign, I’m not sure there’s anything to say about it other than t…

I agree with the OP on multiple tab bars being problematic. What I think their designs are missing is grouping related tabs on the singular tab bar with dividers or colors.

One thing I hate about modern design, and this is on github etc, is the lack of use of color. Its all monochrome to look "professional" but color coding elements by function in a page can really make navigation so much easier. In the OP, just having blue, green, and yellow underlines with a gap under code / commits / branches, releases / issues / pull requests / projects, and wiki / insights / settings tabs would make visual navigation so much easier.

You could then border the file and commit list with blue and the statistics with yellow. The parts of the page related to each "topical heading" could be highlighted with color.

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#106

Post by rob_b » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

Forge36 wrote: post #62

scott_s wrote: post #17

> If you are a programmer, you might be surprised but other people normally don’t like hierarchies. Nested structures are hard to grasp, remember, navigate, and grouping is very often non-intuitive. Nested tabs are one of the worst UI patterns out there. GitHub is primarily a development tool, so it should be designed for developers. Hierarchies align very well with development tasks, so it's natural to use them for…

I think the author describes the problem with the redesign the best: its noisy. Your point over how hierarchy helps programmers use GitHub feels lost on the designer. It feels as if they're designing for a different user.

That noise is the exact reason why I think the design over the years hasn’t strayed away as captured in the screenshots. One of my favorite parts of using GitHub is that the design is clean and easy to navigate. Throwing twenty widgets on there and cramming everything on top of each other adds clutter and distracts users from being able to visually navigate the page. I can’t speak for everyone, but given the chance, I prefer using GitHub over BitBucket and GitLab because the design is much cleaner and easier to navigate.

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#107

Post by zwkrt » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:03 AM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #99

superfrank wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was totally with the author for steps 1-7, but I have problems with the last four steps. Personally, I think step 9 shows exactly where the author is a bit out of touch. He seems to see GitHub as a sort of code social media site where statistics about the repository are just as valuable as the code itself. In some cases (especially open source), I can see that being kind of true, but I think GitHub gets far m…

I think, even as an internal collaboration tool, the faces of who has been touching a repo recently are very valuable. Who do I go to for help, or to get a PR approved, or to request a new feature?

Look at last commit, look up username, email. Where did their face come into it?

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#108

Post by octobanana » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #17

> If you are a programmer, you might be surprised but other people normally don’t like hierarchies. Nested structures are hard to grasp, remember, navigate, and grouping is very often non-intuitive. Nested tabs are one of the worst UI patterns out there. GitHub is primarily a development tool, so it should be designed for developers. Hierarchies align very well with development tasks, so it's natural to use them for…

> When I'm working with a GitHub project, I commonly want to load up the page and navigate to some files. If not, it's usually not much scrolling to get down to the README.

The solution I'm using currently for the git repos hosted on my personal site [0] is to show the projects file tree above the README, but allow it to be collapsed by clicking on the projects root directory. Originally, the project tree was collapsed by default, but the click through rate was quite low, so the expanded view became the default.

[0] https://octobanana.com/software/fltrdr

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#109

Post by jpeeler » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

> Commits often touch files for completely arbitrary reasons, so the last commit tells you almost nothing.

I actually use this feature frequently. I bet others do too. If I wanted to see the commits list, I can just click the commits tab.

Re: Redesigning GitHub Repository Page

#110

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC

What I really want to see is not having to click on 'Show Desktop' whenever I'm on a phone to be able to read a whole README file. I just want to see the README first, all of it.