
Show HN: Chrome extension for less confusing Digital Ocean menus - naicuoctavian
https://github.com/addpipe/Less-Confusing-Digital-Ocean-Menus
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chrisallick
Wow. So cool. I love offering a solution that could ultimate inform a change
in their product in the form of a Chrome Extension.

In principle, however, I am not comfortable giving over control of a site that
has financial information, and thus potential financial ramifications, to a
chrome extension.

To echo other comments. If you made this for AWS though, id have no choice but
to adopt. That site is too fucked not to accept any solution to clean it up

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brassattax
This is interesting, thanks for sharing.

I hope this doesn't sound critical (because I like when people make a change
for the better and share it), but before doing this, did you provide feedback
to DigitalOcean regarding their menus? If so, did they respond?

Seems odd to me to create a Chrome Extension to change what would probably be
a pretty minor change on DO's end for everyone's benefit.

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naiyt
Hm, "simple changes" are almost never simple. To get it done, the following
would likely need to happen:

Project managers would need to write a proposal and use cases. UX/design would
need to meet and make wireframes and mocks. Engineers would need to nail down
the technical design. The time and costs would have to be approved by
management. They'd likely end up discussing the change with their biggest
clients to make sure it doesn't interrupt their work flow. Eventually the
engineers will be able to write a bit of code to make the change -- at which
point QA will get their hands on it when they finally have time.

This is why suggestions like that are typically "put on the roadmap" with
little likelihood of actually happening.

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ryanq_do
This is true to a degree at DO though these changes to language and
positioning aren't quite so large to require everything you listed. We rolled
out the copy change a few minutes ago to change "Notifications" to "Email
Subscriptions" as suggested.

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notwhoyouthink
I wonder if this change breaks the extension, ha.

I can appreciate the flexibility you're offered even with the A-list clientele
you have. In a world of "move fast and break things" I've re-worked that into
my own mantra of "move fast and make things better."

In fintech we can't afford -- both figuratively and literally -- to break
things, but you still have to allow your teams to take a crazy "bar napkin"
idea and run with it without a bunch of red tape or you lose the competitive
edge that makes you stand out.

Now changing the wording on a link isn't a crazy bar napkin idea, but it still
demonstrates the flexibility you're afforded to make things better and I see a
lot of value in that.

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overcast
Out of all of the virtual hosts, I would have pinned Digital Ocean's to be the
most simple to navigate.

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robzyb
My opinion:

It's structure is simple, but that doesn't preclude it from being confusing.

For example, where do you go to see a list of your volumes (virtual block
storage, like EBS)? Well you click on the "Droplets" button which shows you a
list of Droplets (instances).

Personally, I would've rathered that they rename "Image" to "Storage" and put
both images and volumes under that.

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naicuoctavian
Similarly their new "Monitoring BETA" product/section is just a confusing name
for Alerts.

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xur17
I would love (and pay for) something like this for aws. Their website is a
mess.

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nicostouch
Awesome work. I actually built a chrome extension yesterday to fix the log
work experience in JIRA because of its horrible ＵＸ. Funny to see someone else
with a desire to hack together a chrome extension to get the experience they
want. DO even implemented a change in response! Thats just awesome. Their UX
is pretty decent IMO but it does miss the mark in some areas. Its funny
working in software we know how painful it can be to get changes like that all
the way into production, yet isnt it amazing the speed at which you can move
when you are free from any constraints and dont have to worry about any
backend stuff or frameworks... just bolt something on the front and boom.

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relics443
I wonder how often a Chrome extension had to led to a feature implementation
or bug fix?

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fiatjaf
Why not a Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey script?

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JangoSteve
I'd also rename Droplets => Servers or Instances, and add a link for actual
Notifications.

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geoffmcc
As far as renaming droplets to servers or instances- i don't think that will
ever happen. Calling them droplets is basically (whats the word im looking for
here) their brand/marketing term.

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JangoSteve
Exactly. That's why I'd do it in the extension.

