
Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout? - verdverm
I think it feels like Jira and I&#x27;m really sad. Seems more like a MS move than a GH move...<p>Migrating to gitlab...
======
ljm
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 short-hash
is the last thing I care about. You cannot see if your default branch has
passed CI/status checks now. Those things should be first class citizens,
that's why we put status badges all at the top of our readmes to make that
info more visible with what we have.

It follows the trend of designing with lower information density. This trend
IMO is not appropriate for developer tools.

~~~
natfriedman
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.

~~~
tarboreus
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.

~~~
zoomablemind
Also there's font-size party happening on the home's right sidebar. 16px,
14px, 12px in a rapid succession.

Meanwhile, on Pull Requests' right side bar everything is rendered in 12px
size.

Just to be clear, 12px is equivalent of 9pt. That's fairly small on screen.
For comparison the README body text is rendered in 16px, which is equivalent
of 12pt.

By the way, HN body text is 13.33px, about 10pt.

~~~
danudey
Weird design choices like this are why I've been setting minimum font sizes in
my browser since the day the feature was added. It's a life saver, especially
on high-resolution displays.

~~~
angristan
How do you do that?

------
Hedja
I have a single major problem with all of their new layouts. They place
content at extreme ends of the screen, completely stretched out like a rubber
band with No Man's Land in the middle. In this case, the top half is stretched
and the bottom half is centred. Completely inconsistent and tiring for your
eyes darting around corners of the screen.

Example:
[https://twitter.com/JahedDEV/status/1275532988772683776](https://twitter.com/JahedDEV/status/1275532988772683776)

I don't know why they think it's good design, it would be nice to know. All of
their previews for it squash the window so it looks perfect, like their
mockups I assume. Similarly, I have to have a dedicated, half-width window
just for GitHub to workaround this.

~~~
humblebee
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 most of the screen space on my 4k monitor.

    
    
        :root {
            --width: 1600px;
        }
    
        .container-xl {
            max-width: var(--width);
        }
        .pagehead {
            padding-left: calc(50% - (var(--width) / 2));
            padding-right: calc(50% - (var(--width) / 2));
        }

~~~
drey08
How can I use this code snippet? Apologies if it's obvious to everyone.

~~~
Jetroid
On Chrome, I use an extension called 'Stylebot'. Not sure about other
platforms.

~~~
square_usual
You can use Stylus on Firefox (and Chrome, too.)

------
jolmg
Lots of hate here. I probably don't use GitHub as much as others here, so I
can understand that any change adds friction and people are going to hate
that. Having said that, I'm comparing using the Wayback Machine:

new:

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux](https://github.com/torvalds/linux)

old:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200619163555/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200619163555/https://github.com/torvalds/linux)

and I can't find it in me to dislike the changes they've made. They've removed
the double repo navbar in favor of just 1. They've added a right-sidebar that
shows various info about the repo in general, like what the last release is.
Before, I would open the branch/tag list to look at the versions; now, it's
plain as day in the sidebar. For the main contributors, I no longer need to go
to insights > contributors. They're shown in the sidebar. For the main
languages, I no longer need to click on the thin color line. I find that the
most common bits of info about a repo that I sought are now displayed in the
main repo page. That's an improvement.

I don't understand why people are complaining like it's an absolute disaster.
It's not perfect, sure, but this seems to bring significant improvements.

~~~
treve
Also fun to go back to a much earlier version:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130807124247/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130807124247/https://github.com/torvalds/linux)

~~~
granzymes
Hah. I think we can all agree that the UI has been improved since then.

~~~
nfoz
I....... have to disagree, though I'm not sure why, but that old one looks
much better to me. Like it's simpler and more clear.

~~~
granzymes
The 2013 version by comparison wastes horizontal space while surfacing less
information. The contrast is worse and there isn't enough to visually
distinguish the four (!) rows of headers. Personally, I also find the
navigation box on the right to be weirdly sunken into the page and I think the
color scheme has been greatly improved.

------
peterkos
Aside from the accessibility concerns -- which is honestly inexcusable -- the
non-centered repo layout is so strange to me:

All that info that's now in the sidebar is temporary. All of it. I never need
to look at a project language more than once.

However, it takes up 100% of the height of the page, so when I'm halfway
through a README, the README gets offset by some magical space. The ghost of
the 1 paragraph of "language/tags/etc." takes up that space. The README is not
centered.

From a design perspective, this layout implies an equal level of hierarchy
between the right sidebar and the main content. It implies that they should be
referenced side-by-side. But that is just not the case. I want to meet the
person who thinks that the document literally entitled "README" (or oh, I
don't know, _all_ of the files) is somehow as-or-less important than the tags
on a repository -- which are usually just the title copy pasted anyways.

I develop open-source things and I absolutely love to use GitHub. In
particular, I've spent a LOT of time reading README's and also writing them. I
really think their centered layout should come back.

As a suggestion: Maybe they could shift just the _files list_ over for that
sidebar, and have any block content not centered?

Or maybe if there somehow existed a compact way to organize that information.
Maybe a horizontal layout because there is only a little bit of text.
Something like that.

~~~
gbrown_
I don't like any part of the update but this is by far my biggest issue with
it.

------
bconnorwhite
This is the MacOS 11 thread all over again. Apparently no one on HN has been
through a redesign...

For those of you complaining, congratulations, you've discovered ~ nostalgia ~

In two weeks you'll inevitably find the old design ugly, and forget GitHub
ever looked any other way.

In 5 years, each will get another round of improved designs, and there will be
a thread on HN full of people complaining about how the new design sucks and
how 5 years ago was "the good old days."

The new GitHub design is _objectively_ better. The new MacOS 11 design is
_objectively_ better.

"Low information density" means less clutter. You find the information that
matters quicker. Changes to padding/visual separation/sizing/etc. all provide
similar context to which information is important, and how items relate. "Flat
design" isn't some trend, flat icons are just easier to quickly recognize, and
look far more crisp.

In both threads the degree of negativity is disappointing. Can we not have one
or two positive comments on how crisp the new commit graph colors look, how
nice the transparent pin dragging interface is, or how the action buttons are
more prominent? Not to mention the entire code/README page. The flat rounded
corner borders are very clean!

If you really don't like the rounded borders, use wget

~~~
mixologic
Low information density means "less clutter" for somebody new to the
interface, but it means "many more steps" to provide all the information that
a dense design allows for. So much design fails to take into account human
expertise, and our ability to learn complex interfaces. They get the A/B
treatment which optimizes for beginners, which always leans towards the
simpler, easier design.

This is why we'll never get a better spreadsheet design. In the hands of
experts it's already perfect.

If modern UI designers were responsible for building musical instruments,
there would be a lot more kazoos and recorders, and a lot fewer cellos and
bassoons.

~~~
Deimorz
This is also linked to the obsession with constant, never-ending growth.

Bringing in new users is more important than making existing users happier -
you just need to keep them happy enough that they won't actually leave. It
results in targeting the design towards people that don't use the product
(yet) instead of the ones that already do.

~~~
mixologic
Seriously one of my biggest pet peeves. So often I hunt around for the login
button, annoyed at being force fed some growth hackers moronic idea of a good
interface. It undermines the likely hood that I will "recommend this product
to a friend".

------
AlexandrB
This is getting cliche. With any modern UI redesign you can immediately guess
what's changed:

    
    
        * Removed/reduced visual separation between elements
        * Flattened things more
        * More padding
    

Modern UI designers are strikingly unoriginal.

~~~
spenczar5
I _want_ UI designers to be unoriginal. I wish they were _less_ original. I
don't like learning new visual languages every 5 years; I want intuitive
interfaces, which mostly means familiar interfaces.

~~~
eyerony
I never thought trendy modern GUI design would get so bad that looking at
screenshots of programs running on Windows 98 would feel instantly and
overwhelmingly relaxing, like settling into a warm bath, as if parts of my
brain being taxed for no reason could finally just _chill_. Yet, here we are.

~~~
systemvoltage
One of the arguments by Designers is that they make the UI more approachable -
they don't realize that they are biased by their personal aesthetic taste,
their friends like the same type of flat sleek modern UI designs, and they
like going to minimal galleries, subscribe to itsnotthat and read the colossal
blog.

This is a cultural imposition, not something a professional would do. Yet, we
have modern designers injecting their personal taste of modernism into UIs, in
this case, Github developers are not the average Joe - they are familiar with
complexity, highly dense information screens (code!) and don't need any of
this non-sense.

Non-designers I've met actually have a better more grounded and functional
approach to design, which is what I think design is. Yet the general opinion
amongst designers is that the engineers are like Milton from Office Space -
they don't understand fashion, current trends and aesthetics.

~~~
eyerony
True story: my dad is confused by basically all technology and all modern user
interfaces. The one site he finds usable without assistance? Craigslist.

~~~
kyawzazaw
On the contrary, my parents were never able to use texting on old mobile
phones or even 2013-era smartphones. but now they easily are able to do video-
calls, voice-calls on today's smartphones and apps.

They are also able to make payments using code scanning and normal transfer
through the ease to use interface.

And this is in Myanmar, where we barely had internet for public use 10 years
ago.

------
h91wka
Looks absolutely horrible. I use a laptop as my main dev machine, and all
these 16px and 30px paddings that they added everywhere create real tunnel
vision experience. I guess people with huge displays don't mind... But I
absolutely do.

Looks like another case when a frontend team does something to justify their
existence.

But let's look at the positives: the last redesign of that sort helped me to
completely migrate away from gmail.

~~~
rochacon
> I guess people with huge displays don't mind...

I use a ultra-wide (2560x1080) monitor and it looks terrible [1]. The
repository header being "fluid" put the repository name and watch/star/fork
buttons so far out of the rest of the repository info, like branch name,
commit info etc., that using GitHub maximized feels very weird and tiring.

I get using the whole resolution for the menu bar, since its content is
disconnected to the rest of the page content. But having part of the
repository info in different "aspects" don't make sense for me

[1] [https://imgur.com/FNs1qb6](https://imgur.com/FNs1qb6)

~~~
andrethegiant
The fluid width makes text harder to read. There's a reason why newspapers
print in skinny columns. I wish they would at least let me set a max-width on
the body.

~~~
ttymck
I knew there was a reason I prefer skinny column text! I presume the reason is
because it's a smaller leap from end-of-line to beginning-of-next, much less
likely for your brain to miss.

------
somerandomacc
Like many others, I use Github every day. Changes like this add friction to
our workflow.

There better be a damn good reason for these changes, otherwise it's a
pointless redesign that looks no better than it did previously while
simultaneously adding a slight overhead as users "learn" the new layout.

Does anyone know of an option to revert this update?

~~~
verdverm
My hypothesis is the point is to compete with Jira. That would be MS's biggest
competitor in this space, and the changes make it look a whole lot more like
that.

I wonder if MS has gone back on their word to leave GitHub to it's own
devices...?

I have been unable to find a method to revert. Best option might be to make a
bunch of noise. Other than that, it's migration time.

~~~
talideon
If competing with Atlassian is the point, then they're going to have to
completely revise their licensing model for a start. GHE is _far_ too
expensive compared to Atlassian's whole software suite to be any real
competition.

~~~
verdverm
It gets merged into MS product catalog, GitHub might have a time table at this
point...

~~~
kyawzazaw
just like Teams got marketshare

------
greatgib
For me it is a bad and unnecessary rework. Exactly the kind where they break a
functional design that was refined for multiple years. And they break it just
for a product management/ marketing reason to have 'something new'.

Both on desktop and mobile there are a lot of useful info lost and at the same
time, low density and a lot of empty space. But in addition there is no
coherence.

For me, the mobile experience is illustrative. Look at the screenshot examples
there:
[https://twitter.com/greatgib42/status/1275703359283122183?s=...](https://twitter.com/greatgib42/status/1275703359283122183?s=09)

If you had no knowledge, you could think that after was in fact before.

Issues that I can see:

\- No part of the readme/description visible anymore.

\- Stupidly lost space, like nothing anymore in the top bar to use additional
line.

\- stars count was smart before by being on the button itself. Now one big
empty button and a separate counter.

\- for commit, issues, project... Everything was directly visible before. Now,
a horizontal scroll is needed. I hate having to horizontally scroll on mobile
web. (But maybe it is just me)

~~~
greatgib
For a fun test, I showed my GF the 2 screenshots. I tried to avoid involuntary
giving any clue, and asked her which one, she was thinking was the old
interface and the new one. She is not a geek, not in tech, and does not know
Github.

But, you can bet it, her guess was that the NEW interface was the oldest one,
and that the OLD one was the recent rework...

That is an interesting test to rule out the fact that we are "adverse" to
changes.

~~~
playpause
I'm not sure why that rules out the idea that people are averse to design
changes. For one thing, it's just one piece of anecdata. For another, just
because someone thinks Design A looks newer doesn't mean that they wouldn't
prefer to keep using Design B if they were already used to it. Anyway, even if
we accept that people are generally averse to changes, that doesn't imply that
all criticism of a redesign should be dismissed as aversion to change.

------
7ewis
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](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 modern, but there could definitely be some
improvements.

~~~
JoshTriplett
That seems like a tradeoff between people discovering a project and people
developing that project. People initially discovering a project usually want
the README; people developing a project may potentially want either.

~~~
njovin
I never look at the Code page of projects I work on. I'm always going straight
to the pull requests or issues.

I always thought the Code page's intended audience was new people checking out
the repo for documentation or to peruse the code (usually after checking out
the README).

~~~
JoshTriplett
I find that the code helps me get oriented, like running ls in a project's
directory after cd-ing to it.

------
h3ll0k4ll3
The design before was targeting developers with a "for work" feel. From a vcs
perspective and ci/cd perspective it showed the important stuff. The new file
browser is especially bad - being Tritanopia color blind the lack of lines and
the folders physically hurt my eyes.

But To be honest we all know what this re-design is for. Microsoft pushing
Azure Pipelines ( github actions ). The previous github interface was not cute
/ nice enough for actions. So they re-designed the entire site to be able to
push us towards Azure usage. ( that is the entire reason Microsoft Acquired
github - slowly luring developers from opensource to the safe walled garded of
microsoft. With a slow shift of Azure cloud offerings leaking in to our minds.
). And slowly taking over most organisations tool-chains.

~~~
brian-armstrong
What is an action? And is there really much risk of us using Azure? My code,
like most I suspect, runs on linux/unixy things and probably doesn't even
build on Windows.

~~~
gnur
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that at least 50% of the vms running in Azure
are actually running linux.

And in this case, "action" refers to the ci/cd tooling github provides called
"github actions". It's one of the tabs at the top.

------
foresto
Ugh. Yet another design by someone who keeps their browser window maximized
(or has the luxury of an enormous display) and expects everyone else to do the
same. A few things that leap out at me:

\- Large margins everywhere

\- Sidebar gobbling up 20-30% of my browser window's horizontal space, no
matter how far down I scroll.

\- Hamburger menu hiding the dashboard and other frequently used links.

\- Latest commit timestamp hidden by mostly useless stuff like tag and branch
count.

This layout wastes a ton of space. Information density feels too low, which
might be appropriate for a product landing page, but is counterproductive in a
development tool. It also makes things needlessly difficult for people who
multitask with side-by-side windows or have small screens.

On the positive side, at least this layout is less annoying than Gitlab's
"bury everything within javascript menus" approach?

~~~
realusername
I have the same complaints, I do agree that the new redesign looks great in my
external monitor, except I do my browsing on my 14" display and the repo
information looks kind of squished into the left.

------
zowanet
I don't like change.

I don't like the circular avatars - I don't need the place I store my code to
feel like a social network.

But the worst change for me is that the 'Languages' section is now below the
fold. Now I have to scroll to find out if I should ignore the latest compiler,
package manager or system tool because it was written in JavaScript.

Edit: Gah! I only noticed this by directly comparing old and new, but the
filenames in the main list are no longer blue, so now on each row, the
filename, commit message and timestamp are in three subtly different shades of
gray. That, combined with the lack of gridlines just makes the whole thing
look like word soup.

~~~
thex10
> the filenames in the main list are no longer blue, so now on each row, the
> filename, commit message and timestamp are in three subtly different shades
> of gray

Shoot, now I notice it too. I like the redesign but that is just.. bad.

------
bE9a3S5So8igd3
The worst redesign yet. It looks even worse than an early version of Gogs I
tried. Of course, if you're paying designers they ultimately have to design
something even if it's crap. Ideal github design was maybe in 2012.

Unrelated to the redesign, but the documentation for things like Actions just
scream "microsoft." It was really hard for me to find the important
information; had to sift through pages of abstraction gunk where things aren't
explained clearly or with code. Felt like IBM product pages. Very non-github.
This clueless internet-explorer-type design trend will almost certainly
continue IMO. They simply can't help theirselves.

Unfortunately I also don't like gitlab or bitbucket. Github circa 2012 was the
gold standard for the design solution, while everything else was cluttered or
pad-y or overreliant on side navigation. Now everything sucks.

What's sad? Actually, you can find the classic (good) github design alive and
well in China:
[https://gitee.com/drinkjava2/frog](https://gitee.com/drinkjava2/frog)

~~~
GuiA
Sorry tangential, but what's this frog neural network project? Looks fun!

~~~
bE9a3S5So8igd3
Oh, I dunno I just found that by exploring gitee

------
DreamScatter
The new web design layout on GitHub is awful and has less accessibility.

For example, the repository languages used to be at the top center of the
page, while now I need to scroll past the bottom of the screen and find the
information off centered in an awkward place.

The stars and other top bar links are off centered in an awkward way for the
mouse and the eyes. Also, the profile tabs are less accessible because
followers are now on the other side of the screen instead of in the convenient
tab location.

Please contact GitHub with your feedback if you also think it's less
accessible design.

~~~
duhi88
I wouldn't consider any of your criticisms as being "less accessible".

To take your example of the languages, the new design is more accessible. It
has a clearly labeled heading, and I can see the names of the languages are
being used without clicking on the bar. The old design has no hints that the
striped bar (or in the case of `linux`, grey) is supposed to be informative.
We're all just used to clicking that bar if we're curious.

It's clear they've optimized the layout around productivity, and making it
more approachable to new visitors. Everyone has their preferences, and new
designs are always tough to get right for everyone. "Less accessible" is the
wrong way to phrase your criticisms, though.

~~~
DreamScatter
They could have left the languages in the same place where it was before. Now
it requires extra input and mental effort to find the languages section. This
is definitely a step backwards.

Not complaining about the design of the new languages section, but the layout
is just completely terrible and useless.

~~~
jamespullar
I would regularly wow people by showing them the language feature existed. It
was obfuscated in the old layout and now it's readily available without any
additional clicks. Yes, my eyes have to scan to the side now, but to call it
"completely terrible and useless" is ridiculous. More users will discover this
feature now that it's been moved and made visible.

------
anonfunction
I don't mind the aesthetic design changes but the layout drives me crazy. I
count 4 separate alignments in the new repo page on my 15" macbook's full
width browser window!

I found and modified a Firefox user style to fix the alignment for wide
windows.

Original mozilla userstyle:
[https://gist.github.com/healingbrew/acc65ad439379eabdbb276e8...](https://gist.github.com/healingbrew/acc65ad439379eabdbb276e86975275e)

Modified stylish chrome extenstion userstyle:
[https://gist.github.com/montanaflynn/ca64cc0fcf55bcd4556a016...](https://gist.github.com/montanaflynn/ca64cc0fcf55bcd4556a016bffd8a7e3)

I use this regex so it doesn't apply on the full width logged in homepage or
/notifications:

    
    
        https:\/\/github\.com/(?!notifications)(.+)
    

Here are some screenshots.

Before: [https://imgur.com/3ogzYhI](https://imgur.com/3ogzYhI) After:
[https://imgur.com/8zMwTLL](https://imgur.com/8zMwTLL)

~~~
amarshall
Thank you for this, using it now.

------
bluefox
I've been using GitHub since 2008. My default browser has JavaScript disabled
for various reasons. It was not long after Microsoft acquired GitHub that the
UI changed for the worse, but it was minor and still very functional. Now,
it's terrible: the dates and commit information is missing, for example. I
expect soon it will reach GitLab "quality": unable to view source code without
JavaScript enabled. I'm still on the fence on whether to act on it now, for my
own projects, or wait for the fatal blow. Since much of the programming world
is on GitHub, this looks pretty bad for me.

~~~
efiecho
> I expect soon it will reach GitLab "quality": unable to view source code
> without JavaScript enabled.

I also hate GitLab for this, but I learned today that they are actually
working on fixing this, by shifting some components to server side rendering.
Awkward for me if GitLab suddenly will become the better choice.

~~~
bluefox
The way it looks now, a self-hosted gogs with a nojs patch may be the way
forward. The application-specific part (gogs.js) is <2kloc and it's already
rendering stuff on the server. I'm giving it a few weeks before I've had
enough...

~~~
j-james
You could also try out Sourcehut, which seems to fit your use case well.

[https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

------
juliendc
They are following the trends of flat design and rounded corners, which I
don’t really mind. I’m more bothered by the fact that nothing is aligned: the
GitHub logo, the breadcrumb, the horizontal menu and the issue title are all
on different verticals. Looks messy.

~~~
rowanseymour
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](https://imgur.com/a/wR9xsvT)

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

~~~
roryokane
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.

~~~
rowanseymour
For sure we can all learn through trial and error pretty much any UI. And I
know there are complaints any time any big site tries to do a redesign.

But a good UI should be intuitive for a first time user. This seems
objectively worse.

------
rowanseymour
It's not the layout I dislike but the styling which makes it harder to see
what is a button and what isn't, e.g. only 2 of these are clickable
[https://imgur.com/a/wR9xsvT](https://imgur.com/a/wR9xsvT)

~~~
slmjkdbtl
Reminds me of sr.ht who just straight up make every link blue + underline, on
the scale of design effectiveness it already beats 99% websites

------
kostarelo
I really like it, it's much more cleaner and despite all the comments in here,
I find it to be a very smooth transition. I wondered around for a few minutes
and pretty much mapped the whole changes.

I really don't get what's all the fuzz about.

~~~
granzymes
Looks like nothing I use regularly moved too far away. I like the new top bar
(I'm sure this will make it more mobile-friendly). One change I would make is
to give the README section a header so it is easier to see where to stop
scrolling if you are trying to get to it.

Overall a positive change since the pages are loading faster for me.

------
misnome
Ugh, they've gotten rid of the commit message, because they merged "commits"
"branches" "tags" into the header bar. If you want to see what the latest
commit was you need an additional click.

Turns out that glancing at the header was useful to tell what was going on!

On the plus side, GitLab's repo view (which I disliked because it felt
cluttered and always hard to find what I wanted) is now easier to use and read
than GitHub's, so that makes changing easier.

~~~
misnome
Also, I'm noticing a lot more "preload" pages ... e.g. the page loads with
blank placeholder fields for the commit and text information that's then
replaced live after loading the page. Maybe it did this before and is just
slower now?

~~~
verdverm
yup, this is a Jira move, GitHub sounds like it's on it's way down fast

~~~
misnome
My cynical guess is that they used “page load time” as a metric to prove their
new system was “faster”.

And maybe only tested internally on a faster system, or with hot-cache
repository loads? It doesn’t seem to do it on reloads, though going away for a
bit and coming back seems to cause it again (and, visibly, different parts of
the page load at different times).

Anyway, It definitely reeks of “enterprise” so I guess Microsoft finally got
enough people into github to steer the ship towards the iceberg.

~~~
verdverm
> reeks of “enterprise”

you made my day! thanks

------
MikusR
They destroyed the one thing Github had over alternatives (like gitlab). An
easily findable releases section.

~~~
driverdan
There's are large release section at the top of the right column. It's given
more real estate now than the simple link that was there before.

~~~
MikusR
Previously it was at the top in the same row as Code, Issues etc. Now without
scrolling it is at the bottom right corner.

~~~
tom_
It was a sub-heading in the Code section. See, e.g.,
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200320205539/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200320205539/https://github.com/torvalds/linux)

------
kn0where
The old Github was honestly a terrible UI. Not responsive at all, making it
awful on big and small screens. The information density feels the same to me;
it was low before and it’s low now, but at least diffs fill my screen (though
improved responsiveness is something they added within the last year tbf).
Unlike Jira, shit loads without a horrible amount of pop-in, and I don’t
really realize I’m using a SPA. They didn’t rearrange the core UI much, and I
don’t feel like I’m having to relearn anything. So overall, some ambiguous
buttons are my only complaint. Feels like a big improvement that was long
overdue.

------
matterhorn2000
Contrary to everyone else I really like the new design.

The metadata is placed to the right as it should have always been. The
languages are in the sidebar and are visible without me remembering that
typescript is somewhat dark blue.

Also the new look is more modern and unlike most people here I am not afraid
of change.

~~~
thex10
> and unlike most people here I am not afraid of change

Hear, hear!

I like the new design too. It overwhelmed me at first (somehow it felt really
'big' to me), and I'm still getting used to it on a visual level, but I
appreciate all the new bits of information that I can much more easily access
now (mostly in the repo sidebar).

I also appreciate that the new design doesn't actually change that much.
Overall, it still feels like... GitHub.

------
carlosdp
Honestly, it's a positive improvement. Better information layout, and the code
is still front and center. None of the core functions really changed place,
just changed padding a little.

~~~
verdverm
What about determining the language and license?

That used to be front and center and two of the most important things when I
land on a repo page.

~~~
carlosdp
I highly doubt that's the case for most people when using Github on a daily
basis though.

~~~
t0astbread
Really? I found that I only really look at the code when I look at projects
I'm involved in. Usually though I use GitHub for discovery and then I care
much more about the languages, commits, releases and Readme.

~~~
lostmsu
To be fair, that means you are not the one paying their bills.

~~~
verdverm
I pay them money on several accounts, maybe it's not enough and IBM asked them
to do this? I'm not sure how well MS and IBM get along, IBM saw them as public
enemy #1 when I left, but where paying for GitHub?

------
atarian
It looks OK, but I hate how the header is now justified to the edges instead
of being centered.

~~~
saghm
Ditto, and doubly so for the README. If I'm scrolled down further than the end
of the sidebar, the README, suddenly 40% of my screen is empty, and not even
split evenly on each side.

------
acemarke
As I just said on Twitter [0]:

> Hrm. I just got switched to Github's new look and feel... and tbh, I _don't_
> like it. I liked the 3D depth of the prior buttons. The new ones are too
> flat, the text is thinner, and they're too rounded. I appreciate that people
> worked on this, but... why was this change needed?

(See tweet for a screenshot comparison of the "New Issue" and "Edit" buttons
before and after)

[0]
[https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1275465823403020288](https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1275465823403020288)

------
karmakaze
I thought you all were exaggerating. So sorry not.

The commit list looked like it was doing some sort of eventual consistent
update, then I realized that hovering over different commits expands that one
shifting rows up/down as you hover on different items.

GitHub: under new management. My theory about management is like my theory for
bad music at venues. The management greenlights which acts will play,
unfortunately most owners don't have a clue, they themselves are not the
target audience. There are also legendary venues where obviously they were 'in
the know'.

~~~
jamespetercook
> “ There are also legendary venues where obviously they were 'in the know'.”

Could you elaborate on this?

~~~
rurp
I took it to mean that most music venues are managed by people who don't know
or care much about the music they book; however the best ones are run by
competent people who are also passionate about the music.

It seems like a pretty good analogy to me. A lot of UI redesigns (including
this one) seem like they were approved by people who liked the look of some
static mock-ups, but weren't regular users of the site. Lots of layouts look
great in a demo but are awful to use.

~~~
karmakaze
Yes exactly what I meant.

Even the changelog summary is similarly directionless:

> Today we’ve launched a refresh to the design of GitHub UI, and layout
> changes to your repository homepage. We hope these changes improve your
> experience visiting and maintaining repositories, and using GitHub in
> general. Along with visual design changes, you’ll see the the following
> updates to your repository homepage:
    
    
      - Responsive layout and improved mobile web experience
      - More content surfaced via the repository sidebar
      - Ability to show or hide Releases, Packages, and Environments in your repository sidebar
    

> These changes lay the foundation for future incremental improvements that
> will better surface your projects, the people who make them extraordinary,
> accessibility, and yes, dark mode.

The whole thing reads like it was an update to a landing page, which it is for
some projects. But it's also a core point of collaboration and workflow for
many, not to be rearranged without precise and deliberate intention for each
and every change. A "refresh to the design" rebrand to signal new ownership is
not welcome.

Edit: it's even really bad as a landing page. I just realized that the README
is now often 'below the fold' because of so much linespacing whitespace above
it.

The 'refresh' was clearly meant to be for its own sake and any improvements
secondary or incidental.

------
Sachaniman
Sign up for the developer feature previews, so you can give feedback to these
changes before they're published.

I gave some negative feedback about it earlier regarding this change, but it
seems I might have been a part of the minority.

~~~
holler
I gave feedback too and never heard anything. The rounded corners look
cartoonish, the header is terrible, moving releases and using a new column at
the right is terrible. Seriously w-t-h are they thinking? there was literally
nothing wrong with their existing UI.

~~~
lostmsu
I'd make the languages bar expanded by default, and for repositories where I
rarely contribute hide file list elsewhere (like on mobile), bringing README
to the top.

Also show latest release link with summary.

------
charlesdaniels
I don't much care for it. It seems to make much less efficient use of screen
real-estate. Information that used to be clustered tightly together is now
spread all over.

It seems to me like someone who doesn't actually use git professionally just
arbitrarily move things around for no discernible reason. The UI elements that
have moved don't seem to have any particular rhyme or reason. For example,
apparently the "security" tab is worth being in the tab bar, but the releases
aren't?

Frankly, I think it's inappropriate for a professional tool to change it's UI
arbitrarily, or even for a marginal benefit, since all of the great many
existing users now have to learn the new UI. These things should only be
modified if there is a clear and significant benefit that justifies the
trouble.

This makes me glad that I'm a Sourcehut user (
[https://sr.ht/](https://sr.ht/) ), since it's UI is much more sensible, and
faster to boot.

------
beshrkayali
On a 3840x2160 res it looks horrible, extremely stretched and honestly it
looks like someone's first web design, and if you zoom in it looks unbalanced.

There's no reason for the major layout change.

Sadly, this seems like yet another case of designers/project-managers having
nothing to do and wanting to feel useful every once in a while so they go
about redoing the design. Paypal, slack, spotify, and many others do it all
the time it, so why not github.

------
mscdex
Quick hack for Ublock Origin users to get everything lined up again (add this
to your filters): github.com#$#body{ max-width: 1280px !important; margin-
right: auto !important; margin-left: auto !important; }

~~~
Kyrio
That's perfect, thanks! I usually resort to Firefox's userContent.css file,
but the feature is now disabled by default, so I'm glad to hear uBO can do it
too.

Did GitHub only test their new layout on 4/3 screens? It looks so odd when the
project header is fluid but the project itself is still centered and 1280px
wide. Especially if you log out of GitHub, in which case the GitHub banner is
no longer fluid and makes the project header look really out of place[1].

[1] [https://imgur.com/3wOE7Nr](https://imgur.com/3wOE7Nr)

~~~
ntauthority
A 13" MacBook would have an effective horizontal resolution equivalent to 1280
pixels. It's likely that they designed this only for 200%-scaled laptops.

------
achr2
What a poor design, yikes. Did they seriously just use an off the shelf
'responsive' template and not think twice? We are programmers, this is code -
give me information density!

------
qqii
Example repository of a project that's invested in using GitHub:
[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs)

Discussion on /r/github:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/hei81f/](https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/hei81f/)

Personally I think it's an improvement on mobile - finally the entire README
is readable by default.

That being said was there any warning/reasoning behind the change? I cannot
find any announcements.

~~~
h91wka
> Personally I think it's an improvement on mobile

...because usage of Github from mobile is so important /s

~~~
qqii
Since some projects use their github README as a landing page and the rise of
termux, yeah I think it is important.

------
traverseda
I don't like change.

\---

Alright, that's a big of an exaggeration but I don't feel like this change is
nearly good enough to warrant significant changes to a professional tool I
use. Like if you want to completely change my user-experience you better at
least have a reason, not just do it for-the-lulz. After trying it out for a
while under the feature preview I really don't get why they did this.

------
rvz
It's never been a good time to try something else. That something new is
GitLab.

GitHub however, capsized one of its servers yesterday resulting in downtime
for some including me and today I wake up to this horrific eyesore that Github
has blasted onto my screen, which I can't revert or disable.

It now looks like a shameless rushed copy of the GitLab look. I'd rather use
GitLab for real instead.

------
greggman3
What do people feel about the code at the top (both old and new)

The thing I think I want at the top is the readme. If I'm looking for repos I
need to know what it is before I look at the code. If it's a repo I'm working
on I'm more likely to look at the code locally then the code on github. When I
do look at the code on github it doesn't need to be on the front page for me.
[https://github.com/username/reponame/code](https://github.com/username/reponame/code)
or the links to various branches would suffice for me. Even if I am looking
for the code the 95% of the time the code is not above the fold, instead there
are several lines of folders and config I don't care about and so I still have
to scroll down or search. In other words, the code at the top doesn't even
help for code.

To put it another way, the code at the top is actively hostile to what I need
to get done.

~~~
laumars
BitBucket follows this principle and it’s one of the main reasons I hate using
BitBucket.

The vast majority of the time I arrive at a git repository is because I want
the source.

~~~
greggman3
By "want the source" you mean you want to look at the source via the gitlab
website ?

I would interpret "want the source" as "I want to download the source" in
which case showing the files is useless. All you need is a "download source"
button

~~~
laumars
The conversation was about viewing the source online vs the README so clearly
I meant I want to glance through the source online. There's a few reasons I
might be doing this:

\- before deciding if I want to clone the repository.

\- Or sometimes I might just want to check the hooks of a particular API (eg
the outputs of a Terraform module) where there isn't really a need to manually
clone the repository just to validate some assumptions.

\- Sometimes I might want to quickly verify the code that's on origin master
is up-to-date (everyone has committed PRs and merged back into master).

\- Sometimes I might just want to validate what code kicked off the CI/CD
pipeline.

\- Sometimes I might be demoing some changes in the sprint review and rather
than spin up another IDE / switch branches / etc I might just open a new tab
and walk the team through what has been committed on Github

Also nobody was talking about Gitlab specifically. BitBucket and GitHub were
mentioned though.

~~~
greggman3
How would you know you even want to look at the code at all if you haven't
read the description of the code which is currently below all the code at the
bottom of the page?

I need to know what the project is and what it's trying to do before I have
any interest in looking at the code.

------
tomklein
I actually like it but I miss the small bar at the top containing the links to
the releases, commits, language information etc. in a single place. However, I
have a quiet big display with great color settings and didn't try it yet on my
smaller laptop displays.

I guess if your display doesn't show the light grays and shadows as well it
may suck.

------
tmabraham
GitHub what have you done?

I feel GitHub is making a lot of changes in a short amount of time and as
someone mentioned earlier, it really leads to additional friction in our
workflow. When we get used to one layout and then they change it, there is
time and effort required to get used to the new layout. It's fine if there is
some clear benefit, but I don't see any such benefit in this case...

------
sloreti
Frustrating that it no longer shows the latest commit message at the top by
default.

~~~
recursive
I'm not frustrated. In fact, I prefer the cleaner look. Now I'm not distracted
by extra information I don't care about 99% of the time.

------
NuSkooler
This feels like a huge step back. One of the first very obvious bits has been
pointed out numerous times in this thread already: The main panel is shrunk
down while various navigation is off in no-man's land.

------
arch-ninja
Tools which change like this never stand the test of time. A far better move
would have been to standardize GH APIs and provide native clients,
guaranteeing long-term utility on many platforms. Git passed the test of time,
but github likely will not.

Edit: today I learned a lot of young people sound like old people. Interesting
perspective.

------
joelkesler
The new layout of the repo screen is decent, but the new, overly-smooth UI
components are too much of a departure from the previous, well-done UI
components.

The way the top tab/nav bar stretches across the screen, while the content is
centered feels broken to me.

[https://twitter.com/joelkesler/status/1275557934290755584](https://twitter.com/joelkesler/status/1275557934290755584)

(above) I mocked up what the repo screen could look like if it used Github's
previous UI with the new layout (and fixed the fluid tab bar!)

------
montalbano
It's all fine for me except:

main repository view on widescreen puts all the "Code, Issues, Pull Requests
etc..." buttons way over to the left. Why not just centre it like the
repository files view below it? Seems completely bizarre and adds extra mouse
movement between files and the buttons above.

------
dugmartin
A little weird that the top nav in a repo is flush left instead of using auto
margins and a max-width like the rest of the page under the nav.

------
pan69
Overall this design change doesn't matter to me. The only thing that really
stands out and that annoys the hell out of me is the circular profile images.
It looks completely out of place compared to all the other elements on screen,
even their generated profile images don't fit in it correctly. It seems that
this decision was made not from "add value" point of view but someone just
really liked Instagram or the look of some other social network and shoehorned
it in there.

~~~
jomar
I dislike large swathes of the new repository view, and I also especially
dislike the circular profile images.

Fortunately it's easy to use a little custom CSS to revert them to square
images, at least for now:

[https://gist.github.com/jmarshall/a880c93725ee727abb54473582...](https://gist.github.com/jmarshall/a880c93725ee727abb5447358292b314)

------
exochrono
I haven't had too much time to play around with it yet today, but Github is
core to our development workflow and productivity workflow. Everything for our
small team is tracked in GH issues and tagged with labels, and of course all
our code goes through GH PRs. IMHO the features I use most (issues, pull
requests, code browsing) didn't take any discovery to continue using normally
and the interface was much faster, so I am a fan.

------
RNCTX
It's bad.

The only way they could do such a thing and not drive people away would be to
come up with more useful features, but their redesign seems to have less basic
functionality than the old UI did.

Microsoft will understand that github users don't care about their "branding"
and if they don't, they'll simply drive those billions of dollars into an
early grave like Yahoo does with everything that Yahoo buys.

------
lizerome
>the buttons in the header are separated to the extreme ends of the screen

>...but the elements in the global site header aren't (for some reason)

>the selected tab has a thin underline which is harder to recognize than a
colored background, and isn't as clear (does it mean I'm currently hovering
over it, does it just mean that section is important, is it the same as a
notification badge, etc)

>the main column is off-center

>there's no separation or contrast between the list elements, making it harder
to align things by eye

>the readme section doesn't have a header, making it look like the text
"README" is part of the document itself

>there's an entire second column in the layout, placing both on an equal level
of importance

>...but it only has a single paragraph in it, which leaves you with an empty
column taking up space 95% of the time

>if a project doesn't have something, the sidebar will simply omit that
section instead of showing the same element with the text "0 releases", "0
branches", etc.

>...which in turn trains you to ignore the contents of that column and not
expect to find things there

>this also applies to the "about" text, the purpose of which is literally to
be the first thing you see when loading the page - now in the sidebar,
sandwiched between three lines of text in the same font, color, weight and
length

>the labels at the bottom of the page are spaced out evenly, which actually
makes them feel HARDER to click (the sizes of the hitboxes are the same,
they're just much further apart) in addition to looking ridiculous

Guys, stop complaining. You're just afraid of change.

------
redisman
Well I can tell it's a Microsoft project now. Not in a good way. People almost
never like re-designs so maybe it'll feel natural later, it's not terrible.
Just sterile and corporate feeling.

~~~
Quelklef
Yeah. I think that the new layout is fine, but I really don't like that it
doesn't look like GitHub anymore. It looks like every other modern UI out
there.

------
thegabez
Worst UI update to GitHub I've ever seen. Reminds me of GitLab. Who thought
this would be a good idea? Shame, they could have used the resources for
updates that would actually make GitHub better.

~~~
fuzzy2
This looks nothing like GitLab.

------
amadeuspagel
I don't see what's wrong with it. One thing I love about it is that I can now
finally read readmes even if the window is only half or even a third of the
width of my screen. Other then that it just looks a bit more modern.

One thing I just slightly dislike is that the width of the body is limited,
but not the width of the header. Looks inconsistent.

~~~
verdverm
wait, how do you find readmes easier now?

They used to be full width no matter how wide your window was (I put to 1/2
for browser). Now they only occupy 70% of that space. So I just lost 30% of my
readme width to empty space. This is just terrible UX

~~~
WorldMaker
GitHub never had full width pages before of the Repo interface. They used a
giant gutter on both sides on widescreens in classic Web 1.0 blog template
fashion. That ~30% empty space has always been there beside the README, it's
just now consolidated to a single side and used to bring a few more bits of
information "above the fold".

------
Thorentis
Since the repo screen is now basically full width, why not add a simple commit
stream on the left? (So make it three columns instead of two). The most
important thing I look for when checking out a repo, is how much commit
activity there is and what sort of things are being worked on. It gives you a
good sense of the health of the project.

So in the middle you have the files, and the action buttons above that, on the
right you have info on langs, the contributors, the "About" blurb, but on the
left you could put a (live updating?) commit stream with just a small
contributor pic and name, hash, time stamp (x days ago), and the first bit of
the commit message.

EDIT: Instead of just a commit stream, why not add a "repo feed" on the left?
Includes new issues, PRs, commits, etc. Live updates (animates new ones
bumping into the top).

------
Dowwie
I've been really happy with Github Dark:
[https://github.com/StylishThemes/GitHub-
Dark](https://github.com/StylishThemes/GitHub-Dark)

I can't relate to the OP's preference for Gitlab's UI. Gitlab UI is the reason
why I don't use Gitlab.

~~~
verdverm
I don't have preference for GitLab.

I do not like Jira, and if GitHub starts to be Jira, definitely looking
elsewhere.

GitLab seems like the next best option. Any other suggestions welcome too!

------
phillipcarter
I'm completely neutral. They've changed their UI many times over the years and
this is no different. Products usually change UI and that's just a fact of
life.

~~~
gruez
>They've changed their UI many times over the years and this is no different.
Products usually change UI and that's just a fact of life.

Your justification for bad redesigns is that... other companies do it too?
That's a very apathetic/defeatist attitude.

~~~
dntrkv
Most of the time it isn't bad UI but a vocal minority that just hates any
change.

It's not like these companies release these changes without doing significant
user testing and AB testing. If you design based on the opinions of
HN/Twitter, every site would look like Craigslist (or HN's favorite
abomination of a design, the Berkshire Hathaway site).

------
Stevvo
I'm not sure yet, 30 minutes isn't long enough with it to form an opinion. My
initial reaction was, What? Why has this changed? I didn't see anything wrong
with the old one.

I do like that sponsors appears more prominently; for a very long time
financial incentives have been an unsolved problem in open source.

------
peterwwillis
Imagine waking up one day and suddenly your apartment is completely different
than when you went to sleep. You stumble around, bewildered. You go into the
bathroom... and it's the kitchen. You go back and turn left around a corner...
and it's not the living room, it's the garage. The entryway to the living room
was through the kitchen.

According to the new designers of the apartment you rent, this configuration
is _much_ more efficient. Meanwhile, for the next two weeks, every time you
want to take a pee, you end up wandering into the wrong rooms looking for a
toilet.

Product Owners: please don't treat your users like an afterthought, or refuse
to help them adapt to the changes you didn't even ask them to accept. It's
careless, and makes users immediately dislike your product.

------
bergwerf
I like that GitHub is one of the few websites that kept roughly the same
design for years. Design is something that gets familiar, and I believe it
helps your brain when it is not changing all the time. I would like to see an
explanation from GitHub's side as to why this change was needed.

------
jmiskovic
A related question: Why is it so hard to find a most up-to-date fork?

When I come upon a useful lib, there would often be hundreds of forks. 99% of
those forks don't make any commit on top of upstream repo. Why even bother
forking if you're not actually changing the code? Can we agree those are
useless and just hide them in GitHub interface?

You can list all the forks on GitHub, there's even a nice hierarchy, but no
other information. So you open hundred tabs and scan all the forks to see if
they are ahead or behind the original. There must be a better way! Few years
back there was a graph that took forever to load, but it gave good idea of
commits that each fork applied on top of original. Is it still available?

~~~
jmiskovic
It seems fork graph as a feature is now available only to GitHub Pro / Teams
accounts.

------
dilap
Yeah, it's bullshit. I think once a company gets "big" and corporate enough,
focus somehow dissipates away from actual usability into...something else. See
also: all recent changes to Slack.

Maybe this is just because the best people are drawn to work on new products?

Another insane example of this is scrolling in the iOS AppStore app. If your
finger happens to start a scroll on a button, the scroll is just _completely
ignored_.

Apple used to write entire carefully-considered tech reports about how to
handle this case (until the finger starts to move or some time has passed w/o
moving, you're in a limbo state where a button tap or scroll can't be
distinguished), but now they don't even _try_ to get it right.

------
battery423
I'm not sure why you would get rid of the table lines.

Like "hey lets get rid of the eye guidance thingy, so it looks less like a
table?!"

------
Seb-C
I mostly don't mind (like 99% of redesign these days, it is pointless), but
the new one makes many things harder to read: \- I don't know which menu or
tab is selected (the tiny border is not obvious enough) \- The buttons don't
have a state anymore, so figuring out if I am following this repository or not
is difficult \- The file browser does not have a clear separation (border) for
each file, nor does it have alternating background colors. That makes the
navigation harder. \- I am disappointed to see that the redesign did not get
rid of the useless in-page loader when I click on a link. This is annoying and
breaks my normal navigation.

------
perryizgr8
I am no UI expert so I will not try to evaluate the old vs new UI. However, I
want to say that I really like the way Github has looked and functioned. It
feel lightweight and it feels like someone just built it up from basic html.
For example, you can right click the "go to file" button and open it in a new
tab and it works like any standard link. Compare that to any button on
facebook or youtube or gmail which are probably not even real html buttons,
you can't expect them to properly open in a new tab.

------
flaque
Personally, I love that it fits perfectly in exactly half of a 15-inch Macbook
Pro screen. That's always how I have GitHub open and it bugged me that it
didn't fit right before.

------
feikname
I think it's way more responsive, which is good.

Hoowever, the increased use of horizontal space makes it _harder_ to read
(imagine HN without the blank sides) and I believe the information density has
been lost a notch way too much.

All in all I think I prefer the previous design because to me information
readability comes first.

It actually becomes pretty decent if you zoom out to 80% in Firefox although
the text becomes a tad too small. I believe making an extension to increase
information density shouldn't be too hard.

------
sdinsn
I don't like it. I thought the old layout was pretty much perfect, no need to
change anything.

------
alexmingoia
Nothing has been improved, only changed for the sake of change. A redesign
without a user requirement or business concern indicates mismanagement. If
designers or management wanted a new look they should have coupled it with
functional interface improvements. Changing the style alone has a lot more
potential downside than upside.

And of course in the quest to re-skin everything for no reason, important
things like last commit message and status were removed.

------
greatgib
Indeed, that is shitty cloggy. Yes a MS or Google move where you break
something that works well because of product managers that want "new things"
to sell.

------
snissn
1) it lists "contributors" in the corner and listed an old employee which made
me worry that they were still able to access the repository. they're not. i
don't need to see their profile on my repo, it's not helpful 2) because of
that I noticed that i'd been paying for two additional seats for god knows how
long and downgraded. I'm kind of disappointed i've been overbilled for no
reason

------
gadrev
They could use some alignment. It's one of the basic rules in design, and it
really seems a bit off when the files are centered but the hmenu with Issues,
PRs... is left-aligned. Maybe they had some cramming issues when there are
many extra buttons in that row, since some only show up in certain cases, like
the Settings button.

Other things aren't so bad but I don't think they make up for breaking the
general alignment in such an obvious way.

------
deposition
There's not enough contrast compared to the old design.

------
yogthos
It feels like change for the sake of change to me. There doesn't appear to be
any actual improvement in terms of UI or functionality as far as I can tell.

------
retorquere
It's fugly. I thought a plugin broke rendering on GH. This seems like a change
for change's sake -- I don't see what this was supposed to accomplish.

Put back the "releases" link where it belongs for a start. And why is the
code-issues-pullrequest etc left-aligned and the content it governs centered?
How did this get out the door?

------
lukeramsden
I generally liked the new design in the feature preview, except for the new
repo page, which I immediately opted back out of.

The "About" being moved to the right side is a good move, but the top bar
being full-width is incredibly annoying.

If this is any taste of things to come, then I imagine I'll be moving to
Sourcehut permanently earlier than I thought.

~~~
verdverm
I've actually been thinking about GitLab since Sid interviewed Joe Jacks.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk_DNX8LGuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk_DNX8LGuM)

I'm thinking of moving just to support another COSS (Commercial OSS) company.
[https://coss.media](https://coss.media)

------
whalesalad
I've been previewing this for a while. My biggest gripe is the treatment on
all of the buttons. They look like they are depressed when they aren't and
don't stand out as remarkably as a call-to-action the way the old buttons did.
The easing on the hover animations is way too slow, as well. It just feels
half-assed.

------
diob
I think I dislike the new repo view because the two main columns are reversed
from what my brain thinks they should be.

Did a quick jumble of the html and css to things I would prefer:
[https://imgur.com/a/1HEROxa](https://imgur.com/a/1HEROxa)

Not perfect but I like it more than what they went with.

------
t0astbread
A few months ago I think there were some fan-made "GitHub redesigns" floating
around that sorta looked like this. It kinda reminds me of those crazy
futuristic video game console "leak" videos (à la "This will be PlayStation in
2020!!") followed by the reveal of the actual new PlayStation design.

------
martinesko36
I hate it. It nixed any contrast.

~~~
verdverm
Right, like this is such an obviously bad design pattern and yet they still do
it. I just don't understand where design is as a science or art anymore...

~~~
martinesko36
It is redesign for sake of redesign unfortunately. My guess is GitHub/MS has a
bunch of designers paid full-time and they need to justify their salaries.

------
jlarocco
I think it's great. It's about time they started using more of the available
screen space. If I want a tiny view I'll shrink the window.

Since this seems to be such a contentious issue, I wonder why they didn't keep
the original style around as an option? Aren't stylesheets supposed to make
that easy?

------
Ardefactual
Why would I want to be able to see a bunch of meaningless icons for
contributors? Why is this being prioritized in one of the highest visual-
traffic sections of the layout? Why would I want to see what percentage of the
project is in different languages as a high priority piece of information?

Like, 100% agreement with everyone complaining about how the sidebar de-
centers the README, agreed, that's awful, but what rubs salt into the wound is
the sidebar is full of useless garbage! Both as a contributor of code and as a
consumer it's hard to imagine things I'd care about less. Have it in a cute
little "info" tab that no one will ever click like all useless information,
and keep the landing page of a project for essential information.

------
nshm
One very important positive thing is that the whole readme is now displayed on
mobile version and that is the one which is indexed by Google.

Previously they only shown few top lines and thus all README was not visible
in the search engine. Something that awesomeopensource took huge advantage of.

I wish they can enable google analytics on Github pages.

------
ulisesrmzroche
It’s a good redesign. Not great but that’s ok. What we need to talk about is
the quality of the criticism. It on par with the “why would anyone use Dropbox
when rsync exists”

People hate websites that look like they were designed by a programmer.
Programmers hate websites that look like they were designed by a programmer

------
dec0dedab0de
Fullscreen on my large monitor it looks ridiculous. On my phone it seems ok,
except firefox crashed at one point.

Developer tools should really be desktop first, instead of mobile first. I
always wonder why we all use bootstrap as our goto so the site works on
mobile, but then twitter barely works on a mobile browser.

------
arshbot
Some positive feedback that may be overlooked with all the UI changes:

Love that releases are shown prominently on the repo page! It's always been a
'trick' of mine to check for releases for a repo by appending `/releases/` to
the URL. Now I don't have to, and can just peek at a glance.

------
NoKnowledge
It's broken for me, thanks to the "responsive" design. When the browser window
occupies half my screen (1920x1080px), the top-right menus (bell, plus,
profile) get replaced with only a bell icon. How am I supposed to reach the
settings page now?

------
janpot
I often go to a repo and look at the recent commit history. Maybe it was just
muscle memory, but I keep struggling finding where to click for this,
especially on mobile. Doing this now takes me considerably more time with the
new design. (been on this for a week or so)

------
est31
The worst part for me is the rounded avatars (the other rounded stuff is
okay). So many pictures on github weren't built for rounding. My own avatar is
cut off as well. I hope they revert it, but if it sticks around for a while I
guess I'll have to update my avatar.

------
microcolonel
I guess the upshot of GitHub burning their design advantage is that I no
longer have to justify that when using GitLab. As a relatively long-time
GitLab user, my feedback every time they change the design (often for the
worse, in the same way as GitHub has now done) has been “make it more like
GitHub”. Now what do I point at? SourceHut?

I guess it is SourceHut actually; I think it could use a bit more
texture/skeumorph on things like tabs and buttons, but it is so clean,
especially since it uses my default sans serif font (which is condensed).
There's just so much to do right, see:
[https://qui.suis.je/drop/sourcehut.png](https://qui.suis.je/drop/sourcehut.png)

------
wiredfool
Scrolling feels jankier on large syntax highlighted pages.

The livesearch loses focus, then selects the whole item if you pause for a
second. If you then continue, the search is borked.

If you search fo something in an organization, the next time you try to search
it searches the whole site.

------
perpetualgrimac
A friend of mine dislikes the redesign due to (a) the sidebar taking up too
much space and (b) the lack of gridlines in the file listing. Here's some CSS
that addresses those issues in case anyone else wants to blast it in via
browser extension:

.repository-content > .d-flex { flex-direction: column !important; }
.repository-content > .d-flex > * { width: 100% !important; padding-left: 0
!important; padding-right: 0 !important; } .repository-content > .d-flex >
:last-child { margin-top: 2rem !important; } .Box-row:not(:last-child) {
border-bottom: 1px solid #e1e4e8 !important; }

------
yellowapple
I do like that the page does a better job of filling the window; nothing irks
me more than wasted space.

I also like that it's a lot friendlier to narrow windows (no horizontal
overflow/scrolling); makes it more convenient to put it side-by-side with
something else.

------
bewestphal
I’m open to change. But I question whether this was necessary.

I’ve admired Github for having a clear and readable UI that didn’t change. All
their UI feature additions before I thought were fantastic.

Devs don’t want to have learn new things if not necessary. I’m hoping it will
grow on me.

------
andy_ppp
It seems fine to me in that I'm using it and have barely noticed apart from I
have to scroll a bit more. It always amazes me somehow everyone thinks of the
same ideas at the same time. MacOS Big Sur feels very reminiscent of some of
these changes...

------
a_bored_husky
A small bookmarklet that improves the design in my opinion

    
    
        javascript:void(document.getElementsByClassName("gutter-condensed")[0].childNodes[3].after(document.getElementsByClassName("gutter-condensed")[0].childNodes[1]))

------
conradfr
The picture on the profile page is so comically big.

I'm not sure what was wrong with the old design. Now everything is too rounded
and flat and there's not enough contrast.

I also liked GitHub better years ago when the top bar was not black, so yeah I
can hold a grudge :)

------
saagarjha
Wow, they rolled that out quick! I think they were pushing the beta just a
week or two ago…

~~~
verdverm
Yeah, I think they forgot to take the time to listen to their users

------
miguelmota
Never liked how Microsoft designed things because it feels unfinished and
contrast of colors is bad. Certain content is pushed to the edges of the
screen for no good reason and some of the fonts are a light in color making it
hard to read. The commits link is not obvious anymore that it's clickable.

The redesign is not that bad but there's still a lot to improve on. Before it
was easier to scan the page from top to bottom but now the page feels a lot
more busier because there's more dropdowns and sidebars. I feel like my eyes
are jumping all over the place trying to locate things now. Wish they had
chosen functionality over design.

------
riccardogiorato
A list of feedbacks on the new UI here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/heknhd/some_real_fe...](https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/heknhd/some_real_feedback_on_the_new_ui_changes_tweets/)

Personally I would love to see some fixes to the project page where with the
new Design you waste ton of space on the screen for things that you could see
before just in a small row now they take 20/30% of the right part of the
screen just if you don't scroll and if you scroll down you get 50% of the
screen or more just white...

------
hoss_pumpkin
It looks kinda (being liberal here) like the old theme, but slightly worse and
it has issues:

1.) Everything feels left especially on my 21:9 display. This makes going from
opening issues to clicking "Code" a very long mouse movement.

2.) There aren't grid lines on the file view.

3.) It looks unprofessional. Professional tools have this feel to them, and
this new theme doesn't have it. It feels like a toy that shouldn't be in the
toolbox.

At this point I may just move to GitLab. It seems more feature packed and you
can have it mirror a repo to GitHub for the users don't want to make the
switch.

------
CGamesPlay
My browser window is 1059x751 (inner dimensions; to get yours, open your web
inspector and type window.innerWidth). For context, this is a desktop machine,
but those dimensions fall into Bootstrap's "tablet" size. The only thing I
immediately noticed is that README's on the project root have lots of wasted
space to their right. Interestingly, historical versions of Github seem to go
back and forth on this (the presence of a sidebar) every major redesign.

> Migrating to gitlab...

Wow, some serious "looks like JIRA" PTSD there. Did Gitlab promise they
wouldn't redesign?

------
amedvednikov
I think the old github design was perfect.

Upcoming [https://gitly.org](https://gitly.org) is going to have a similar
design, even simpler.

It's written in V, so it's very light and fast. Open source release this week.

Other features (from the readme):

\- Minimal amount of RAM usage (works great on the cheapest $3.5 AWS Lightsail
instance)

\- Easy to deploy (a single <1 MB binary that includes compiled templates)

\- Works without JavaScript

\- Detailed language stats for each directory

\- "Top files" feature to give an overview of the project

[https://github.com/vlang/gitly](https://github.com/vlang/gitly)

~~~
ajoseps
why is there so much dead space when you scroll down past the footer?

------
stockkid
Personally I have noticed some changes, but nothing that impacted my
productivity in any significant way, and paid no more attention.

I believe sometimes we tend to overreact to certain changes that have minimal
impact on our lives, because of our attachments to the tools. For instance, on
HN, we seem to get a sea of "That's it I'm moving to Firefox/GitLab/etc.."
comments often when their counterparts change something. Sometimes those
reactions seem warranted, and in this case, not really.

------
cgreerrun
I wish the code panel was collapsed by default on the repo home page, so that
you could see the README section front and center.

That's usually the first thing I read. Then I dive into one or two files to
check things out.

------
VariantXYZ
The commit message not being shown anymore and the CI status badges not
showing up kinda suck. Otherwise, as a repo maintainer I don't really see much
other benefit.

As a user, I do appreciate releases being just... there on the front page.
That's really about it though. Everything else sorta just feels the same.

Also, I don't mind using the right side for more information but... can we
just left-justify the whole page instead of centering it? It'd provide way
more space for info on the right and wouldn't... just be completely empty on
the left.

------
dawnerd
I'm not a fan of the repo being center contained, but the navigation being
full width. Things don't line up like they should and it just looks weird.
Otherwise no real complaints about it.

------
etimberg
With the new notification layout, I lose a lot of vertical screen real estate
on a laptop. Between the site header, the repo header, and the notification
bar I probably lose 50% of my screen.

------
mcintyre1994
Not sure if it’s part of the new design or just a feature I haven’t seen
before, but converting links to a line of code into a code view displaying
that code in issues is great.

------
talideon
In aggregate, I neither like it nor hate it. But here's what I hate:

* It's even flatter than the previous layout, which makes it more difficult to use. In particular, it's easy to miss the branch dropdown. * It no longer shows the last commit message, which is an extremely useful thing to be able to see, as others have noted. If space is an issue, they should shift the junk on the right of that section up beside the 'branches' dropdown.

------
peternicky
I tried the new layout when offered as a beta feature and very quickly
realized it was a regression in terms of ease of access to the information I
want when I navigate to a repo page. I’ve submitted multiple feedback messages
and was shocked when this was pushed through. Natfriedman, please consider
these points.

------
kanglelin
I think it was much cleaner, does anyone hate it actually?

------
brainzap
I think "Release" deserves to be in the tab, I use that feature a lot. For
example Microsoft uses it heavy to provide changelogs to users.

------
GuiA
I'm surprised I'm not seeing more people talk about source hut
([https://sr.ht](https://sr.ht)) on HN. If you're a github/gitlab/git* user it
does all the things you want, has a lightweight text focused interface, it's
run sustainably, que demande le peuple.

I am not affiliated with Source Hut in anyway other than being a satisfied
customer.

------
FZambia
I also don't really like new design of main repo page. Repo short description
on the right – so inconvenient. BTW this is how it looks on mobile:
[https://i.imgur.com/SqV23WN.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/SqV23WN.jpg) \- the most
interesting things about repo usually located in first lines of README - now
we can't see it.

------
sbr464
I also found that it took a while to find the commits page. Not GitHub web
related, but on the mobile app, 2 issues I've came across:

1\. Not being able to click to a repo home page if you are on a nested page,
or link to a file from the web etc.

2\. Markdown files displaying in raw form when someone links to a ReadMe.md
file directly etc.

------
anonymousab
I'm not the biggest fan, but the site seems functionally much faster on the
massive repos I'm working with. Overall a net benefit.

~~~
azangru
Wonder how it performs on definitely_typed :-)

UPD: Nah, it can't handle it.

------
makecheck
They need to get rid of the “sign up for GitHub” thing, which is especially
egregious on mobile where it’s half of the initial screen. I hate having to
scroll just to see things.

I’d imagine 99% of visitors _are_ on GitHub but, like me, are not always
_logged in_ and I’m not _going_ to when checking simple things.

------
agustamir
Okay, is just me or does anybody else reduce the screen magnification by
10-20% when companies "refresh" their UIs?

~~~
vaccarium
Not just you. I have to use Google search at 80% magnification tops, otherwise
the results don't really fit on the screen.

------
tenryuu
Made my own userstyle to alter it all. I removed a lot of the rounded corners
on pretty much everything. They're still round (2px perhaps), but not as
dramatic as they are being served. Only problem is that I didn't save the damn
thing before my browser crashed. And critically, made avatars square again

------
efiecho
Ugh, that's not good. Latest commit message and date will not display under <>
Code without Javascript enabled, but if I click around in the repository and
go back to <> Code or keep refreshing the page, they suddenly show up, still
with Javascript disabled. Can anyone explain this?

However, I do like the visual part of the new layout.

~~~
recursive
I don't see commit messages inside the "Code" menu item anywhere, with or
without javascript or reloading. You have to click a commit hash to see its
message. I think this is an improvement.

------
some_developer
Everything which is a list becomes harder to read / get an overview due to the
new width (files, issues, PRs). Color changes don't exactly help either.

But for the diff view, it's great to see more of the line width.

Miss the last commit message and especially the status of it. Seems like a
major loss of information to me.

------
sixers2329
The releases on the sidebar is handy, but something about the top of the page
feels... disconnected. I think I’d like the “about” section at the top rather
than in the sidebar. Getting rid of the double nav is a good improvement.

The non-centered readme is a little triggering, but maybe I just need to get
used to it

------
heipei
Ugh, just realised how bad it is. The menu bar and repo toolbar are float
left/right but the repo content is in a centered max-width div which means
that it does not align with the buttons and text in the bars above it at all.
Who the hell came up with that design, it's unusable!

------
RileyJames
Hmmm. The new design seems to be pushing hard towards "dev in the browser"
with the new. "Add file", which forks the project, and drops you straight to
editing a new file, ready for commit.

Kinda interesting. But beyond a README, I can't imagine making any significant
edits this way.

------
michaelangerman
>> They've added a right-sidebar that shows various info about the repo in
general, like what the last release is.

How do I get rid of the right-sidebar ? This is terrible and a complete waste
of real estate. And hopefully someone will tell me how to get rid of it...
Thank you !

------
lukasdanin
My only suggestion in to move the Sidebar to the left when viewing a
repository's files/commits, or at least give us the option to do so, which is
easily doable by injecting custom CSSs into the page using Stylus btw.

Everything looks great so far, so kudos for everyone involved.

------
dandep
I really can't look at a list of items without separating lines, i think it's
a basic need.

------
antpls
I don't have repo on GitHub, but the mobile version is better for me so far.
It uses all the screen space, and now we can finally see the language bar (%
of languages used in the repo) on mobile version, which wasn't possible
before.

------
arrayjumper
Using inspect, I did two things -

    
    
      - removed all the rounded edges
      - added lines dividing the rows in the files table
    

It looks way better with these two things in my opinion. Maybe someone can
create a browser extension which does these things.

~~~
Quelklef
You can use Stylish [0] to write custom per-site CSS!

[0] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-
the...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish-custom-themes-
for/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe)

------
Retr0spectrum
I'm pretty change-averse, so I tend to navigate sites like GitHhub by
memorising URL paths of pages I frequently use. For example, I have /commits
and /releases memorized. This makes it much easier for me to adjust to weird
design changes.

------
darepublic
I don't like the clone button is now a big ugly pill button. I will probably
get used to it, but damn you github UX designers, fixing what ain't fucking
broke. You should use your fucking creative brains for real problems,
PLEASE!!!

------
csande17
One how'd-they-ship-this regression is the weird double focus ring that
appears when you click the search bar on
[https://gist.github.com/discover](https://gist.github.com/discover) .

------
prputnam
In a quick browse of the thread I didn't see this mentioned yet - it seems to
have broken multi-line suggestions which I thought was a great addition.

I do wish there was an option to use more screen-width, and this does seem to
be a step in that direction.

------
jedwards1211
My first thought was good ol' Microsoft UX design...

Wish they had kept the description and page URL top and center.

And at least made the tabs and badges area the same width as the content. I
bet they'll eventually come to their senses about that.

------
MH15
The only problem I have with the design is the repo header not being centered.
I'll fix this with some userstyle CSS but it's a terrible design pattern.
Other then that I actually really like how it looks/feels/works.

------
dwarfstarlinux
It does not feel like GotHub anymore. The old layout always had a more robust
feel. Now it is too modern. The main thing that bugs me is that the languages
of the repository are at the bottom right now instead of the top.

------
keyle
I don't think it's worth "migrating away" but the new design does feel even
flatter to me and the removal of row lines is a step back in readability. I
feel like my screen needs further calibrating...

------
Kiro
Like with every redesign everyone will eventually get used to it and
completely forget how the old one looked. When the next redesign happens
everyone will rage the same way and say they want the "old" design back.

~~~
DreamScatter
Wrong, this redesign is awkward. If it was a good design, then people wouldn't
complain about it. However, it really is a step backwards.

~~~
recursive
> If it was a good design, then people wouldn't complain about it.

In that case, I submit that good design doesn't exist. I've never seen a major
redesign that wasn't widely complained about.

~~~
DreamScatter
So you're going to ignore all criticism when you make a huge redesign?

There are valid complaints about this. I rarely complain about website design,
and this time I am compelled to criticize it.

~~~
Kiro
The difference is that it's about a service you use a lot so you automatically
get conservative and defensive about the design. This is no different than
people joining groups on Facebook "WE DEMAND THE OLD DESIGN BACK" every time
they do a redesign.

------
wnevets
I kinda dislike it. I was part of the beta earlier this month and I switched
back.

------
alfg
Not a fan of the new rounded corners on everything. Also, don't like how a
repository's navigation is no longer aligned with the content of the
repository itself. Just seems off.

Other than those two, everything else seems OK.

~~~
duderific
Agree re the rounded corners. I think they were rounded before, but only two
or three pixels maybe. Now with the greater rounding (which also forced them
to increase padding to accommodate the rounding), it looks kind of cartoonish,
rather than crisp and polished as before.

------
maxwroc
The header sucks on the ultra-wide monitors as you have one set of the buttons
on the left side and other on the right while the main content is in the
middle.

It completely destroys typical page parsing habits.

------
Insanity
I think it's fine really. I wouldn't say it's an improvement over the previous
version, but it's not worse either. Took a bit getting used to, but I can
still find my way around the repo.

------
quickthrower2
I'm used to Jira changing their interface more often than my socks get holes
in them. So this is small potato and my well trained UX boobytrap avoiding
subconscious navigated it beautifully.

------
hartator
I don’t like it either. White spaces and margin added for the sake of clarity
when it makes it less readable. No more strict centering anymore. Avatar being
rounded makes them loss information.

------
udkl
A relevant discussion from 2019
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19276113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19276113)

------
pcj-github
I feel like they are setting up a design iteration pathway to making changes
that will ultimately make it look more like vscode. Seems like a MSFT
influenced-thing. Don't love it.

------
math0ne
The number one thing I do on github is read README files and adding a right
column just makes the area I use to do that smaller.

The header thing must be a bug, I can't imagine that won't get fixed.

------
superasn
It's a disaster. I was so happy that i could just turn it off but now they
have removed that option. Reddit really has done a great service keeping
old.reddit.com, wish gh did too.

------
jventura
It looks more like gitlab!

~~~
verdverm
I don't see this sidebar on the repo page in GitLab.

Jira has this, thus my association and triggering ;]

------
ddevault
Disclaimer: Founder of a GitHub competitor here

I use GitHub very little these days, and have mostly removed it from my daily
workflow. But, on the whole, I mostly like the new design. It's more pleasing
to look at, and doesn't really interfere with the things I still come to
GitHub to do.

I still feel that the notifications redesign was poorly done, however, and
that's where I spend most of my time. I ended up completely disabling almost
all of my GitHub notifications as a result. The notifications redesign drove
me from visiting GitHub a a few times per day to a couple of times per week.
But to be honest, my usage was already on the wane by then, it may have just
accellerated it.

------
meddlepal
I am really not enjoying the fact my eyes have to move from center where the
repo contents are to the top left to see the navigation... I really liked it
when it was all centered.

------
Rochus
The number of repositories is no longer displayed, or did I miss it?

------
arriu
Too many rounded corners for my taste.

Functionaly, I'm having trouble finding things. Half of it is just because
it's new but honestly some of it is due to stretching information apart.

~~~
adventured
The last version of GitHub had as many rounded corners. They didn't change
that, they increased the roundness (they increased the border-radius).

------
smabie
I really like it. Looks really good. It's possible that they could put more
information on one screen, but I'm sure they'll iterate and add some tweaks.

------
rezonant
My biggest problem is the Find File feature no longer shows up on mobile...
This is a super handy feature for mobile specifically. Hopefully they'll put
it back.

------
throw_m239339
It doesn't look good, but it's not that bad either. But I don't think GitHub
needed a layout change on desktop screens. They should increase the margins a
bit.

------
abathur
I got the option to opt into this "feature" a few (4? 5?) days ago. I've been
intending to give feedback, but haven't had time, yet, to take screenshots and
marshal my thoughts.

I don't want to over-perform it, but I'm annoyed GH bothered prompting me for
feedback on something that they were going to general release in less than a
week anyways. I'm not really a cranky person, but I already wasted an hour of
my life looking for some good plugins that would help me annotate the page to
illustrate my thoughts.

I have a billion things more important than giving GH free feedback on my
plate, but I was nonetheless naively looking forward to giving feedback on it
because it was the first time I've ever been opted into a UI experiment where
the ability to give feedback was so prominent that I felt like anyone actually
gave a shit.

So. Now, I'm cranky.

1\. The visual alignment of this design is miserable relative to the previous.
I'm willing to entertain counterpoints from the actual designers here (and I
_do_ appreciate that this design is more responsive). I was going to send a
number of nice little graphics illustrating how multiple strong visual lines
are destroyed by this layout, but I'm not frittering away any more of my life
on it, now.

2\. The list of releases is probably the single most important signal on the
page. And now, if a project has no releases, it's just an absence. There's no
indication. I just have to know, from its absence, that there are no releases.

3\. It's covered elsewhere in the thread, but I agree on the languages being
moved. Someone notes that the existing location was obscure; fine, just force
the existing indicators to expanded-by-default. They were in the right place.
The second most important signal is what languages a project is in. In some
responsive views this information is now at the bottom of the page. This is
_absolutely_ backwards.

Everything else on my commentary list is probably covered elsewhere here. If
not, I don't really care.

P.S. In the future, don't jerk people around with feature opt-ins with less
than a week of turnaround on feedback.

------
forgotmypw17
The previous version required JS to view list of commits.

New version displays them all.

Thank you.

------
gscho
When I logged in today and saw the redesign I thought to myself, "how long
until there is a hacker news post full of comments blasting this"?

Thank you for not disappointing.

------
k0dede
I must be lazy. I don’t want my eyesight travel from left to right in like
100ms. It should be like notepad, open it up and resize it whatever you want.

------
adadahdjej
I honestly hate the design with the fire of a thousand suns.

The navigation aligned on the left and the main section with code centered is
so unbalanced it makes me nauseous.

------
switch007
I took an instant disliking to it. My eyes hurt. Some vertical alignment is
off. I dislike the wide layout.

Was there a reason other than "it's 5 years old"?

------
floatingatoll
Which of these changelog entries are you referencing?

[https://github.blog/changelog/](https://github.blog/changelog/)

------
battery423
They are able to completly redesign the layout but adding a TOC feature to
their Markdown, no way.

Please add a TOC Feature! Use what you have with github pages and Markdown!

------
jes5199
I think the icons are a little less legible. Not a lot, but just enough to
wonder if I've screwed up my browser's zoom level whenever I see them

------
mariocesar
The code is not in the center, is not the main thing, they are pushing me to
read the sidebar with actually no useful or inmediate information I need.

------
cocoa19
I don't like it compared to the previous layout.

The new layout has soft boundaries between boxes that make it harder mentally
to distinguish one box from another.

------
ethanwillis
file size? I have to click a bunch of files to see if they're even viewable.
E.G. which of these files are data files small enough to view and which are
not? [https://github.com/LahiruJayasinghe/RUL-
Net/tree/master/CMAP...](https://github.com/LahiruJayasinghe/RUL-
Net/tree/master/CMAPSSData)

------
markstos
Couldn't easily find the "releases" page.

------
parasanti
I think it is horrible. I feel it's harder to read overall and harder to
navigate. I am of the feeling, if it's not broken.....

------
lukyvj
It's terrible.. Please, let us go back to the previous design..

------
toohotatopic
With proper MVC design, why can't they make a new design optional or at least
make the old design accessible like old.github.com?

------
systematical
I don't like it. They pulled a reddit and their UI was already WAY better than
old reddit. I don't mind the side nav though.

------
winrid
I really don't like seeing the code stats way at the bottom.

Also, on mobile I'm not really sure how to go directly to commits to master.

Edit: figured it out...

------
verdverm
Actually, I think I'll just do everything from the terminal from now on.
Anyone familiar with a great CLI? (that is not by GitHub)

------
steve_adams_86
Is it normal to ship with scss source maps? It seems like it would be a net
negative for performance and delivery times.

------
merb
I think it's really strange that they redesigned it, but still do not have
settings to use the full width...

------
jp_sc
I love it! It is finally usable on mobile.

------
rychco
I really wish the top half of the screen were centered (where the code,
Issues, Pull Requests, etc buttons are).

------
gsich
Clone URL should be visible instantly, not after 1 click. It's by far the most
common thing I need.

------
Emyjamalian
This new design is so smooth and friendly though. I mean, it's Github, not a
social media.

------
heavyset_go
I really dislike circular borders on profile pictures and can't wait for this
trend to die.

------
rurban
Like it. More important links upfront.

~~~
verdverm
Determining which language the repo is now requires scrolling, as now the
readme is only 70% width instead of 100%

So much wasted space and loss of information if you ask me.

~~~
DenseComet
This is my biggest gripe with it. The sidebar only extends down for a short
length, but causes the entire readme to shrink and results in a lot of empty
space. I'm indifferent to all the other changes but the readme shrinking for
no good reason is quite annoying.

------
ciguy
Others have outlined some specific issues such as commit status not bing
visible from repo view, but besides a few things like this which will likely
be fixed quickly I think it's a cleaner a more modern looking design. It's
easy to hate on any change simply because it requires some effort to get used
to, but I think this is one of the good ones.

------
disposekinetics
Why is there so much wasted space?

------
dzonga
it seems they also migrated from server rendered pages, which were a beauty,
when you were inspected the network tab. to polymer, which itself, is good and
lightweight. Github was one of last big companies not doing heavy spa stuff.

------
carapace
It seems faster. Quite snappy.

------
alappin
I don't mind the new look and feel. They made it look a bit more polished.

------
pryelluw
Its basically JIRA. Hate it. Hoping they let users opt in to use the older UI.

------
kapilvt
new ux sucks, on a wide screen content is no longer properly centered,
horrible left float, right float on different elements of ux vs center box
previously on core content elements. ie, it`s a bug not a feature.

------
stanislavb
I think it will open a lot of work to many people that are scraping Github :)

~~~
withinboredom
Why would people do this? [https://repo.git](https://repo.git) and shallow
clone...

------
jacke127
Table view of files looks terrible. Hope they will fix it

------
noway421
I love it, just miss the percentage breakdown of languages on repo page.

------
echeese
It'll take me a few days to get used to it but it's not bad.

------
hackerman123469
My opinion is that Github now looks like a default bootstrap theme.

------
LegitGandalf
Is there a way to use the older interface, kinda like old.reddit.com?

------
LukaD
The new layout is so bad I no longer click on Github links...

------
geori
It looks like Gitlab. I wondered if i was on the correct site.

------
sraw333
I really hope they can revert this, it is really ugly.

------
onnnon
I like it. Wider content, improved IA, cleaner graphics, and mobile support. I
can see people not liking the repo nav being fullscreen with very wide
monitors. Maybe an option to pin it to the content width would be useful.

------
tuananh
it's bad.

\- information is scatter everywhere \- release is a lot hard to find \- UX is
bad on wide screen. I use a 32:9 49" monitor and it's pretty bad.

------
aogl
I don't like it and it reminds me of Bitbucket :(

------
llacb47
Too wide and spacious

------
carlosdp
I think it's fine, nothing much actually changed...

~~~
azangru
I agree. I was afraid I was gonna hate it, but it left me largely indifferent.
More white space, rounder buttons, round avatars, wider and more centrally
positioned content area, new icons, slightly different colors. Whatever.

------
systemvoltage
Loss of borders in the tables (source code file tree).

------
opqpo
It's worse but still possible to swallow for me.

------
hivacruz
I really don't like the sidebar on repo view.

------
wallstprog
What happened to "forked from"?

------
asjfj9
Why fix something that's not broken?

------
codywan1996
the column on the right takes whole lot of space from README. It just looks
very annoyingly un-balanced.

------
elchin
I like it, better use of horizontal space.

~~~
verdverm
How is it better when there are large swaths of empty space?

Like scroll down a readme, is all that space on the right better usage?

------
markstos
Searching for an issue was disorienting.

------
kylebarron
Is there any way to revert the changes?

------
jonathan-kosgei
It feels designed for larger monitors.

------
surajs
it hurts my soul....why Microsoft? why must everything look like it's a
corporate sellout?

------
livealife
Sucks. Migrating to BitBucket.

------
ilmiont
Looks horrific at 3440x1440...

------
moltar
It’s ok, I’ll get used to it.

------
sandGorgon
it deprioritises the readme. which was the whole point of Github.

------
villgax
Needed Dark Mode as well

------
yadco
Reminds me of gitlab

------
dvno42
Looks terrible. Figures MS would make it look FisherPrice like. GL it is.

------
brailsafe
You'd switch platforms just because you don't like the layout?

------
rcshubhadeep
I hate it! Simple

------
RocketSyntax
Needs dark mode

------
coronadisaster
maybe they should accept pull requests

------
justcontent
Less is more.

------
DeepYogurt
Whatever

------
baby
I like it!

------
yboris
I love it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
s9w
Where did releases go?

~~~
Dunedan
To the right side of the code between "About" and "Contributors".

~~~
s9w
Nothing there for repos without releases. That's pretty implicit.

------
tinix
hate it.

------
verdverm
Another concurrent thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23616422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23616422)

~~~
dang
We've merged it hither.

------
taylorlapeyre
I really like it!

~~~
verdverm
what about it?

