
The new Git-scm.com - tanoku
http://git-scm.com/?new
======
flixic
This is great in so many ways:

\- New logo! Much better "brand" than previous, and look good in small sizes,
although I will miss the cute visual pun of GIT letters being refresh,
addition and subtraction symbols. Although, both favicon and logo image would
look better without half-transparent-pixels in vertical branch.

\- New font! Adelle from Typekit, not from Google Fonts. They took it
seriously, and it's a fantastic choice.

\- The whole branding and theme and everything is way better than what was
before, and arguably the best looking site for any DVCS. (maybe took some
design inspiration from <http://www.joyent.com/products/> ?)

\- Built on Rails, and open sourced: <https://github.com/github/gitscm-next>
That's great, and hopefully will allow the community to contribute more to the
site itself.

~~~
demetris
“New font! Adelle from Typekit, not from Google Fonts. They took it seriously,
and it's a fantastic choice.”

To my eyes, it is a poor choice:

First, Adelle does not seem to work well for body text. Second, it does not
look good on Windows.

~~~
samf
Not being argumentative, but I'm curious: why do you think that Adelle doesn't
work well for body text? I'm trying to learn more about fonts and their
selection.

~~~
demetris
Just what my eyes told me when I looked at the page.

Looking now at the Typekit site (where the font comes from) I see that Adelle,
indeed, is not recommended for body text by Typekit, only for headings.

The Typekit site offers some short explanations about what these
recommendations mean:

Fonts recommended for paragraph text: “Recommended for continuous text at
small sizes, these fonts possess a generous x-height and are manually hinted
to perform well across operating systems.”

Fonts recommended for headings: “Recommended for short text at medium to large
sizes, these fonts are generally more decorative and often served with
PostScript outlines for improved rendering.”

A good place to start reading if you are interested in this is a post at the
Typekit site again, part of a series on web fonts and font rendering:

[http://blog.typekit.com/2010/12/17/type-rendering-review-
and...](http://blog.typekit.com/2010/12/17/type-rendering-review-and-fonts-
that-render-well/)

It includes this:

“All of the fonts tagged Paragraph have been manually hinted to look great on
screen at text sizes in every major browser/OS mix. Use these recommendations
to make informed decisions about how well a font will render, knowing that
they are backed up by Typekit’s font diagnostic tools.”

More generally:

I have found that often—I’m tempted to say more often than not, but I have not
the data to back this up—designs using web fonts are worse than they would be
without web fonts. When you consider how complex the issue of good rendering
across devices and operating system is, that’s not suprising. It is
interesting though that even professionals—even people who teach web design
and who write books on web design—make such mistakes.

------
tikhonj
I don't know--this one's polished and all, but looks like another startup's
landing page more than anything else. The old one was distinctive and had
character. I also miss the old logo, even if it didn't make much sense.

~~~
mikegerwitz
I agree; I feel rather disappointed by this move. The layout feels cookie-
cutter to me. If anything, it just looks like an effort to "sell" the project
to businesses, especially with the list of projects/companies at the bottom.
The no-js default of Mac for the download is also a poor choice, regardless of
its popularity, especially considering that Git was created by the author of
the kernel Linux.

The previous theme was cute, fun and different. This site does, however, do an
excellent job of laying out the information (minus the fact that it needs JS
when stylesheets are enabled).

~~~
DanI-S
As a developer who loves using git, I am more than happy for others to go to
the effort of selling it to business stakeholders. Why wouldn't I be?

~~~
mikegerwitz
I don't see that as a problem; I just think that Git has built up a certain
user base that they should continue to appeal to with their website.

------
kevingadd
I mourn the loss of the old awesome tree-munching git monster logo.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
I apologize for the language, but one of my co-workers said that the new logo
looks like a penis (the diagonal branch) with a dangling scrotum (the vertical
branch) to him. The circles on the end are the glans and the testes.
Unfortunately, I do now see what he is saying.

This is yet another incident in a long line of easily-misinterpreted open
source project logos or names. MongoDB is one of the most significant, with
"mongo" being slang for mental retardation in several languages. The scrotwm
window manager, while quite excellent, also has a name that's easily
misinterpreted.

~~~
icebraining
Git itself has one of those names. Personally I think anyone who is offended
by those names can go use something else.

~~~
praptak
Only in case of Git it is intentional. This is how its creator jokingly
describes himself.

------
kimmel
As others have already said 'I miss the tree eating blob' and the site had
character.

The new version obviously had the corporate types in mind. It is clean and
optimized to sell it to the pointy haired boss. At first I thought some
company had bought and changed the website. Then I realized it is just a
cookie cutter template where almost any generic computer program could be
plugged in. Then there is the grey color scheme, I see enough websites
everyday that have grey color schemes, it is generic and boring. The color
scheme before was different and that was a good thing. This constant
conformity to sell the corporate and enterprise users on software stinks.

Someone going to censor the man pages because it has phrases like this: 'git -
the stupid content tracker'?

------
jeltz
While good looking I am not sure if the new deign is an improvement. For one
the download button is less obvious. The new one is likely to be mistaken for
noise, there are too many details around it.

~~~
teraflop
Also, it's now much harder to find tarballs for Linux. You have to follow the
"older releases" link even if you want the most recent version.

------
theatrus2
Great, except for the tag line. I know they're trying to be trendy, but its
not really helping.

~~~
davvid
I really like git's original tag line:

    
    
        git - the stupid content tracker
    

And, of course, "the information manager from hell",
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2177877>

I don't know if Linus meant it as a tongue-in-cheek joke, but that last one is
pretty funny to me (probably because I read it as "the IT manager from hell",
which evokes dilbert).

------
xbryanx
Very nice and clean, but, and I know I'll get boo'ed down for this, it's
always a bit tiresome to see gender norms reinforced in slogans like, "--not-
your-daddys-version-control."

~~~
marshray
There are a few places in the US where going up to someone on the street and
saying "not your mother's version control" will get you stabbed.

Both my mother and my father have worked in the software industry (though
before version control was the norm). I don't find either version offensive
and I don't see any problem with a silly quip implying my father uses a
version control system unlike the one being described.

EDIT: It occurred to me that my story goes even deeper.

The syntactic template "Not your father's X" is a reference to a well known ad
campaign by General Motors. "Not your father's Oldsmobile" the slogan went. It
was clearly an attempt to remove the strong association with an older
generation that the brand had among younger buyers. It couldn't have helped
that the nickname for the brand was "Olds", but that association was also
somewhat based in fact: the car was indisputably a favorite among old people.
Once at a family reunion I noticed that most of my aunts and uncles drove
Oldsmobiles, with a few Buicks thrown in for good measure.

Note that another effect of this campaign also worked to _discourage_ the
perception of Oldsmobiles as appropriate for specifically male buyers. Clearly
they wanted all the buyers they could get. So "Not your father's X" seems
constructed to actively remove gender stereotyping, not reinforce it.

Apparently the ad campaign didn't work well enough, as GM stopped producing
new cars under the Oldsmobile brand a few years ago.

Indeed my father did have an Oldsmobile for a few years, during which he had a
software startup. However, he had inherited it from my grandmother when she
died. When the AC broke in a way that was not economical to repair my dad went
back to driving Toyotas and he gave me the Olds. So that actually _was_ my
father's Oldsmobile (but I associated it more with my grandmother).

That reminds me, I've been meaning to ask Dad what kind of source code control
system he's using these days...

~~~
michh
> There are a few places in the US where going up to someone on the street and
> saying "not your mother's version control" will get you stabbed.

The alternative isn't "Not your mother's version control" but rather "Not your
parents' version control". Neutral should be the norm. Not a big deal, but
there is a lot of subtle sexism in tech and it adds up at the end of the day.

~~~
marshray
But "Not your parents' version control" could be taken to imply that my
parents used version control collectively.

My parents divorced before version control was commonplace, how dare you imply
such a thing!

------
tar
The old website had character. This one just seems like they are trying too
hard and has too much noise. Also, I do not like that it just assumes that I'm
on a Mac if JavaScript is not enabled. Wouldn't Linux have been a better
choice?

~~~
ethereal
I had the same thought about the download link -- it does seem a bit odd.

But if you think about it, it does make sense. Very few people will not have
JavaScript enabled -- those who do will be web developers or other
technologically-minded individuals. I'm sure this is not exactly valid, but .
. . it seems to me, at least, that a lot of the time this sort of person is
going to be using either Linux or an Apple system.

Between the two, AFAIK, a Linux system is far more likely to have git
installed already. If not, most would probably want to install it via their
distribution's package manager (as the Linux download page actually directs
you to do). So it does seem a semi-logical choice.

Personally, though -- I would have fallen back to a list of download links for
different platforms.

~~~
tar
Many web developers use Windows and might have their JavaScript disabled. What
about them?

~~~
armandososa
They click the 'Windows build' link. The one with the Windows logo.

------
marshray
I'm going to be brutally honest here, but don't worry I'm not a connoisseur of
these things! I'm actually probably close to your target audience.

I've been using git as a single developer in a very timid way for years. This
is my public repo <https://github.com/marshray> . I know how to 'add' and
'commit -m ...' and 'push'. Anything else I usually have to look up. Just
yesterday I actively collaborated for the first time and did a fastforward
pull and a merge a few times. Scared me to death I was going to screw
something up because we had a hard deadline.

When I followed the link on HN, I didn't know what it was. I thought you might
be starting a GitHub competitor service. It's a pretty design, but the first
two paragraphs I skimmed over. I already know what git is or I wouldn't be on
the site. I actually know quite a bit about how git compares to those other
products because I've used most of them. But the graph with the stack of books
on the right reminds me "gee I know exactly how to do that in Perforce, I wish
it would just sink in how to do it with git. The branch diagrams still look
like Feynman diagrams to me and I don't know quantum physics".

I saw the 'About, Documentation, Downloads, Community'. All very obvious
categorizations, but here's was my first impression:

About - yes I've figured out by now this is a website about git, and already
know what git is about

Downloads - I've never downloaded git except via a package manager so this is
probably not useful to me

Documentation - ok _that_ could be helpful, but I have no sense at this point
if it's any good. You know a lot of sites amount to mostly just manpages.

Community get involved! - I'm not so invested in git that I would want to join
a list about it. I feel grateful for the community because when I have
questions a web search usually turns up an appropriate discussion. But usually
it's a blog post or stack overflow. I don't recall a mailing list or a forum
post being helpful, but probably it has and I've just forgotten.

I saw the picture of the book. "Oh yes, the black and yellow publisher" I
thought. Its bold colors visually dominated everything else on the page. I
suspected that the site may be a guy who wrote a book on git and this is his
personal site.

I saw all the list of logos of companies using git and thought "I wonder if he
got permission for all of those, wow that must have taken a lot of emails".
But that's just how my mind works.

At this point I closed the page, not having any pressing need to interact or
explore the site.

I totally didn't notice the Mac on the right hand side.

I read the HN discussion a little bit. Mostly I found myself replying to the
guy who said the slogan (which I didn't even notice) was reinforcing gender
stereotypes. Reading a few more comments it starts to dawn on me: "OH! This is
that same git-scm site I think I've been to before. The one that had the good
manual on how to use git in some practical situations..." I remembered it
fondly, though not very clearly because I wasn't a very frequent visitor.

I see someone mention in an HN comment that a Mac appears when Javascript is
disabled. I had totally tuned it out before but now it looks ridiculous. Why
in the world would the primary choice be to download for Mac? Why would the
only other platform download be for Windows? (But it's good to know there may
be a supported option for Windows if I ever need it.)

To explore further, I click on 'Documentation' as it's the only link that
remotely seems like something useful to my forseeable needs. My eyes go to the
picture of the book "Reference manual" OK there's the printout of the man
pages I guess. Scanning down I see "Getting started, Git basics, ... yawn
standard stuff"

For some reason, I scroll down a bit. WOW! brightly colored business cards! "
_Git Basics_ What is version control?" The title seems useless, but I'm more
focused on trying to figure out what these very visually distinctive
rectangles are doing below the fold on a table of contents. OH WOW these are
Videos! Earlier today I'd had a passing thought about watching some video on
git when I was at O'Reilly's site for DRM-free day. They'd had a 6 hour video
you could download for $40 or something. That wasn't in my price range, but
these videos could be worth watching.

So sorry if I didn't pick up on the visual appeal of your redesign, but I hope
my best effort at describing the state of my mind in retrospect will be
helpful to you or others in your web design endeavors.

~~~
eternalban
I'll be equally brutally honest here: as a software professional, craftsman,
hacker, or even hobbyist, there is a minimum amount of intellectual effort
required for mastery of your toolkit.

> At this point I closed the page, not having any pressing need to interact or
> explore the site.

IMHO, the single most valuable asset of a creative mind is curiosity.

[p.s. HN: don't read anything into the order of that list .. :)]

~~~
Iv
> IMHO, the single most valuable asset of a creative mind is curiosity.

All the minds curious enough to explore exhaustively every new website have
been pruned out of the reproduction pool since the 2000s. They still haunt
some websites, but the only one left are now those able to form an arbitrary
judgement of the value of a website from its homepage.

------
masnick
As someone who has spent a lot of time convincing people to use git and
helping them learn, it's great to see resources like this made available for
free to the community.

------
asb
I love the site update. It's very classy there's not even a direct GitHub
homepage link, let alone a logo. Is this considered the official Git website?
If so, would it not make sense for the domain to be owned by e.g. the SFC on
behalf of the Git project?

------
pwpwp
The old one had character.

~~~
davvid
It's interesting to see how it's progressed.

Before git-scm.com there was git.or.cz:

<http://web.archive.org/web/20080102111752/http://git.or.cz/>

------
brcrth
I wonder how much awesome free/open source tools/services would benefit from a
clean, good design like this.

~~~
lukeholder
I thought about making a site to allow designers to offer to design things for
open source project as a way of giving back.

~~~
RegEx
Stop thinking about it and do it, sounds like a great idea :)

------
Aqwis
I wonder how much it would cost them to buy git.com.

~~~
primatology
From domainbrokers.com: > The owner might not respond to offers under $299520

Yikes.

~~~
robryan
Seems stupid on the part of the owner, not like they are going to find a big
brand that matches the domain so well again and who knows how long domains
will be valuable.

------
mccoyst
Yeah, I miss domo-kun.

------
lordlicorice
Why does it think I have a Mac?

~~~
kevingadd
That should fix itself if you enable JavaScript. I had the same problem.

~~~
joeyh
I have JavaScript enabled, using chromium, on Debian; it still thinks I have a
Mac.

------
jayferd
I am disappoint.

    
    
        $ git --distributed-is-the-new-centralized
        Unknown option: --distributed-is-the-new-centralized
        usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path]
                   [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects]
                   [--bare] [--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>]
                   [-c name=value] [--help]
                   <command> [<args>]

------
cenonews
As someone new to version control, and contrary to some opinions here, it was
refreshing to see git represented in such a light. Modern, elegant and easy to
use. I'm very curious to watch the videos, if they're what I'm expecting this
just might be the time I can get my colleagues to use git. In electrical
engineering it's very rare for people to even _know_ what version control is.

------
singold
Im learning git right now for a project. Because all my life i've used win, im
now fighting with git-gui and its ugly interface (because of this, and other
reasons related to software development, im considering moving to a linux
distro) <br> As a newbie, I really appreciate this move, its good for
motivation to learn from the source in a clean and studied format

------
Seich
It looks really nice, I kind of miss the old carefree attitude the site used
to have but, it's definitely an improvement.

------
pgbovine
curious question: Which projects within Microsoft are using Git? The company
is listed as a user on the front page.

~~~
__float
If you click on the Microsoft logo, you'll be taken to the GitHub profile page
for Windows Azure: <https://github.com/WindowsAzure>

------
human_error
Something is strange. If you go to German version of the book and click "Los
geht's", then click "next" and all you see is 500 Internal Server Error. I've
checked the French and Dutch version as well, but they don't have that
problem. I guess ' creates the problem.

------
chris_wot
I love this site - except for one thing. When you click on the Next link
button on a page such as <http://git-scm.com/about> it navigates to the next
page - but starts at the bottom! Very, very irritating.

~~~
chris_wot
Just realised this has a bug tracking page. Issue logged:
<https://github.com/github/gitscm-next/issues/51>

------
ryan-allen
"Not your Daddy's version control", looks like the brogrammers got their 2c
in.

------
josefonseca
Coincidentally I accessed this in class earlier today without seeing HN first
and thought how amazing it was.

I didn't know that it'd gotten a whole new look so recently. Amazing. Congrats
to all at Git-SCM, nice job.

------
g3orge
Proof that Open Source can have beautiful websites.

------
juddlyon
Huge improvement!

The title tags could use some love, but I'm sure it's been a mad scramble to
get the site up.

~~~
schacon
If you have places where the titles could be better, please let me know at
<https://github.com/github/gitscm-next/issues> or send a PR

------
dsirijus
Until I read few commentaries over here, I didn't even know what's the site
about.

~~~
For_Iconoclasm
Sorry, but it's the website for git. Things have websites. How difficult is
that to reason, really? The top of the page explains what git is. Isn't it
obvious that the site is git's website? It then lists things which one would
expect to find on git's website, including the documentation and download
sections.

Here are some other websites for things. The front pages also explain what
they are and links to more information.

* Y Combinator: <http://ycombinator.com/>

* Ubuntu: <http://www.ubuntu.com/>

* Google Chrome: <https://www.google.com/chrome>

I will admit that some websites don't do a great job at this.

* Firefox: <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/>

Firefox doesn't say what it is. The other websites say that the things are.

But git-scm.com? How much more information do you need than "Git is a free and
open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything
from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency." to realize that
it's the website for git, the free and open source distributed version control
system?

Your comment is not the only one in here like this, but I'm struggling to
identify the reason why anybody would consider this website difficult to grok.
Sure, it may not have the character of the old website with a monster eating
trees, but I really feel that organization and clarity are _not_ issues here.

------
alinajaf
Fantastic work guys, this looks amazing!

------
TOGoS
Blows. I miss tree muncher. :(

------
voidnothings
Humanized!

------
mmhd
Looks great!

------
mcmire
Sexy. I like.

