

New Homepage - janerik
https://github.com/blog/1355-new-homepage

======
marknutter
There's a fine line you can cross with minimalist design where it suddenly
feels cold, generic, and frail. And I believe Github has crossed this line
with this new homepage. I also echo some other's lamentations that Octocat is
gone. It's just not.. fun.

~~~
state
I always found all of those 'fun' elements of GitHub to be sort of
patronizing. It took extra effort for me to get past all of that 'fun' gloss
to appreciate what a powerful tool it could be.

That's what makes design so challenging. Both you and I want to use the
product and have legitimate but different tastes. New homepage looks like an
improvement to me.

~~~
squidsoup
I don't know, I was a bit sad when "hardcore forking action" disappeared.

~~~
gkop
Holy cow, it's gone! I will miss this. Forking seems faster now, at least.

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peterjmag
I've been finding Proxima Nova[1] _everywhere_ this year. I'm not complaining
though—I think it's a beautiful, highly readable typeface.

[1] <https://typekit.com/fonts/proxima-nova>

~~~
sudonim
Yup! We use Proxima-Nova. It's probably the next Helvetica Neue (i.e. hipster
designers will be rolling their eyes at you soon).

One of the things that's great about it is there are so many variations:
Regular, Light, Regular Italic, Light Italic, Semibold, Bold, Extrabold,
Black, Semibold Italic, Bold Italic.

Most other sans-serif typefaces we evaluated didn't have enough variation that
it could reliably service any use-case.

We use proxima-nova on <http://customer.io> as well as in all our
presentations (e.g. [https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-
rea...](https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-read) ) .
Love that typeface.

~~~
peterjmag
Agreed on the huge range of weights and styles. I experimented with almost all
of them for <http://peterjmags.com/> before settling on the current two for
headings. Each variation that I tried had such a different impact on the
overall design and "character" of my site. To me, that's the mark of a well-
designed family of type.

And great work on the customer.io site! I was actually admiring it just
yesterday after following your link in another thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912268>

------
bretthellman
I love GitHub but the new homepage makes GitHub feel like a small, seed funded
startup & not a trusted company.

~~~
bjustin
I saw it and immediately thought "Bootstrap". The large width top item,
followed by three columns with graphics followed by text, is like the
Bootstrap site itself[1] and many others which use Bootstrap. I do like the
new homepage, whereas I felt that the old one was overwhelming.

[1] <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/>

~~~
wonster
That's the very same thing I thought of as soon as I saw the page.

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46Bit
GitHub is awesome, but why so many upvotes for a homepage redesign?

EDIT: Why so many upvotes for a comment about upvotes?

~~~
notatoad
>Why so many upvotes for a comment about upvotes?

i assume you're just joking here, but it's a trend i've noticed on reddit: any
comment or submission that has anything to do with voting, whether actual
reddit votes or elections or anything else, gets more votes than something
that doesn't reference voting. It reminds people to vote.

~~~
jrockway
I think you're right.

I know I'm going to be downvoted for this, but adding the expression "I know
I'm going to be downvoted for this" is probably the easiest way to get upvotes
on any social site. I guess it reminds people to vote, and most readers don't
actually care to downvote you. (Usually comments will make "haters" really
angry but not have any impact on people that agree or are neutral, so you get
downvoted on a comment that most people like. "I know I'm going to get
downvoted" causes the neutrals to realize that they need to upvote you to
avoid the evil downvotes from the Other Clan. Or something.)

~~~
46Bit
Then after reading that comment, I notice my mouse drifting towards the voting
arrows.

------
franze
i think it's stupid ... putting the apple, windows, android logo on the
frontpage, getting rid of their own playful brand element(octocat) completely.
oh, and on top of that adding two meaningles illustrations that can only be
seen as an insult to any thinking developer.

as a person who is kinda proud of having octocat as one of two stickers on my
mac i have to say: it sucks and i cant identify with it.

tl;dr: get rid of the apple/mac/android logos, bring octocat back.

~~~
leviathant
To play the pedant, they haven't completely gotten rid of Octocat - check out
the favicon.

~~~
franze
if the only place where you display your most popular visual brand element is
the footer and the favicon, you are doing it wrong.

~~~
jeremymcanally
We've never had an Octocat on the home page, actually.

~~~
franze
ok, my bad, but you should have.

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subb
I find the lack of octocat disturbing.

~~~
wyuenho
I find the trend of seeing every change Github or Bootstrap makes on the front
page of HN even more disturbing.

~~~
af3
that's why I have moved to lobste.rs ;)

PS: this news is also there [1] ;)

[1] <https://lobste.rs/s/gliqo6/new_github_homepage>

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BasDirks
It still has no (prominent) search box on the homepage. Do I need to explain
how dumb this is?

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agentgt
I wish they would make their stuff look better on mobile.

I guess I'm the only sick person who looks at code while in my bed on my
iPhone. I really should read a book instead.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
You're not exactly the only sick person, though I generally use my Kindle Fire

------
yuvadam
Cool. Too bad I've seen the Github [1] homepage only once, and will never have
see it again.

[1] - or any other authenticated service for that matter.

~~~
gradys
Homepages aren't designed to appeal to people who have already signed up for
the service. At least in Github's case, the homepage is purely for marketing.

------
eddieroger
I dig it. Looks nice and makes me want to use the service, but I can't get
past the cost of the private repos. The unlimited, free, private repos are
what keep me at BitBucket.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
Sounds sustainable.

~~~
silverbax88
Just like building something that relies on a community as it's top feature.

------
cgislason
I wanted to compare the old and new pages, but noticed that their robots.txt
disallowed the wayback machine from caching it.

Also, the Octocat was not on the page that Google cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SZgkdCZ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SZgkdCZ5k2sJ:https://github.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

~~~
pserwylo
Wow, it just occurred to me that I never see the github home page when I visit
the site, seeing as I'm always logged in on the machines I use.

Compared to that cached version, I much prefer the new one. This is despite
agreeing and lamenting that there is nothing particularly _fun_ about it. But
hey, I'm not even sure what I mean by that :)

------
silverbax88
My first reaction was that it looks like the old BitBucket page. A lot.

------
ippa
When I needed to get my rails-update-fix I usually checked from my ipad where
I haven't logged in to my github account.. then I used the railslink on top.
Now it's gone :/ First world probblem :P.

I think the new one is too clean/generic.

------
dysoco
I really dislike the new design. Also, it's just me or the fonts are horribly
cluttered? I'm guessing it's my fault and I need some font installed or
something, because it's really awful.

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joey_muller
It looks like a Google creation. Nothing wrong with that. I would expect
Google to know a thing or two about funnels.

Best of all is the big button -- I know what to do!

------
JeremyMorgan
I like this design, it's clean, minimal and yet still professional. It's a
reflection of the way the web has been (thankfully) moving the last few years.

------
devsatish
the star wars themed octocat is still on their 404 page. example:
<https://github.com/loginzzz>

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heeton
My favourite part? The class names on some of the elements.

".jumbotron .heading" ".mega-icon"

I should name things like that more :)

------
cmelbye
Finally, that old homepage was an abomination.

