
A new look for repositories - obilgic
https://github.com/blog/2085-a-new-look-for-repositories
======
archimedespi
Ha, they're going back to the way repo tab navigation _used_ to work a long
time ago, with the tabs on the top, like [1] and [2].

Arguably it's a nicer look with some UX benefits.

[1] -
[https://camo.githubusercontent.com/fec1c4ab93659e759682ad5db...](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/fec1c4ab93659e759682ad5dba5308430f0d07d9/68747470733a2f2f662e636c6f75642e6769746875622e636f6d2f6173736574732f313335342f3635313336302f35626133336266342d643437322d313165322d393439362d6134386339373361313232342e6a7067)

[2] -
[http://cdn.appappeal.com/pictures/6089/screenshot.png](http://cdn.appappeal.com/pictures/6089/screenshot.png)

~~~
lucaspottersky
and then when they decide to add new Menu Items and run out of space, they
will switch back to the Sidebar :D

------
makecheck
There's one part of the GitHub UI that I still wish they'd change: the way
"contributions" are displayed.

Right now, there are accounts that seem to just fork a bunch of repositories
and then do nothing with the forks. This makes those people look like massive
contributors to open-source because GitHub gives them a nice "Contributions"
tab with a list of popular projects under it.

They also get free advertising in reverse because they automatically appear as
a "Member" of the parent project's network, despite having done nothing at all
in the project!

At the very least, GitHub should require the forking person to have made
_some_ pull request that was accepted. If those forks aren't actually
contributing, they shouldn't even be mentioned as a sub-network of the
original (except perhaps as an option for the project maintainers to see, if
they're curious where forks have occurred).

~~~
githubsceptic
I've seen tons of this. People forking popular projects and making minor pull
requests to correct spelling or change formatting, probably so they can pad
their github profile (which we're told is the new resume) and make it appear
as though they're highly-active and are contributors to major projects.

~~~
rudolf0
If someone were forking my project to even fix a single tiny whitespace issue
or typo, I'd be happy! They generally do nothing though. It seems like 90% or
more of forks result in absolutely no changes whatsoever.

I kind of wish a fork wouldn't even trigger notifications or be listed on any
pages until at least one commit is made to it.

~~~
rubiquity
Most GitHub forks are because people don't understand how git refs work. I
used to work at a company that required us to fork every repo we depended on
and lock our dependency to the fork rather than using a package manager and
git refs.

~~~
cballard
This prevents you from getting _why'd, so it's pretty reasonable.

~~~
mendelk
For those that don't understand the reference:

> On 19 August 2009, why's accounts on Twitter and GitHub and his personally
> maintained websites went offline. Shortly before he disappeared, why the
> lucky stiff tweeted, "programming is rather thankless. u see your works
> become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few
> more."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff)

------
fuzionmonkey
I hope the removal of the sidebar doesn't result in wider README views.

The current design has a fixed width of 790px (including 30px of padding on
each side), which leads to a comfortable number of words per line. I find
readability much worse when line lengths get longer.

Other than that, I think the simplified navigation is a big improvement.

~~~
kevinmgranger
It does feel a bit wide to me, but I haven't tried it yet.

Some extra margin on each side might be nice.

------
cpitman
I had never noticed before that GitHub "Highly Recommends" cloning via HTTPS
instead of via SSH. This is the opposite of what I usually tell people to do.
I do not see any reasoning anywhere, but I might have missed it.

Does anyone know why you would recommend HTTPS over SSH? Is it just the
complication of setting up SSH keys?

~~~
lamby
> This is the opposite of what I usually tell people to do

How come, out of interest? In terms of peformance, cloning for HTTP is fairly
efficient these days although I would concede an authentication argument.

(As an aside, SSH can be blocked on some corporate networks)

~~~
cpitman
Because you don't have to keep supplying credentials when using SHH keys. It's
less about speed and more about reducing the friction in common operations.
It's also the way I'm used to handling things with gitolite, so that might be
part of it.

We already usually use SSH w/ keys for server access, so uploading public keys
to GitHub isn't much of an additional hurdle.

~~~
WorldMaker
You can setup a credential manager in git and don't have to continue supplying
credentials with HTTPS repositories. For instance, I commonly use this one on
Windows [1]:

[https://github.com/Microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-for-
Wind...](https://github.com/Microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-for-
Windows/releases)

[1] Although currently marked as pre-release, this is a fork/successor of an
earlier one that was fairly rock solid, now with a better installer. The "pre-
release" tag here mostly is with respect to the new 2FA support.

~~~
krisdol
Thanks, but this seems like a lot more complexity than using github's built-in
SSH Key manager (especially since I wager that most people using github are
not on windows). That, and I've inevitably always needed SSH keys for one
thing or another on every computer I've used, so it's just really streamlined.

~~~
WorldMaker
As with most such things, your mileage will of course vary. There are
credential managers out there for things like the the Mac OS X keychain and
Gnome keyring.

So yes, if you've already got SSH keys in play and you aren't dealing with
(corporate) firewall issues for SSH protocols then that is often going to be
convenient, but the point is that credential managers are out there and are
equally convenient (work just like the ssh-agents you rely on) for those
(stuck) with HTTPS or who don't need SSH keys anywhere other than git(hub)
repositories.

Also, I'd almost take that wager. There are a lot of Windows developers these
days on Github and/or Github for Enterprises. I don't think Windows developers
have made it into a majority yet, but I'm guessing there are a lot more than
you think there are.

------
shadeless
I wish they reverted to the old search bar, where you could chose to search
globally or just the repository you're on currently:
[https://github.com/blog/1492-repository-search-on-all-
reposi...](https://github.com/blog/1492-repository-search-on-all-repositories)

Unless I missed something, the only way to search globally now is to go to
github.com and then use the search bar.

~~~
masklinn
> Unless I missed something, the only way to search globally now is to go to
> github.com and then use the search bar.

You can delete the default "this repository" facet. Just hit backspace when
you're in the "local" search:
[http://giphy.com/gifs/l41lJC4ZrO3sEFuNO](http://giphy.com/gifs/l41lJC4ZrO3sEFuNO)

~~~
hultner
Wow I totally missed that, I wouldn't say that it's very good UX considering
that it doesn't intuitive for many, with the dropdown it's obvious that you
can switch.

~~~
cpitman
Yeah, the only way I ever found it was because I kept accidentally doing
global searches when I though I was searching a repo. Turns out I just held
backspace too long while clearing out the search bar. It took me a long time
to realize what was going on.

------
mbrock
I'm holding my thumbs for a GitHub with a responsive layout. The separate
mobile site is pretty nice, but it lacks tons of functionality (and it's hard
to access on non-mobile).

Even HN is responsive these days!

~~~
kzhahou
Ha, yesterday I counted the number of words and/or links they fit onto a
mobile page. Forty! The page is almost all whitespace. Sweet, margin-padding
whitespace.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Well, you know minimalist design is all the rage these days.

------
m0th87
Interesting. This is closer to the older UI, before they rolled out
"Repository Next" \- [https://github.com/blog/1529-repository-
next](https://github.com/blog/1529-repository-next)

------
olalonde
Will be interesting to compare the comments here with those of 2 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5894438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5894438)

~~~
kibwen
And bookmark this current thread for when they reintroduce sidebar navigation
in 2017. :)

------
farnsworth
I don't see how to opt-in, where's the button?

~~~
mikelyons
I don't see it either, maybe they're bucket testing, odd that they'd announce
it if that's the case ...

------
danieltillett
Is there a good way to 'deep' browse GitHub? I love just browsing through
repos by language, but I have found that this is limited to a max of 500. Once
you get to 500 there is no way to get to 501, etc.

~~~
WorldMaker
You can random walk the social graph as deeply as you want to: click on a
contributor to a repository, then explore a repository they've also
contributed to, then click on a different contributor in that repository, ad
infinitum.

~~~
danieltillett
This does not allow you to efficiently browse by language.

~~~
WorldMaker
Depends on the language. Some languages the core contributors are active
enough across the language that you can get a very wide view of the projects
happening in that language. Certainly it will never be as efficient as a flat
list, but it can still be useful for finding interesting things.

------
masonhipp
Interesting changes, seems like the trend of pulling items out of icon-based
menus and into persistent nav is gaining speed.

I'm not sure how I feel about the full-width pages yet.. easier to read commit
messages but stylistically I did like the icon menu on the side. The narrower
version also seems ever-so-slightly easier to read, but it's hard to say
without trying it first. Looking forward to demoing once the roll-out starts.

------
MasterScrat
I was almost expecting them to let us add a header image to our repos, the way
Facebook Google+ and Twitter do.

~~~
themodelplumber
I would like that. For comparing many software projects I sometimes use "how
complete is the Twitter profile" as a metric, just like a lot of people use
"how does the website look".

One software project that I've been involved with for over a decade still uses
the same old stale graphics, and it's basically telegraphing the fact that the
SABDFL is not big on letting other people contribute to areas he's not
comfortable with.

------
Killswitch
Says it's opt in for the next two weeks, but I'm not seeing how to opt in.

~~~
Mithaldu
Don't see it either. Maybe badly worded.

~~~
Killswitch
@mdo said they're slowly rolling it out, and when it's available then you'll
be prompted on the repo you own.

~~~
jtokoph
That's an interesting choice of rollout if you enable it for all users that
see your repository instead of enabling the view for yourself for all
repositories that you browse.

~~~
hamandcheese
I would imagine that it is easier on Githubs end to configure a repo to render
one way or another rather than to conditionally render it based on the current
user.

------
farresito
I never understood why they changed it, but I'm glad it's back.

~~~
masklinn
They wanted more repository content above the fold. Turns out having
discoverable and clear navigation is more important since the vast majority of
the content (e.g. readmes) is going to be displayed below the fold either way.

------
tonglil
If someone wants to keep the tabbed nav sticky to the top of the page, I wrote
a Firefox add-on / Chrome extension to do so:
[https://github.com/tonglil/github-static-
nav](https://github.com/tonglil/github-static-nav)

------
r0muald
I don't get what is different in third screenshot.

Otherwise, a nice incremental change.

~~~
rowofpixels
I think it's that the sidebar menu is not present anymore (on the right hand
side). Usually in this view it is the icons only, so pretty narrow anyway.

------
marcinkuzminski
I never liked the side navigation, we stayed with top one in RhodeCode from
beginning and imho it works much better, and i say no for putting icons on
everything.

