
A DIFFERENT GitHub redesign proposal - alexandercrohde
https://blog.alexrohde.com/archives/656
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NathanKP
No offense but that isn't a redesign, it is a gutted version that takes signal
rich features out and makes Github much less usable. Signals like "number of
releases", "number of contributors", "languages used in the project", and
"number of commits" are all important ways that people evaluate an open source
project before adopting it.

This redesign even hides the "Insights" tab. Maybe that makes sense if you are
someone who only ever pushes code, but if you are a user of open source, and
doing something like trying to determine whether an NPM module is healthy,
then one of the best signals available to you is to click on the repo for the
module and check the "Insights" tab to see if it is actively maintained, if it
is a one person project or a group effort, etc. Even if the project has no
activity and therefore nothing to populate the "Insights" tab that is actually
also an important signal that this project is probably kind of dead and if
there are fixes that need to be made I'll have to do them myself.

~~~
geoah
Would be interesting if users were allowed to customize the ui depending on
their needs actually, even if that was client side. — the more I think about
this the more certain I am that there must already be a chrome extension that
does that.

~~~
yoz-y
In theory grease monkey, user scripts, custom css or even an ad blocker could
be used to do that.

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unfunco
> I have zero expertise and no real design credentials.

> If these rules don’t click for you, then you probably have a long way to go
> in your UX journey.

You seem to establish yourself as knowing very little, but then belittle
people that might know more than you if they disagree with your rules that
you've just made up.

> Wiki and Insights are features I have never used on github and may never
> use. They should be hidden by default.

Just because you have never used them doesn't mean nobody has used them, and I
read the next line about "intelligently" showing them (since when has a
boolean comparison been considered intelligence?) if they've been used before;
but then how do those features get discovered?

I only want to sound as rude as you were to the person whose work you've
criticised for pageviews, so I'll leave it at: stick to DevOps.

> There is always a flexible solution which caters to both experts and novices
> simultaneously.

That's wrong, regardless of how bold you make the word always.

~~~
lol768
> You seem to establish yourself as knowing very little, but then belittle
> people that might know more than you if they disagree with your rules that
> you've just made up.

Yeah, that "you probably have a long way to go in your UX journey" comment
irked me when I read it. I'm glad it's not just me who found it patronising.

Your point about feature discovery is a good one that the article didn't
address. It's all well and good hiding less used 'expert' features, but all
experts were once novices.

------
playpause
> As a senior-devops engineer, I have zero expertise and no real design
> credentials. Yet I think I can still do better.

> Far be it from me to tell everyone else how to do their job, but here are
> some principles that seem intuitive to me, and maybe designers might
> consider them too.

> If these rules don’t click for you, then you probably have a long way to go
> in your UX journey.

I guess I have a long way to go on my UX journey.

~~~
Raphmedia
It always amazes me how arrogant some people can be without being aware of it.

------
theandrewbailey
First thing I noticed was that text labels disappeared. Your proposal has a
significant drawback right away, and I dislike it.

~~~
heavenlyblue
I would take the author's lesson and rewrite your comment as:

>> Your proposal has a significant drawback right away, _as_ I dislike it.

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Operyl
You gutted most of the features out of sight that I use as a developer, at
least based on that screenshot. I am not a fan of hiding things behind
countless links, so, I'm a no on this one.

------
geoah
Thank you for taking the time to write this up and mock up your suggestion. I
could not agree more on your changes. (Might have some issues with the
position of the new buttons and lack of releases link but that’s minor).

The only thing I’d add back somehwere under the description would be the
languages the project uses and its labels.

~~~
yoz-y
The author removed all functionality they don't use. I could do the same with
Photoshop and end up with a tool that nobody wants.

I believe that GitHub has way better metrics for knowing which functionalities
have to be put forward.

As a personal note, the author removed the Projects tab, which is the reason I
moved back to GitHub from Bitbucket.

~~~
wedn3sday
There is one good point in the post, which is that it would be cool if things
not used by the repo were automatically hidden (but still accessible if you
want to start using them). Dont have a wiki? Dont show the wiki button (hide
it under "more"). Dont use Projects? Hide the Project tab.

~~~
yoz-y
That is already the case though. You can disable wikis, projects and issues
and if you do so they will not show up. Granted it is kind of opt-out rather
than opt-in, but I think that if you are starting with GitHub it is better to
see what is available and if you are experienced you know what to do to hide
them.

In the end I disagree with the author that gratuitously hiding stuff under
some submenu is good if there is no need to save space.

------
wedn3sday
There seems to be some general consensus that the github UI is in need of a
refresh (which I strongly agree with). Instead of having random sniping via
blog post, it would be awesome to see an open design competition where anyone
in the community can submit mockups with some bounty for the winner.

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zwieback
It's always hard to look at changes once you've gotten used to the status quo.
When github first started I hated everything about it, wasn't clear at all how
it improved over just using git.

Now that I've been using github a lot (we switched a lot of our corporate
repos over to internal githubs) I don't even notice whether the GUI is good or
not. I still feel a lot of common tasks are buried in weird icon/button/tab
clicking sequences but I've committed them to my lizard brain so now it
literally doesn't matter what the GUI elements look like or where they are.

It's the same with other tools that I've used for decades: VS, vi, word,
excel. Do they have good GUI? I don't know but it doesn't matter anymore.

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jonny_eh
Is it just more, or wouldn't the blame (recent person who touched a file) be
more relevant as a file detail than its most recent commit?

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rubyfan
I don’t love designers inflicting what they think looks good without having
real user usage data and input from customers. Just don’t do it.

~~~
Raphmedia
Their words: "As a senior-devops engineer, I have zero expertise and no real
design credentials."

