

GitHub's on your phone - oBeLx
https://github.com/blog/1559-github-s-on-your-phone

======
llambda
I'm not sure what took GitHub so long to _finally_ implement a mobile view for
the site, but thank you. I have been waiting for this to happen for years,
quite literally.

Edit: It's worth noting I've heard plenty of counter arguments to using GitHub
from my phone. But I will say, sometimes I want to check out a project and
possibly browse source and lo and behold I'm not at my desktop. For this
reason alone, a mobile GitHub makes sense. Glad to see it at long last.

~~~
Splendor
Maybe it's a coincidence but this was a sticking point during a discussion
between a couple folks at GitHub and Scott Hanselman on the HanselMinutes
podcast episode aired on June 14th.

Link: [http://hanselminutes.com/375/on-culture-and-remoteness-at-
gi...](http://hanselminutes.com/375/on-culture-and-remoteness-at-github-with-
paul-betts-and-justin-spahr-summers)

~~~
shanselman
Likely a coincidence, but I'm a little bummed they didn't mention it if they
knew it was coming. ;)

~~~
xpaulbettsx
Secrets! We test things like that for quite some time before we release it. We
know it's good when coworkers start asking, "Wait, this isn't shipped yet? Why
not?!"

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graue
I'm sad to see this didn't come with a responsive design for the main site.
You get horizontal scrollbars everywhere if your window is thinner than ~1000
pixels, making it impossible to have code + GitHub side by side on a laptop
without some serious annoyance. The repo redesign made it worse, as now all
the in-project links (issues, pulls, wiki...) are offscreen.

I'd happily work around this by using the mobile view from my desktop browser
(as you can do on Wikipedia and many news sites), but GitHub doesn't seem to
have made that possible, either.

If any GitHubbers are reading, please make the design (at least a little bit)
responsive!

~~~
CaptchaReader
If it was responsive, all they would be doing is "hiding or relocating stuff",
but the size (in KB) of each page would be the same for mobile and desktop.

That would make it unusable on a mobile. They NEEDED to do different pages for
each, and make it much lighter for mobile.

~~~
edvinbesic
Couldn't this be somewhat mitigated by using progressive enhancement versus
graceful degradation?

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timothya
I've been hoping this would happen for a long time. Most of the views look
really good, but I'm not very excited about the code view. The font on the
code is bigger than necessary, in my opinion, and the word-wrap on the code
text just makes it really hard to read.

Displaying code on a narrow window is difficult, but I'm not convinced that
this is the right solution. I'd prefer to be able to zoom out.

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oscardelben
Fun fact: years ago I started building an ipad app for Github, but it was
rejected multiple times by Apple because users could use it to create a new
account but then Apple wouldn't get any commission.

[https://github.com/oscardelben/GithubBrowser](https://github.com/oscardelben/GithubBrowser)

~~~
CoryG89
What do you mean Apple wouldn't get any commission? For creating new GitHub
accounts? Am I missing something?

~~~
jakebellacera
I think what ocscardelben meant was that Apple wouldn't get any commission off
of new, paid, GitHub accounts.

~~~
oscardelben
YES

------
kevin1024
Interesting that they decided not to do a responsive design. Instead, it
serves up different HTML if you send a phone user-agent. I've been trying to
decide if this is a good idea for my own project.

~~~
holman
For us, it made sense.

Our desktop site is pretty large. Check the graph in the blog post- the mobile
pages are about 1/10th the size of the desktop CSS and JavaScript. By avoiding
a responsive design, we can make things load disproportionately faster for our
use case. On top of that, it's isolated so we're less likely to break views by
adding features later. Pretty fun.

~~~
daegloe
Zach, what was the reasoning behind using such large text for the code view?
Will there be a zoom in/out option? Or a text size preference?

~~~
holman
To make it easy to read code. :) It feels pretty comfortable- squinting isn't
fun.

We tend to avoid user preferences. If it ends up being a problem, we'll lower
the text size at some point.

~~~
xnxn
It seems a bit extreme on my Nexus 4...
[http://i.imgur.com/hagaiLR.png](http://i.imgur.com/hagaiLR.png)

------
ontouchstart
I started an experiment of writing my blog purely on an iPhone via github web
UI.
([https://github.com/ontouchstart/blog](https://github.com/ontouchstart/blog)).
Since the mobile view doesn't have the EDIT option, I have to switch to
desktop version to edit my posts.

I believe I am a minority in github users. :-)

------
joeblau
From Windows Mobile 8, I see a blue border around images that are linkable
[1].

[1] - [http://i.imgur.com/bglIKU5.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/bglIKU5.jpg)

~~~
alanctgardner2
Can I just say that this is the worst "feature" in the world? It's not just
mobile, desktop IE adds a border to images with links by default. As a non-web
developer knocking up a site, I didn't think to suppress borders on random
elements, and people were asking why the site was ugly in IE 9.

Why isn't there a common, default stylesheet across browsers? Please?

~~~
nathos
you want
[http://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/](http://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/)

------
the_mitsuhiko
Seems not fully deployed yet or not a full feature. The overview page if
you're not signed in, as well as all profiles don't seem to have ombile
versions. Same with the news feed.

~~~
kickingvegas
Agreed. While I'm happy to see effort here, it seems half-baked.

Among the many things not there:

* Create new issues * Add tags to issues * View milestones * View diffs

~~~
clone1018
They'll probably want to steer all mobile users to their Github app.

~~~
jmathai
I don't understand this line of thinking. If I'm a Github user and I'm on the
website from a phone and go to create an issue then that's actually what I'm
hoping to do.

------
jordanthoms
Are there updates coming for the Android apps also, or is the focus on mobile
web? The Android app doesn't support the one thing I could reasonably do on my
phone - reviewing pull requests.

------
qntmfred
Is there a way to change which branch of the repo you're browsing?

------
thinker
Looks like Github used Angular.js. Would be interesting to hear how they
settled on that. I've been using it for a side project and so far have had a
positive experience.

~~~
cleverjake
I don't see any sign of angular - what makes you think that they did?

~~~
gnufied
Yes, definitely not angural.js. It would be still interesting to see their
mobile webapp stack.

~~~
bkbleikamp
It's currently very simple.

The mobile app is just part of our main web app. We use the same models and
controllers as our desktop views. We have separate markup, different bundles
for mobile JavaScript and CSS, and separate view models[1].

[1] [http://warpspire.com/posts/mustache-style-
erb/](http://warpspire.com/posts/mustache-style-erb/)

------
tomchristie
Mostly pretty great, but it'd be nice to see a couple of controls that have
now disappeared.

I can't close or reopen issues anymore, which is something that's super useful
to be able to do on the go.

Also there's no way to edit files from the mobile view. Again, something I've
often found really useful for quick docs fixes, or adding contributors to the
credits after merging a pull request.

------
grobie
So you're trying to tell me my phone isn't even the right device to make line
comments in pull requests?

------
rjvir
"Our phones, on the other hand, aren’t great for creating things but they’re
perfect for browsing and reading content."

Tell that to Instagram, Vine, Twitter, or Smule. Mobile phones are amazing
creation tools.

~~~
vecinu
All of the tools you mentioned can be replaced by their desktop counterparts.

I would argue against using your mobile device to create relevant content. I
know people want an all-in-one toolkit that does everything great but let's go
with history on this, it won't work.

A jack of all trades is good but a specialized tool will always be better.

Instagram < Camera + Filter Vine < Video camera + Editing Twitter < (Medium
seems to be getting more popular, maybe 140 characters really isn't the
future)

I've never heard of Smule.

Again, this is simply my opinion but I feel like some folks are too fast to do
everything on their 'mobile device' (let's not call it a smartPHONE).

------
diggan
Whoops, the users profile page is redirect to desktop view. Is that on
purpose?

~~~
jbarnette
Yup, we're focusing on the pages most likely to be clicked through on mobile
first.

------
jbrooksuk
WOOOOOO! This has been driving me insane. Trying to read issues and
repositories, and I'm there pinching and panning around getting lost and
frustrated. Thank you GitHub <3

------
swah
I remember they didn't go with a full client side app for the desktop version,
instead opting for something like pjax.

What did they do there, media queries?

------
dsyph3r
This is by far one of the best updates GitHub has made recently. Using the
current GitHub on a mobile device is difficult and slow. Really pleased to see
this done!

------
Spiritus
Hmm, they forgot the news feed. Or have I gone blind?

------
Afforess
Kinda useless without the newsfeed. :/

------
catshirt
wow, finally! this comes very welcome. although i suppose i must now bid
farewell to another one of my repositories :)
[http://github.com/catshirt/github-mobile](http://github.com/catshirt/github-
mobile)

------
zhenjl
Hm..is it me or there's no way to switch branch using the mobile view..

------
gms
How do I close an open pull request from this view? I don't see it.

------
Bosence
Is that Jurassic Park in the background of the first image???

~~~
technoweenie
Yes! Now guess the background of the second image :)

~~~
cholmon
"Ferris, get off of the float!"

------
6ren
How can I get the mobile version on my desktop?

------
AndyKelley
Octodroid is still the winner, in my opinion.

------
carlosdp
About time! This is awesome!

------
late2part
Github's in your base, killing your dudes! (OUTAGE!!)

