I don't see what's wrong with it. One thing I love about it is that I can now finally read readmes even if the window is only half or even a third of the width of my screen. Other then that it just looks a bit more modern.
One thing I just slightly dislike is that the width of the body is limited, but not the width of the header. Looks inconsistent.
They used to be full width no matter how wide your window was (I put to 1/2 for browser). Now they only occupy 70% of that space. So I just lost 30% of my readme width to empty space. This is just terrible UX
GitHub never had full width pages before of the Repo interface. They used a giant gutter on both sides on widescreens in classic Web 1.0 blog template fashion. That ~30% empty space has always been there beside the README, it's just now consolidated to a single side and used to bring a few more bits of information "above the fold".
It's not the layout I dislike but the styling which makes it harder to see what is a button and what isn't, e.g. only 2 of these are clickable https://imgur.com/a/wR9xsvT
i always find it hard to read tiny text so my zoom level is always between 120% and 150%. they fixed all my issues with this update and that made me happy.
It's indeed much better on mobile, since the old design not only hid most of the README, but also lacked many useful indicators from the desktop version (languages, releases, etc.)
The thing is, they just released an excellent app, which was seemingly meant to solve the problem of browsing GitHub on mobile. It's a bit surprising that this design, by many aspects, seems targeted towards mobile users and is already displaying more useful info than the app.
Ugh, they've gotten rid of the commit message, because they merged "commits" "branches" "tags" into the header bar. If you want to see what the latest commit was you need an additional click.
Turns out that glancing at the header was useful to tell what was going on!
On the plus side, GitLab's repo view (which I disliked because it felt cluttered and always hard to find what I wanted) is now easier to use and read than GitHub's, so that makes changing easier.
Also, I'm noticing a lot more "preload" pages ... e.g. the page loads with blank placeholder fields for the commit and text information that's then replaced live after loading the page. Maybe it did this before and is just slower now?
My cynical guess is that they used “page load time” as a metric to prove their new system was “faster”.
And maybe only tested internally on a faster system, or with hot-cache repository loads? It doesn’t seem to do it on reloads, though going away for a bit and coming back seems to cause it again (and, visibly, different parts of the page load at different times).
Anyway, It definitely reeks of “enterprise” so I guess Microsoft finally got enough people into github to steer the ship towards the iceberg.
> Hrm. I just got switched to Github's new look and feel... and tbh, I _don't_ like it. I liked the 3D depth of the prior buttons. The new ones are too flat, the text is thinner, and they're too rounded. I appreciate that people worked on this, but... why was this change needed?
(See tweet for a screenshot comparison of the "New Issue" and "Edit" buttons before and after)
They are following the trends of flat design and rounded corners, which I don’t really mind.
I’m more bothered by the fact that nothing is aligned: the GitHub logo, the breadcrumb, the horizontal menu and the issue title are all on different verticals. Looks messy.
There is a consistent principle behind those choices: rectangles with slightly rounded corners are clickable, while rectangles with semicircular sides (“pills”) are not clickable. It's confusing because I've never seen another site that distinguishes clickable elements in that way, but I can imagine we'll grow to find it intuitive with enough usage.
We will all get used to it all right. I use Arch Linux, free in every sense, and couldn't give a damn about OSX fuckeries. Get over your pussy free lives. Get arch linux-
I felt the same, and even made the same image with vertical lines in my feedback to GitHub while the change was still in the preview stage.
I installed a custom css user style extension just to fix it. Here's a link to my comment with example before and after along with the CSS needed for chrome or firefox:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624292
I felt the same, I installed a custom css user style extension just to fix it. Here's a link to my comment with example before and after along with the CSS needed for chrome or firefox:
This is my biggest gripe with it. The sidebar only extends down for a short length, but causes the entire readme to shrink and results in a lot of empty space. I'm indifferent to all the other changes but the readme shrinking for no good reason is quite annoying.
Yep. The languages used in the repo is the first bit of information I look for. That little visualisation was a very clever feature and a highly efficient use of space.
I'm completely neutral. They've changed their UI many times over the years and this is no different. Products usually change UI and that's just a fact of life.
Most of the time it isn't bad UI but a vocal minority that just hates any change.
It's not like these companies release these changes without doing significant user testing and AB testing. If you design based on the opinions of HN/Twitter, every site would look like Craigslist (or HN's favorite abomination of a design, the Berkshire Hathaway site).
Not necessarily. I've seen the concept of "vocal minority vs silent majority" used as justification to push through a change. So even if you get only bad feedback, it still goes through because most people said nothing, which means most people like it.
Or most people hated it but didn't love the product enough to care to comment. Perhaps the design of the feedback form matters. I wasn't part of the beta so I don't know how they asked.
They didn't ask, you have to go into the feature view menu (under profile) and then click a link there to go to another page and then have a form to fill out.
They know UX for sure!
Maybe we should send them a copy of Don't Make Me Think
Same here - but it also feels like I got the feature preview notification maybe a week before the feature actually launched, two weeks max. Didn't feel like enough time for me to properly test the new interface, or for them to properly evaluate feedback.
I gave some feedback on this as well but unfortunately I only saw the preview like, two days ago. Have I just missed it or did they not roll this preview out earlier?
I got it on 19th June (I remember because it was the day GitHub went down). I left feedback, but it feels like it would've been a foregone conclusion at that point.
I was only given at most a couple of weeks to provide feedback which like everyone else here was negative.
But to have it launch now means that they never had any intention of listening to real feedback. They just wanted to see if there were any showstopper bugs.
I gave feedback too and never heard anything. The rounded corners look cartoonish, the header is terrible, moving releases and using a new column at the right is terrible. Seriously w-t-h are they thinking? there was literally nothing wrong with their existing UI.
I'd make the languages bar expanded by default, and for repositories where I rarely contribute hide file list elsewhere (like on mobile), bringing README to the top.
Like many others, I use Github every day. Changes like this add friction to our workflow.
There better be a damn good reason for these changes, otherwise it's a pointless redesign that looks no better than it did previously while simultaneously adding a slight overhead as users "learn" the new layout.
Does anyone know of an option to revert this update?
My hypothesis is the point is to compete with Jira. That would be MS's biggest competitor in this space, and the changes make it look a whole lot more like that.
I wonder if MS has gone back on their word to leave GitHub to it's own devices...?
I have been unable to find a method to revert. Best option might be to make a bunch of noise. Other than that, it's migration time.
> My hypothesis is the point is to compete with Jira.
When they start making everything drag & droppable at a huge cost to UI latency and bundle size (plus, for some reason, idle resource use), we'll know for sure that's what they're doing.
If competing with Atlassian is the point, then they're going to have to completely revise their licensing model for a start. GHE is _far_ too expensive compared to Atlassian's whole software suite to be any real competition.
I'm curious, what exactly has broken in your workflow? The biggest issue I see is that you are unable to see build status on a commit (above the file list), but otherwise nothing really has changed too much in my opinion.
1. On larger monitors e.g. 4K the menus are on the far left whilst the content is in the middle which makes it far more of an effort to navigate around.
2. Row separators have disappeared so I have to be a lot more deliberate about which file I am clicking now since it's a lot easier to mis-click.
3. Buttons are a mess. You can't distinguish what is a button and what is not e.g. Clone versus the Open Issue label.
4. Clone button is so prominent. I only do this once per repo and yet it's like a giant CTA begging you to click it. Likewise for the folder icons. No need for them to be coloured.
Honestly, it's a positive improvement. Better information layout, and the code is still front and center. None of the core functions really changed place, just changed padding a little.
Really? I found that I only really look at the code when I look at projects I'm involved in. Usually though I use GitHub for discovery and then I care much more about the languages, commits, releases and Readme.
I pay them money on several accounts, maybe it's not enough and IBM asked them to do this? I'm not sure how well MS and IBM get along, IBM saw them as public enemy #1 when I left, but where paying for GitHub?
For the license, it's right there near the stop of the sidebar. For me it's actually easier to notice now.
As for language, it's true, it's below the fold in the sidebar. Maybe it'd be better above the contributors. But for me the most important place for me to see language is when searching/browsing through lists of repos - and that hasn't changed.
Yeah it's clear that they're setting things up to be used more frequently on touch-based devices. Combine that with the hosted IDE, Visual Studio Code, Azure Devops, etc and it's more or less strategically obvious that the goal is to enable a shift in that direction.
Looks absolutely horrible. I use a laptop as my main dev machine, and all these 16px and 30px paddings that they added everywhere create real tunnel vision experience. I guess people with huge displays don't mind... But I absolutely do.
Looks like another case when a frontend team does something to justify their existence.
But let's look at the positives: the last redesign of that sort helped me to completely migrate away from gmail.
Yeah, maybe I am a minority in viewing web pages in 1/2 1080P?
The only screen that is full screen is the code.
But really, I want to look at two windows without issue on the same screen. Is that so much to ask? Can we have better layout on 1/2 1080P screens please?
I don't understand the appeal in this for the designers either. Back in the old days (~2010s) every UI had some personality and very intricate details that the designer would be proud of and that will differentiate them from the competition. Nowadays it's the same flat, white and empty UIs everywhere - there is no significant difference. Would a designer really be doing their personal brand a favour by putting one of these new "designs" on it?
The appeal is that they need something on-trend to put in their portfolios for career advancement. It's their version of résumé-driven development. Project managers have similar incentives (screenshots are very powerful, in many settings) so at least don't stop them, if not actually encouraging them.
I use a ultra-wide (2560x1080) monitor and it looks terrible [1]. The repository header being "fluid" put the repository name and watch/star/fork buttons so far out of the rest of the repository info, like branch name, commit info etc., that using GitHub maximized feels very weird and tiring.
I get using the whole resolution for the menu bar, since its content is disconnected to the rest of the page content. But having part of the repository info in different "aspects" don't make sense for me
The fluid width makes text harder to read. There's a reason why newspapers print in skinny columns. I wish they would at least let me set a max-width on the body.
I knew there was a reason I prefer skinny column text! I presume the reason is because it's a smaller leap from end-of-line to beginning-of-next, much less likely for your brain to miss.
I'm not sure yet, 30 minutes isn't long enough with it to form an opinion. My initial reaction was, What? Why has this changed? I didn't see anything wrong with the old one.
I do like that sponsors appears more prominently; for a very long time financial incentives have been an unsolved problem in open source.
Ugh, that's not good. Latest commit message and date will not display under <> Code without Javascript enabled, but if I click around in the repository and go back to <> Code or keep refreshing the page, they suddenly show up, still with Javascript disabled. Can anyone explain this?
However, I do like the visual part of the new layout.
I don't see commit messages inside the "Code" menu item anywhere, with or without javascript or reloading. You have to click a commit hash to see its message. I think this is an improvement.
Right, like this is such an obviously bad design pattern and yet they still do it. I just don't understand where design is as a science or art anymore...
It is redesign for sake of redesign unfortunately. My guess is GitHub/MS has a bunch of designers paid full-time and they need to justify their salaries.
588 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadOne thing I just slightly dislike is that the width of the body is limited, but not the width of the header. Looks inconsistent.
They used to be full width no matter how wide your window was (I put to 1/2 for browser). Now they only occupy 70% of that space. So I just lost 30% of my readme width to empty space. This is just terrible UX
Discussion on /r/github: https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/hei81f/
Personally I think it's an improvement on mobile - finally the entire README is readable by default.
That being said was there any warning/reasoning behind the change? I cannot find any announcements.
I had a "Preview: Try the new layout and give us feedback" notification for about an hour, then it switched on permanently.
Optimistically, maybe they accidentally flipped a trial feature flag globally and it wasn't intended?
It's more telling that they didn't listen and pushed it out so quickly anyway.
...because usage of Github from mobile is so important /s
Still prefer that to this update
i always find it hard to read tiny text so my zoom level is always between 120% and 150%. they fixed all my issues with this update and that made me happy.
The thing is, they just released an excellent app, which was seemingly meant to solve the problem of browsing GitHub on mobile. It's a bit surprising that this design, by many aspects, seems targeted towards mobile users and is already displaying more useful info than the app.
Turns out that glancing at the header was useful to tell what was going on!
On the plus side, GitLab's repo view (which I disliked because it felt cluttered and always hard to find what I wanted) is now easier to use and read than GitHub's, so that makes changing easier.
And maybe only tested internally on a faster system, or with hot-cache repository loads? It doesn’t seem to do it on reloads, though going away for a bit and coming back seems to cause it again (and, visibly, different parts of the page load at different times).
Anyway, It definitely reeks of “enterprise” so I guess Microsoft finally got enough people into github to steer the ship towards the iceberg.
you made my day! thanks
> Hrm. I just got switched to Github's new look and feel... and tbh, I _don't_ like it. I liked the 3D depth of the prior buttons. The new ones are too flat, the text is thinner, and they're too rounded. I appreciate that people worked on this, but... why was this change needed?
(See tweet for a screenshot comparison of the "New Issue" and "Edit" buttons before and after)
[0] https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1275465823403020288
But a good UI should be intuitive for a first time user. This seems objectively worse.
I installed a custom css user style extension just to fix it. Here's a link to my comment with example before and after along with the CSS needed for chrome or firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624292
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624292
So much wasted space and loss of information if you ask me.
Your justification for bad redesigns is that... other companies do it too? That's a very apathetic/defeatist attitude.
It's not like these companies release these changes without doing significant user testing and AB testing. If you design based on the opinions of HN/Twitter, every site would look like Craigslist (or HN's favorite abomination of a design, the Berkshire Hathaway site).
Like scroll down a readme, is all that space on the right better usage?
The "About" being moved to the right side is a good move, but the top bar being full-width is incredibly annoying.
If this is any taste of things to come, then I imagine I'll be moving to Sourcehut permanently earlier than I thought.
I'm thinking of moving just to support another COSS (Commercial OSS) company. https://coss.media
I gave some negative feedback about it earlier regarding this change, but it seems I might have been a part of the minority.
Really love that they ignored it...
They know UX for sure!
Maybe we should send them a copy of Don't Make Me Think
I was only given at most a couple of weeks to provide feedback which like everyone else here was negative.
But to have it launch now means that they never had any intention of listening to real feedback. They just wanted to see if there were any showstopper bugs.
Also show latest release link with summary.
Jira has this, thus my association and triggering ;]
There better be a damn good reason for these changes, otherwise it's a pointless redesign that looks no better than it did previously while simultaneously adding a slight overhead as users "learn" the new layout.
Does anyone know of an option to revert this update?
I wonder if MS has gone back on their word to leave GitHub to it's own devices...?
I have been unable to find a method to revert. Best option might be to make a bunch of noise. Other than that, it's migration time.
When they start making everything drag & droppable at a huge cost to UI latency and bundle size (plus, for some reason, idle resource use), we'll know for sure that's what they're doing.
1. On larger monitors e.g. 4K the menus are on the far left whilst the content is in the middle which makes it far more of an effort to navigate around.
2. Row separators have disappeared so I have to be a lot more deliberate about which file I am clicking now since it's a lot easier to mis-click.
3. Buttons are a mess. You can't distinguish what is a button and what is not e.g. Clone versus the Open Issue label.
4. Clone button is so prominent. I only do this once per repo and yet it's like a giant CTA begging you to click it. Likewise for the folder icons. No need for them to be coloured.
Except for the very prominent clone button, I really have not felt it has brought anything negative.
Although, I probably use GitHub like 50% less than you.
That used to be front and center and two of the most important things when I land on a repo page.
As for language, it's true, it's below the fold in the sidebar. Maybe it'd be better above the contributors. But for me the most important place for me to see language is when searching/browsing through lists of repos - and that hasn't changed.
Looks like another case when a frontend team does something to justify their existence.
But let's look at the positives: the last redesign of that sort helped me to completely migrate away from gmail.
The only screen that is full screen is the code.
But really, I want to look at two windows without issue on the same screen. Is that so much to ask? Can we have better layout on 1/2 1080P screens please?
Maybe they need a good introspective period in their art, or some psychology classes?
I use a ultra-wide (2560x1080) monitor and it looks terrible [1]. The repository header being "fluid" put the repository name and watch/star/fork buttons so far out of the rest of the repository info, like branch name, commit info etc., that using GitHub maximized feels very weird and tiring.
I get using the whole resolution for the menu bar, since its content is disconnected to the rest of the page content. But having part of the repository info in different "aspects" don't make sense for me
[1] https://imgur.com/FNs1qb6
A menu that uses the entire space, but then something in the middle.
It's just weird.
I really don't like this change and I'm pretty open to it normally
I do like that sponsors appears more prominently; for a very long time financial incentives have been an unsolved problem in open source.
I can't relate to the OP's preference for Gitlab's UI. Gitlab UI is the reason why I don't use Gitlab.
I do not like Jira, and if GitHub starts to be Jira, definitely looking elsewhere.
GitLab seems like the next best option. Any other suggestions welcome too!
However, I do like the visual part of the new layout.