We're a small team, and we don't have a whole marketing and web team to build stuff for us.
They're experiments! Think of this like an 0.1 of an open source project; it's gonna have bugs, it's going to have rough edges. We aren't going to pretend otherwise :D
Simple is always better, especially if you are a small team. For example, there is no reason to scroll jack the site. It makes it extremely difficult to navigate and at least for myself, I immediately close the tab if scroll jacking is in place.
Let your product speak for itself, don't over complicate things or you will lose user confidence.
Indeed. Scroll hijacking is simply the worst, honestly.
I can appreciate that they tried to make it flow better and present the ideas in a context, but it's a lot of complexity to tell me about a product. It's also risky, because now it doesn't work and I can only assume other overly engineered thought processes have been applied to the product itself.
That's totally understandable but it doesn't take the expertise of a marketing team to notice the problems here. Just think whether you personally would like to find out about some neat new feature of a tool you use through some weird janky scrolljacking page which then takes you to a waitlist. And then something about a video presentation and a pinky promise the waitlist is short. I'm guessing you probably don't, like most people. A 0.1 of an open source project can have a lot of rough edges but doesn't have any of this ceremony.
It looks the same on Chrome and Firefox for me. Sure you're not being tricked by the empty block at the beginning? I initially thought that was a rendering error but I guess it's representing the sandbox nature.
Yes, and you only get added to a beta list once you go through their complicated signup flow.
Signup pages aren't really on topic for HN. This looks like a cool project but it should be submitted when there's something for people to actually try.
Kyle Daigle's "Building with :heart:" session[1] in just under an hour is going to show this off, and we'll be getting people into the thing as quickly as possible! No long waitlist here.
What is ‘GitHub Next’? Is this an official GitHub project? It’s not on the github.com domain, so it doesn’t look like it. What signals do I have to know that this site is trustworthy?
I click ‘get started’, and it wants me to hand over access to my GitHub account to see all private resources I have and "act on [my] behalf" to some unknown "blocks" third party.
How do I determine whether this website is some kind of phishing scam, or legit? Everything everyone always says ("check the domain!") rings alarm bells.
Watch Kyle's universe session linked elsewhere in the thread, he's going to be showing off a variety of projects from GitHub Next
There are some very good reasons why we exist outside the primary domain — mostly security-related! The blast radius of our experimentation should not include github.com :D
The SSO authorization requires "Act on your behalf" permissions, and says "Not owned or operated by GitHub" at the bottom of the authorize page. This is suspicious to me.
I would expect the messaging to reflect this is owned by GitHub if GitHub Next is owned by GitHub.
How funny that timing is. It showcases P5 which has absolutely awful bundle sizes because the code is written in a way that tree shaking (unused code removal) isn’t possible. It attaches everything to the p5.prototype.
This took a site I have from loading 200kb to 1.1mb. It also includes browser polyfills that haven’t been needed for years. Unacceptable.
I hope that P5 can get some attention as a result of Blocks to refactor it to solve this.
Looks nice initially but I worry it is akin to closing an open standard, ie embracing and extending and... . I'm not saying that was the intention, but if there is other stuff added to what should ostensibly be a simple Markdown file, it will be harder for me to migrate elsewhere if I think GitHub is lacking in other respects in the future, a form of vendor lock-in.
Besides being GitHub-exclusive, the bigger issue IMO is that this only works online. GitHub is not my file browser: I don't want to constantly load webpages to see a repo's content surrounded by GitHub's UI. I'd rather download the repo and browse code in IntelliJ or neovim. It's not just me, there's a big reason Markdown is the dominant README format and readable text is the dominant code format.
Now if they add the extra README details and file metadata that are stored in the files themselves, then this is a great idea. Although that also means it's essentially an open-standard and competitors like GitLab and SourceHut can adopt the features.
Also, a major reason for Git as a VCS is being able to store and distribute copies. Otherwise, why use commits at all? Why not just store all data in the cloud and turn every file into a Google Doc? That's actually not a terrible solution and I can see someone like GitHub adopting it - but it's not Git.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadThey're experiments! Think of this like an 0.1 of an open source project; it's gonna have bugs, it's going to have rough edges. We aren't going to pretend otherwise :D
Let your product speak for itself, don't over complicate things or you will lose user confidence.
I can appreciate that they tried to make it flow better and present the ideas in a context, but it's a lot of complexity to tell me about a product. It's also risky, because now it doesn't work and I can only assume other overly engineered thought processes have been applied to the product itself.
First impressions matter.
Signup pages aren't really on topic for HN. This looks like a cool project but it should be submitted when there's something for people to actually try.
GitHub Next is a small research lab, formerly known as the Office of the CTO
Kyle Daigle's "Building with :heart:" session[1] in just under an hour is going to show this off, and we'll be getting people into the thing as quickly as possible! No long waitlist here.
https://githubuniverse.com/events/detail/virtual-schedule/a0...
I click ‘get started’, and it wants me to hand over access to my GitHub account to see all private resources I have and "act on [my] behalf" to some unknown "blocks" third party.
How do I determine whether this website is some kind of phishing scam, or legit? Everything everyone always says ("check the domain!") rings alarm bells.
next.github.com redirects to the site
You can see Blocks and Hey, GitHub! on https://github.com/features/preview
Watch Kyle's universe session linked elsewhere in the thread, he's going to be showing off a variety of projects from GitHub Next
There are some very good reasons why we exist outside the primary domain — mostly security-related! The blast radius of our experimentation should not include github.com :D
I would expect the messaging to reflect this is owned by GitHub if GitHub Next is owned by GitHub.
imho that is a really, really important piece of this puzzle.
This took a site I have from loading 200kb to 1.1mb. It also includes browser polyfills that haven’t been needed for years. Unacceptable.
I hope that P5 can get some attention as a result of Blocks to refactor it to solve this.
https://github.com/processing/p5.js/issues/5740#issuecomment...
If only I had known this, I would not spend time on it.
But I wasn't able to try it:
Uh oh, something went wrong! Failed to fetch
I'd love to see the tech behind this get open sourced, so GitLab and whoever else can adopt it as a standard.
Openness makes all the difference. Hard pass.
Now if they add the extra README details and file metadata that are stored in the files themselves, then this is a great idea. Although that also means it's essentially an open-standard and competitors like GitLab and SourceHut can adopt the features.
Also, a major reason for Git as a VCS is being able to store and distribute copies. Otherwise, why use commits at all? Why not just store all data in the cloud and turn every file into a Google Doc? That's actually not a terrible solution and I can see someone like GitHub adopting it - but it's not Git.
[1]: https://blockprotocol.org/