This has noticeably worse info density compared to <a href="https://github.com/notifications" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/notifications, <a href="https://github.com/issues" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/issues and <a href="https://github.com/pulls" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pulls. Those old pages' list entries have padding-top: 8px and padding-bottom: 10px. This new dashboard's list entries have padding: 16px. Just why? It’s definitely more relevant though, overall a positive.
Yeah, I’m surprised at the negativity here. This is probably one of the few actual improvements github has made to UX in a while, normally when I visit I want to be looking for my things to do, not the social feed (though, I do like to explore the social feed sometimes, so, its not like its totally irrelevant, its just not the reason I go there).
Maybe that was the point, if its not front and center then nobody will use the social features.
Regardless, I think its hard to balance UI for normies and UI for techies, I think theres also a lot of brogrammers who might think they like being techies but their version of tech is lots of padding, whitespace, diffused colouring and not information density and consistency.
Personally, I have a negative almost visceral reaction when my tools change, because I learn my tools intimately and create expectations of where things will be- but this is also why I avoid tools which don’t have consistency in their UI too.
It shouldn't be. The dashboard literally doesn't work. There are features on the dashboard that literally do not work. There are features on the dashboard that lie to you. You cannot trust the dashboard.
It's also not necessarily useful because, while it might put my stuff in front, it's not the stuff I care about. And I don't care about all my stuff all the time. Why should I care about a pull request that I have open on a random repo from January? Why should that be one of the top items that I need to address?
More importantly, why can't I resolve it from here?
Why does the copilot chat not work? It doesn't. You type something in, you hit Enter. It takes you to another page. You leave that page, you go back to the dashboard. The dashboard doesn't work because it's blank, and the copilot chat never got sent. And you lost your prompt. GitHub lost my content. I put content into GitHub, and that content is no longer in GitHub. That is user-destructive behavior. It's horrible.
Let me be clear: I put data into GitHub. I hit submit. It took me to another page, and that data went missing. It's just chat, but it's still chat. It's still something I entered. I hit submit, and it's gone. That's from this new dashboard. That alone should be negativity enough.
I'm not asking GitHub to create me the perfect dashboard. What I am saying is that the dashboard that they provided is fairly useless. So useless that, of the entire dashboard, there are only two small little links in the middle of the top repositories that are remotely useful, and there's no way for me to sit there and manage all this stuff. Even if you filter stuff down, the filter options are so pathetically worthless that I don't know why they bothered. I'm not asking GitHub to create me the perfect dashboard. What I am saying is that the dashboard that they provided is fairly useless. So useless that of the entire dashboard, there's only two small little links in the middle of the top repositories that are remotely useful, and there's no way for me to sit there and manage all this stuff. Even if you filter stuff down, the filter options are so pathetically worthless that I don't know why they bothered.
If the goal of the dashboard was to make it easy for you to do your GitHub work, to get stuff done, then for me, they failed tremendously. I'm a developer. I've been a developer for many decades, and I like what I do. GitHub, for all its faults, has pieces that work really well, but the dashboard is absolutely not one of them. I feel like the dashboard is run by the same people who do the code review stuff, and they don't know what they're doing. They've done the dashboard. They've checked it off. They said, "Now you see your stuff front and center," and it's like, "Yay," but it's not stuff you care about.
So sure. We're not at the bottom of the trash anymore, but we're still in a pile of trash.
oefrha · · focus · HN ↗
dijit · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe that was the point, if its not front and center then nobody will use the social features.
Regardless, I think its hard to balance UI for normies and UI for techies, I think theres also a lot of brogrammers who might think they like being techies but their version of tech is lots of padding, whitespace, diffused colouring and not information density and consistency.
Personally, I have a negative almost visceral reaction when my tools change, because I learn my tools intimately and create expectations of where things will be- but this is also why I avoid tools which don’t have consistency in their UI too.
jasonlotito · · focus · HN ↗
It shouldn't be. The dashboard literally doesn't work. There are features on the dashboard that literally do not work. There are features on the dashboard that lie to you. You cannot trust the dashboard.
It's also not necessarily useful because, while it might put my stuff in front, it's not the stuff I care about. And I don't care about all my stuff all the time. Why should I care about a pull request that I have open on a random repo from January? Why should that be one of the top items that I need to address?
More importantly, why can't I resolve it from here?
Why does the copilot chat not work? It doesn't. You type something in, you hit Enter. It takes you to another page. You leave that page, you go back to the dashboard. The dashboard doesn't work because it's blank, and the copilot chat never got sent. And you lost your prompt. GitHub lost my content. I put content into GitHub, and that content is no longer in GitHub. That is user-destructive behavior. It's horrible.
Let me be clear: I put data into GitHub. I hit submit. It took me to another page, and that data went missing. It's just chat, but it's still chat. It's still something I entered. I hit submit, and it's gone. That's from this new dashboard. That alone should be negativity enough.
I'm not asking GitHub to create me the perfect dashboard. What I am saying is that the dashboard that they provided is fairly useless. So useless that, of the entire dashboard, there are only two small little links in the middle of the top repositories that are remotely useful, and there's no way for me to sit there and manage all this stuff. Even if you filter stuff down, the filter options are so pathetically worthless that I don't know why they bothered. I'm not asking GitHub to create me the perfect dashboard. What I am saying is that the dashboard that they provided is fairly useless. So useless that of the entire dashboard, there's only two small little links in the middle of the top repositories that are remotely useful, and there's no way for me to sit there and manage all this stuff. Even if you filter stuff down, the filter options are so pathetically worthless that I don't know why they bothered.
If the goal of the dashboard was to make it easy for you to do your GitHub work, to get stuff done, then for me, they failed tremendously. I'm a developer. I've been a developer for many decades, and I like what I do. GitHub, for all its faults, has pieces that work really well, but the dashboard is absolutely not one of them. I feel like the dashboard is run by the same people who do the code review stuff, and they don't know what they're doing. They've done the dashboard. They've checked it off. They said, "Now you see your stuff front and center," and it's like, "Yay," but it's not stuff you care about.
So sure. We're not at the bottom of the trash anymore, but we're still in a pile of trash.