4 ms·

I just can't get past how bad SourceHut's UI is. They really need to hire someone that knows some basic UI principles. Edit: As a commenter suggested, I will e

I just can't get past how bad SourceHut's UI is. They really need to hire someone that knows some basic UI principles. Edit: As a commenter suggested, I will elaborate a little: I'm a big fan of minimalist and lightweight UIs, that's not my issue with SourceHut's design. My issue is the disregard for several established UI principles (balance, proportion, repetition, etc.). Some examples: - The login[0] and register[1] pages have completely inconsistent layouts (left aligned vs centered aligned, one has a header and the other not, etc.). - The margin between the top navigation and page content is inconsistent from page to page. - Inconsistent styling of links. Some links have an underline that disappears on mouseover, while for some other links, it's the opposite[2]. - Inconsistent use of margin/padding all over the place. Etc. [0] https://meta.sr.ht/login https://meta.sr.ht/login [1] https://meta.sr.ht/ https://meta.sr.ht/ [2] https://sr.ht/~martijnbraam/photoflow/ https://sr.ht/~martijnbraam/photoflow/ see "View project feed" vs "public-inbox" links at the top.

DrBazza 4y ago
It's not bad at all, unfamiliar perhaps, because all the others have copied github. It's like that so that page sizes are as a small as possible, to cater for all users on all platforms in all locations. Not everyone is American or European with a gigabit connection. No pointless theming, no pointless javascript, no trackers and so on.
mikro2nd 4y ago
Personally I really, really like Sourcehut's UI/UX -- far easier to navigate for a casual user than those other Big Name alternatives. As well, I like the minimalism of the UI.
lpcvoid 4y ago
Do you miss the millions of bytes of bloated Javascript mess that "modern" websites are littered with? SourceHut's UI is absolutely amazing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
adrianmsmith 4y ago
This would be more helpful and lead to a more interesting discussion if you could tell us what you didn't like about SourceHut's UI.
goodpoint 4y ago
I love minimalistic javascript-free UIs and that sourcehut is fast (and under AGPL). Yet I find the layout in Sourcehut really confusing and not self-explanatory. Not having a bugtracker UI and having to jump around different FQDNs related to the same project is a usability killer for me. I don't expect forges to copy github. E.g. trac is very different but still has a rational and friendly layout. EDIT: I also like that codeberg.org is non-profit and community-driven. If the sourcehut UI was to become usable I wish codeberg would run an instance of sourcehut. Another aspect I would love to see is federation.
- Tmpod 4y ago
  Yeah, the disconnect between sourcehut components isn't great, but AFAIK they are working on hub.sr.ht or smth like that, and also better integration between all of those services, precisely to fix that issue. I'm eager to see that implemented, because it will be a good step forward.
  - emptyparadise 4y ago
    I don't even mind the separate component approach but I wish they would just have a single consistent navigation bar on all of them for switching between all the services for a project.
    - Tmpod 4y ago
      Yeah, I too quite like the approach, but at the moment the components are too dissociated with each other, so something like what you suggested would come along way to making the platform more welcoming and useful.
    - ddevault 4y ago
      We will be adding this soon, it's an acknowledged priority for the beta.
      - emptyparadise 4y ago
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>The login[0] and register[1] pages have completely inconsistent layouts (left aligned vs centered aligned, one has a header and the other not, etc.). The register link is actually: https://meta.sr.ht/register https://meta.sr.ht/register. You pointed to meta homepage. When you proceed to enter your info (username/password) you'll see the layouts are consistent.
- olalonde 4y ago
  The "Register" link in the top navigation links to https://meta.sr.ht/ https://meta.sr.ht/, while the "Register" link inside the login page links to https://meta.sr.ht/register https://meta.sr.ht/register (another inconsistency I guess). Even if we compare, https://meta.sr.ht/register/step2 https://meta.sr.ht/register/step2 and https://meta.sr.ht/login https://meta.sr.ht/login, the widths of the layouts are different (730px vs 920px).
dncornholio 4y ago
This is always the problem with most of free software. They are so awkward to use. Meanwhile any criticism is very often met with getting downplayed.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  > often met with getting downplayed Or maybe it's just a matter of taste? Personally I find many popular proprietary applications (including web "applications") as comfortable and enjoyable to use as walking on two hands backwards while blindfolded. Yet most people around me seem quite satisfied.
  - dncornholio 4y ago
    And these people end up building it them selfs and that's how we end up with 2 extremes instead of a common middle ground?
beardicus 4y ago
strong agree, though with the caveat that it's "bad" for my tastes and priorities, but is clearly ok for other folks. it feels all too common for folks to rage against bloaty interfaces (i agree, they're terrible!) but swing wildly back towards clunky browser-default randomness. you can have a consistent, polished interface without javascript and tons of images! one thing w/ sourcehut that i find adds confusion is their choice to make their various services (source vs tickets vs mailing lists) completely separate apps. start on this page: https://sr.ht/~martijnbraam/photoflow/ https://sr.ht/~martijnbraam/photoflow/ when you click on the "source" tab what do you expect will happen? i expect i'll go to a page with a source tree, listing files and directories. i also expect that i'll now be on the "source" tab at the new page, and will have the option to click back to the "summary" tab or any of the others that i currently see. instead, you're taken to basically the same exact summary page (displaying README content) but with some git commit info on top. the highlighted tab is now... SUMMARY, AGAIN and there's a completely different tab set available to you. there is no way to click anywhere to get back to the previous version of the summary page and explore that tab group further. i'm sure this makes sense to some folks (and they'll explain why i'm wrong below), but to me it feels like a cohesive user experience is not being prioritized here, and that's something i value ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- gspr 4y ago
  This is the one thing I, too, struggle with with sr.ht. I keep on using it, but I can't wrap my head around why this is supposed to be a good way to do it.
- olalonde 4y ago
  The repository's description also changes for no apparent reason ("Photo management solution" vs "A web picture gallery").
  - mariusor 4y ago
    The link parent posted is not of the repository but of the project. Sourcehut doesn't use the 1 to 1 relationship between projects and repositories, wiki, and issue tracker that the other source forges employ. A sourcehut project can have as many as them as there are required. Therefore the Source tab takes you to the main git/HG repo that you have added for your project. That's also the reason why the descriptions are different, one is of the project, the other is of the repository. It's only confusing if you dismiss everything that's not a clone of github without investing the little time it takes to learn about the differences.
lucideer 4y ago
While I get how the first line of your comment could come across dismissive in isolation (and I guess that was the entire comment before the Edit - so I understand the downvotes in that context), there's a common reply in sibling comments here that bothers me much much more: > "bloated Javascript" > "pointless javascript" > "javascript-free UIs" I don't know how much people have worked in UI and with front-end code (HTML/CSS/JS) but... the commenter criticised the UI. Javascript is not a UI language. Being a front-end language it's used a lot in close conjunction with UI components to control interactivity and data flow, but it has no responsibility for their appearance. In terms of aesthetic visual design, the amount of Javascript you have behind it isn't really relevant. I do see a lot of people mentioning performance (which is a great feature of Sourcehut's), but is also a separate topic. (fwiw I also love Javascriptless interfaces, not arguing that)
- Arnavion 4y ago
  The kind of whizzbangs associated with "beautiful UI" often involves copious amounts of JavaScript hijacking scroll events, running code for every pixel of a mouse move, and so on. Something as simple as "header in the middle of the page" can involve an absolutely-positioned header moved around on scroll events. That's why people were mentioning JS. If you've worked on frontend UI then you can't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. (And yes, I know it can be done with just CSS instead of moving an absolutely-positioned header with JS in scroll events. Tell that to the websites that do it, not to me.)
  - lucideer 4y ago
    I know what you're talking about but I've also never seen anyone (neither on HN nor anywhere outside a caricature design agency boardroom) criticise the lack of whizzbangs. Noone was talking about whizzbangs here, least of all the gp.
euclaise 4y ago
I very much like Sourcehut's UI as a whole (i.e. their design philosophy or whatever), but yeah it is very inconsistent. Hopefully, as it matures, the UI will gain more consistency.
sorrychuck 4y ago
Agreed, the styling has put me off by feeling broken / unfinished. In particular too little and too inconsistent padding. However reviewing now I’ll say that for whatever reason it seems things are much improved. Still not my personal favorite but significantly more clear.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lucideer 4y ago
Agree with a lot of your comment but from its early days I think the UI consistency has come on leaps and bounds. e.g.: The current homepage has an odd out-of-place looking blue banner. This is largely down to uneven margins and paddings applied to the banner content - in particular vertical paddings aren't optically aligned with horizontal. This same issue was once common through sourcehut's content but it's already clear how much that's improved looking at how much better the primary homepage content looks in contrast to the banner. There's little tiny niggling issues like that everywhere - often related to vertical alignment not matching horizontal alignment - and while each is individually negligible, the cumulative affect is a bit jarring. But I still see it improving all the time.
mariusor 4y ago
Contributing patches for these issues would allow you to have free (as in beer) access to sourcehut. I know it's a trite message, but it's open source, you can make it better instead of histrionically "not getting past how bad it is".
- xigoi 4y ago
  Though if you want to do any contributions, you have to install SourceHut on your machine, which includes setting up a PostgreSQL database.

DrBazza 4y ago

It's not bad at all, unfamiliar perhaps, because all the others have copied github. It's like that so that page sizes are as a small as possible, to cater for all users on all platforms in all locations. Not everyone is American or European with a gigabit connection. No pointless theming, no pointless javascript, no trackers and so on.

mikro2nd 4y ago

Personally I really, really like Sourcehut's UI/UX -- far easier to navigate for a casual user than those other Big Name alternatives. As well, I like the minimalism of the UI.

lpcvoid 4y ago

Do you miss the millions of bytes of bloated Javascript mess that "modern" websites are littered with? SourceHut's UI is absolutely amazing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

adrianmsmith 4y ago

This would be more helpful and lead to a more interesting discussion if you could tell us what you didn't like about SourceHut's UI.

goodpoint 4y ago

I love minimalistic javascript-free UIs and that sourcehut is fast (and under AGPL). Yet I find the layout in Sourcehut really confusing and not self-explanatory. Not having a bugtracker UI and having to jump around different FQDNs related to the same project is a usability killer for me. I don't expect forges to copy github. E.g. trac is very different but still has a rational and friendly layout. EDIT: I also like that codeberg.org is non-profit and community-driven. If the sourcehut UI was to become usable I wish codeberg would run an instance of sourcehut. Another aspect I would love to see is federation.

Tmpod 4y ago
Yeah, the disconnect between sourcehut components isn't great, but AFAIK they are working on hub.sr.ht or smth like that, and also better integration between all of those services, precisely to fix that issue. I'm eager to see that implemented, because it will be a good step forward.
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  I don't even mind the separate component approach but I wish they would just have a single consistent navigation bar on all of them for switching between all the services for a project.
  - Tmpod 4y ago
    Yeah, I too quite like the approach, but at the moment the components are too dissociated with each other, so something like what you suggested would come along way to making the platform more welcoming and useful.
  - ddevault 4y ago
    We will be adding this soon, it's an acknowledged priority for the beta.
    - emptyparadise 4y ago

forgotpwd16 4y ago

>The login[0] and register[1] pages have completely inconsistent layouts (left aligned vs centered aligned, one has a header and the other not, etc.). The register link is actually: https://meta.sr.ht/register https://meta.sr.ht/register. You pointed to meta homepage. When you proceed to enter your info (username/password) you'll see the layouts are consistent.

olalonde 4y ago
The "Register" link in the top navigation links to https://meta.sr.ht/ https://meta.sr.ht/, while the "Register" link inside the login page links to https://meta.sr.ht/register https://meta.sr.ht/register (another inconsistency I guess). Even if we compare, https://meta.sr.ht/register/step2 https://meta.sr.ht/register/step2 and https://meta.sr.ht/login https://meta.sr.ht/login, the widths of the layouts are different (730px vs 920px).

dncornholio 4y ago

This is always the problem with most of free software. They are so awkward to use. Meanwhile any criticism is very often met with getting downplayed.

5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
> often met with getting downplayed Or maybe it's just a matter of taste? Personally I find many popular proprietary applications (including web "applications") as comfortable and enjoyable to use as walking on two hands backwards while blindfolded. Yet most people around me seem quite satisfied.
- dncornholio 4y ago
  And these people end up building it them selfs and that's how we end up with 2 extremes instead of a common middle ground?

beardicus 4y ago

strong agree, though with the caveat that it's "bad" for my tastes and priorities, but is clearly ok for other folks. it feels all too common for folks to rage against bloaty interfaces (i agree, they're terrible!) but swing wildly back towards clunky browser-default randomness. you can have a consistent, polished interface without javascript and tons of images! one thing w/ sourcehut that i find adds confusion is their choice to make their various services (source vs tickets vs mailing lists) completely separate apps. start on this page: https://sr.ht/~martijnbraam/photoflow/ https://sr.ht/~martijnbraam/photoflow/ when you click on the "source" tab what do you expect will happen? i expect i'll go to a page with a source tree, listing files and directories. i also expect that i'll now be on the "source" tab at the new page, and will have the option to click back to the "summary" tab or any of the others that i currently see. instead, you're taken to basically the same exact summary page (displaying README content) but with some git commit info on top. the highlighted tab is now... SUMMARY, AGAIN and there's a completely different tab set available to you. there is no way to click anywhere to get back to the previous version of the summary page and explore that tab group further. i'm sure this makes sense to some folks (and they'll explain why i'm wrong below), but to me it feels like a cohesive user experience is not being prioritized here, and that's something i value ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

gspr 4y ago
This is the one thing I, too, struggle with with sr.ht. I keep on using it, but I can't wrap my head around why this is supposed to be a good way to do it.
olalonde 4y ago
The repository's description also changes for no apparent reason ("Photo management solution" vs "A web picture gallery").
- mariusor 4y ago
  The link parent posted is not of the repository but of the project. Sourcehut doesn't use the 1 to 1 relationship between projects and repositories, wiki, and issue tracker that the other source forges employ. A sourcehut project can have as many as them as there are required. Therefore the Source tab takes you to the main git/HG repo that you have added for your project. That's also the reason why the descriptions are different, one is of the project, the other is of the repository. It's only confusing if you dismiss everything that's not a clone of github without investing the little time it takes to learn about the differences.

lucideer 4y ago

While I get how the first line of your comment could come across dismissive in isolation (and I guess that was the entire comment before the Edit - so I understand the downvotes in that context), there's a common reply in sibling comments here that bothers me much much more: > "bloated Javascript" > "pointless javascript" > "javascript-free UIs" I don't know how much people have worked in UI and with front-end code (HTML/CSS/JS) but... the commenter criticised the UI. Javascript is not a UI language. Being a front-end language it's used a lot in close conjunction with UI components to control interactivity and data flow, but it has no responsibility for their appearance. In terms of aesthetic visual design, the amount of Javascript you have behind it isn't really relevant. I do see a lot of people mentioning performance (which is a great feature of Sourcehut's), but is also a separate topic. (fwiw I also love Javascriptless interfaces, not arguing that)

Arnavion 4y ago
The kind of whizzbangs associated with "beautiful UI" often involves copious amounts of JavaScript hijacking scroll events, running code for every pixel of a mouse move, and so on. Something as simple as "header in the middle of the page" can involve an absolutely-positioned header moved around on scroll events. That's why people were mentioning JS. If you've worked on frontend UI then you can't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. (And yes, I know it can be done with just CSS instead of moving an absolutely-positioned header with JS in scroll events. Tell that to the websites that do it, not to me.)
- lucideer 4y ago
  I know what you're talking about but I've also never seen anyone (neither on HN nor anywhere outside a caricature design agency boardroom) criticise the lack of whizzbangs. Noone was talking about whizzbangs here, least of all the gp.

euclaise 4y ago

I very much like Sourcehut's UI as a whole (i.e. their design philosophy or whatever), but yeah it is very inconsistent. Hopefully, as it matures, the UI will gain more consistency.

sorrychuck 4y ago

Agreed, the styling has put me off by feeling broken / unfinished. In particular too little and too inconsistent padding. However reviewing now I’ll say that for whatever reason it seems things are much improved. Still not my personal favorite but significantly more clear.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lucideer 4y ago

Agree with a lot of your comment but from its early days I think the UI consistency has come on leaps and bounds. e.g.: The current homepage has an odd out-of-place looking blue banner. This is largely down to uneven margins and paddings applied to the banner content - in particular vertical paddings aren't optically aligned with horizontal. This same issue was once common through sourcehut's content but it's already clear how much that's improved looking at how much better the primary homepage content looks in contrast to the banner. There's little tiny niggling issues like that everywhere - often related to vertical alignment not matching horizontal alignment - and while each is individually negligible, the cumulative affect is a bit jarring. But I still see it improving all the time.

mariusor 4y ago

Contributing patches for these issues would allow you to have free (as in beer) access to sourcehut. I know it's a trite message, but it's open source, you can make it better instead of histrionically "not getting past how bad it is".

xigoi 4y ago
Though if you want to do any contributions, you have to install SourceHut on your machine, which includes setting up a PostgreSQL database.