8 ms·

GitHub Blocks – waiting list signup

123 points by msoad 4y ago

milliams 4y ago
On Firefox this is rather messed up and is not rendering well. Doesn't give me much confidence.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mkurz 4y ago
  Same with Chromium (Linux). Is this even an official GitHub project?
- marpstar 4y ago
  Same in Safari 16.1
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- idan 4y ago
  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
  - movedx 4y ago
    - cal85 4y ago
      What an obnoxious, domineering comment.
      - movedx 4y ago
        What a useless piece of feedback, lacking any form of constructive substance whatsoever. At least offer me something to work with here.
    - thestepafter 4y ago
      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.
      - movedx 4y ago
        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. First impressions matter.
    - Kiro 4y ago
      I'm sure your client will be happy to see that you're using them as leverage in your toxic rants.
      - movedx 4y ago
        :thumbs-up-emoji:
  - pvg 4y ago
    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.
- tim-- 4y ago
  Make your window less wide. That fixed it for me! Seems like some broken CSS media queries.
- rubyist5eva 4y ago
  I'm on chrome and the scrolling is messed up as well.
- Kiro 4y ago
  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.
threatofrain 4y ago
Looks rather cool but right now there's only a signup page.
- dang 4y ago
  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.
amusingimpala75 4y ago
Is this officially by GitHub?
- idan 4y ago
  Yes! GitHub Next is a small research lab, formerly known as the Office of the CTO
  - frankthedog 4y ago
    Heh, OCTO. Nice.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  That was my first question. GitHubNext sounds like the perfect phishing page.
spyremeown 4y ago
If you don't add metadata to the README so I can still just open with any editor, I'm all for it.
paxys 4y ago
Seems like..embeddable Github Pages? Maybe only on your project readme (or elsewhere, can't really tell)?
idan 4y ago
GitHub Next here! 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/a00e8379-c363-4f0a-93af-2946950ff330 https://githubuniverse.com/events/detail/virtual-schedule/a0...
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  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.
  - idan 4y ago
    A couple of proofs! next.github.com redirects to the site You can see Blocks and Hey, GitHub! on https://github.com/features/preview 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
    - judge2020 4y ago
      The oauth prompt reads "Not owned or operated by GitHub"; should get that changed if this is operated on behalf of the company.
    - jdgoesmarching 4y ago
      FYI, the website is a mess for me on Safari for iOS and iPadOS
- 4y ago
hardwaresofton 4y ago
Github blocks = Notion style blocks and Jupyter notebook style code execution in your GH repository text files
lloydatkinson 4y ago
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. https://github.com/processing/p5.js/issues/5740#issuecomment-1309242564 https://github.com/processing/p5.js/issues/5740#issuecomment...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  how typically hn for that to be downvoted
pokstad 4y ago
But what I liked about git readmes was that they were static and easy to reason about.
- strunz 4y ago
  So keep using them?
billconan 4y ago
I'm currently building a static site generator, which will generate something like jsFiddle, but can be deployed using github page. 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
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
DelightOne 4y ago
Its sad to have to open a new web page/App for everything. Happy to see things go the integration-direction and hopefully seeing some synergies.
cercatrova 4y ago
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.
- superb-owl 4y ago
  I think this is part of the point. I'd love to see the tech behind this get open sourced, so GitLab and whoever else can adopt it as a standard.
- klabb3 4y ago
  100% this. I skimmed the site and no mention of open source, let alone an intent of making it an open standard. Openness makes all the difference. Hard pass.
- deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mbStavola 4y ago
I just hope everything is able to be persisted in files that are committed to the repo.
armchairhacker 4y ago
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.
emptyparadise 4y ago
Does this have anything to do with the Block Protocol [1]? [1]: https://blockprotocol.org/ https://blockprotocol.org/

123 points by msoad 4y ago

milliams 4y ago

On Firefox this is rather messed up and is not rendering well. Doesn't give me much confidence.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mkurz 4y ago
Same with Chromium (Linux). Is this even an official GitHub project?
marpstar 4y ago
Same in Safari 16.1
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
idan 4y ago
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
- movedx 4y ago
  - cal85 4y ago
    What an obnoxious, domineering comment.
    - movedx 4y ago
      What a useless piece of feedback, lacking any form of constructive substance whatsoever. At least offer me something to work with here.
  - thestepafter 4y ago
    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.
    - movedx 4y ago
      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. First impressions matter.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    I'm sure your client will be happy to see that you're using them as leverage in your toxic rants.
    - movedx 4y ago
      :thumbs-up-emoji:
- pvg 4y ago
  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.
tim-- 4y ago
Make your window less wide. That fixed it for me! Seems like some broken CSS media queries.
rubyist5eva 4y ago
I'm on chrome and the scrolling is messed up as well.
Kiro 4y ago
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.

threatofrain 4y ago

Looks rather cool but right now there's only a signup page.

dang 4y ago
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.

amusingimpala75 4y ago

Is this officially by GitHub?

idan 4y ago
Yes! GitHub Next is a small research lab, formerly known as the Office of the CTO
- frankthedog 4y ago
  Heh, OCTO. Nice.
jasonlotito 4y ago
That was my first question. GitHubNext sounds like the perfect phishing page.

spyremeown 4y ago

If you don't add metadata to the README so I can still just open with any editor, I'm all for it.

paxys 4y ago

Seems like..embeddable Github Pages? Maybe only on your project readme (or elsewhere, can't really tell)?

idan 4y ago

GitHub Next here! 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/a00e8379-c363-4f0a-93af-2946950ff330 https://githubuniverse.com/events/detail/virtual-schedule/a0...

madeofpalk 4y ago
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.
- idan 4y ago
  A couple of proofs! next.github.com redirects to the site You can see Blocks and Hey, GitHub! on https://github.com/features/preview 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
  - judge2020 4y ago
    The oauth prompt reads "Not owned or operated by GitHub"; should get that changed if this is operated on behalf of the company.
  - jdgoesmarching 4y ago
    FYI, the website is a mess for me on Safari for iOS and iPadOS
4y ago

hardwaresofton 4y ago

Github blocks = Notion style blocks and Jupyter notebook style code execution in your GH repository text files

lloydatkinson 4y ago

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. https://github.com/processing/p5.js/issues/5740#issuecomment-1309242564 https://github.com/processing/p5.js/issues/5740#issuecomment...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lloydatkinson 4y ago
how typically hn for that to be downvoted

pokstad 4y ago

But what I liked about git readmes was that they were static and easy to reason about.

strunz 4y ago
So keep using them?

billconan 4y ago

I'm currently building a static site generator, which will generate something like jsFiddle, but can be deployed using github page. 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

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

DelightOne 4y ago

Its sad to have to open a new web page/App for everything. Happy to see things go the integration-direction and hopefully seeing some synergies.

cercatrova 4y ago

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.

superb-owl 4y ago
I think this is part of the point. I'd love to see the tech behind this get open sourced, so GitLab and whoever else can adopt it as a standard.
klabb3 4y ago
100% this. I skimmed the site and no mention of open source, let alone an intent of making it an open standard. Openness makes all the difference. Hard pass.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mbStavola 4y ago

I just hope everything is able to be persisted in files that are committed to the repo.

armchairhacker 4y ago

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.

emptyparadise 4y ago

Does this have anything to do with the Block Protocol [1]? [1]: https://blockprotocol.org/ https://blockprotocol.org/