9 ms·

I Tried JetBrains' “New UI” and I Liked It

45 points by xwowsersx 4y ago

gjvc 4y ago
minority opinion!
- sbuk 4y ago
  Peanut gallery?
indymike 4y ago
I tried them too, and honestly, just didn't feel like they were better. Just different for the sake of chasing fashion.
- conradfr 4y ago
  Jetbrains designers have been followers for some time. They used to copy Adobe products, I guess now they want to copy Visual Studio Code. They should remember that when Firefox copied Chrome it didn't make it more successful.
sasakrsmanovic2 4y ago
Pople don't like change; there is a reason why Amazon or Ebay look the same for all these years, despite all their UI/UX shortfalls. That said, anything closer to VS Code will likely be perceived well.
- abeyer 4y ago
  > That said, anything closer to VS Code will likely be perceived well. Citation needed Personally I have the opposite reaction to people cloning the VS Code UI: I find VS Code's model absolutely awful for most things, and even assuming someone _does_ find it useful, most attempts I've seen to clone its UI don't even come close to matching up to the quality of the original. I'm not sure why someone would ever have positive perceptions of an application trying to shoehorn itself into a competitor's UI to capitalize on another project's popularity.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Wait, do people consider VS Code's UI good? I only use it because it's less-minimal (in the UI department) than Sublime, and free.
- bdw5204 4y ago
  A good UI/UX is one that the user is familiar with. A bad UI/UX is one that requires the user to put in extra work to relearn how to get their work done. Redoing UI/UX is also a major accessibility problem because it gets harder for people to relearn how to use a program as they get older (anybody who's ever seen elderly users try to figure out how to use a "new and improved" UI/UX knows this). If you insist on redoing the UI/UX because you think a different design is "better", then you should keep the old UI/UX as an option. But you're almost always better off not redoing it. For software that doesn't have an existing UI/UX, the best UI/UX is one that your potential users are already familiar with. Specifically, one that resembles whatever other programs on your target platform do. The reason for this is because your users are already using those other programs and are familiar with how they work so doing something different for the sake of being different will confuse them (this is why its good that gaming controllers and control schemes in games are largely standardized these days). If you're emacs or vim, it makes sense to stick with your archaic shortcuts because your users expect them and would be confused if you changed them but new programs should stick to ctrl+s for save, ctrl+x for cut, ctrl+c for copy, ctrl+v for paste, etc.
- foepys 4y ago
  VS Code is only used this much because it is free. If Microsoft were to charge only $10 for it, its market share would be in the single digits. It's the same with MS Teams. A bad, sluggish program full of bugs and weird behavior that is only the most used conferencing software because it is included in the Enterprise Office subscription anyways.
  - cassianoleal 4y ago
    > If Microsoft were to charge only $10 for it, its market share would be in the single digits. This might be true. I wouldn't stop using it because I dislike it though. Only that if I'm going to give money, I'd rather do it to pretty much any company that's not Microsoft. I would probably pay for JetBrains stuff at that point, even though I could never get used to their products. > It's the same with MS Teams. A bad, sluggish program full of bugs and weird behavior Teams is the worst. VS Code OTOH is not bad (subjective, of course), definitely not sluggish (it's faster than emacs on my laptop, except when opening it the first time - which happens at most once a day) or full of bugs (at least none that get in the way of me doing my job efficiently).
- 0x457 4y ago
  Amazon does not look the same for all these years. I remember having a different amazon page on nearly every refresh, with different checkout flows and different buttons styling/location. Even AWS console goes through changes.
- conradfr 4y ago
  Why would I pay for a Jetbrain IDE if it's the same as the free one? Although to be honest I kind of pay for it more for the git integration than the editor (especially as the non-official Elixir plugin is not that great) and I guess they won't change that.
kstenerud 4y ago
> I suspect part of what’s behind the pushback is the way some people are using JetBrains’ IDEs, which is that they actually point and click on all the buttons and toolbars, etc. Precisely. And that's what I look for in an IDE: Good mouse support. > You will be 10x (barely an exaggeration) more productive if you learn to use the keyboard shortcuts. No, you won't. If the majority of your time isn't spent thinking rather than typing or clicking, you're doing it wrong. > I die a little bit inside anytime I watch another person reach for their mouse and navigate around the editor at a glacial pace. Then do it quietly, please. > Even if you don’t know a shortcut, it’s usually faster to search for that action (cmd + shift + a). Oh god no. > So, I personally don’t really get the pushback. Right, you don't. So don't rag on those who do. This new UI is terrible for my workflow because it removes the things I reach for the mouse to do. That's not something for you to judge me on.
- armatav 4y ago
  VSCode has a good balance of clickable + vim extension + command palette that helped solve this difference years ago.
- hrunt 4y ago
  > > So, I personally don’t really get the pushback. > Right, you don't. So don't rag on those who do. This new UI is terrible for my workflow. In my experience, when people say, "I don't get" something, what they usually mean is, "I don't want to get" that something. The author does not want to understand why people are pushing back; they just want people to stop pushing back. Note that I include myself in "people." I have done this myself and recognized it upon reflection (not with the JetBrains UI, but in other situations).
  - jnsaff2 4y ago
    Sure, but the "I don't want to get something" comes from: "my system works for me, I don't need a change, it's being imposed on me". Change that is evolutionary can be good, that little tweak that REMOVES pain that you maybe don't even notice but feel better. There also can be change that is imposed by either product managers who have run out of ideas and need to anything to stay relevant or also by designers who don't use the product themselves but find lets say large padding to be aesthetically pleasing. For them the disruption is not felt, the information density is not lost. It looks good on a powerpoint slide.
ddyevf635372 4y ago
Agree. Using it for weeks now and happy with it. Faster, more focused, more space for code. Love it.
cirrus3 4y ago
I didn't expect to like it, but I do. Everything is still there, and almost in the exact same spots yet it gets out of the way so much better.
wolpoli 4y ago
> Learn the keyboard shortcuts. You will be 10x (barely an exaggeration) more productive if you learn to use the keyboard shortcuts. I die a little bit inside anytime I watch another person reach for their mouse and navigate around the editor at a glacial pace. Some of us spend quite a bit of time doing tasks other than development. We use the IDE's UI and if we do a particular task a lot, then we start to look for/memorize the shortcut key.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  > We use the IDE's UI and if we do a particular task a lot, then we start to look for/memorize the shortcut key. I use an extension that gives a small popup in the bottom right corner with what the relevant keybind is. If I do something often enough, it eventually sticks in my memory. Still wouldn't want to be forced to use keybinds.
- probablynish 4y ago
  I recently installed the "Key Promoter" plugin. It shows a popup message in the bottom right every time you use your mouse for an action, telling you what the keyboard shortcut for that action is. I've picked up a couple of shortcuts since installing it, it cuts out the 'let me go and look this up' part of the process.
  - mrlonglong 4y ago
    Nice one! I'll give that a try.
danuker 4y ago
I am still using PyCharm 2021.2.3 which I think is the best version. New versions have messed with the diff window which I use in my workflow. In addition, I have to "trust project" when opening a new project. I don't want to trust ANY project to run code on my machine without me inspecting it. And every time you open the project it nags you to do so. Paradoxically you need to suffer through the nags while you figure out what the project wants to run (IF anything). I mailed them about this, and their response was to open a ticket in their tracker. I couldn't be bothered to reset my forgotten password. Judging by the screenshots, this new UI shows 2 more lines on the screen for the cost of having to click around until you learn what the new icons do. What is the point of removing the text labels? The toolbars are mostly blank anyway.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  > New versions have messed with the diff window I only remember one significant change for the past several years: moving it into the main git panel (which is at the bottom of the screen and is hidden behind alt+9 if you're using the default settings). It's fully configurable. Ctrl+Alt+A → "show diff preview". And then (optionally) this: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-276156/Regular-Show-Diff-opens-a-new-window#focus=Comments-27-5124243.0-0 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-276156/Regular-Sho...
  - danuker 4y ago
    Preview Diff is entirety is pointless to me. I don't understand how people use it - it is uncomfortable reading a diff in the tiny docked view. Making it default alienated me (and the "trust" issues finished the job). Version 2021.2.3 does what I want out of the box, and I think I'll never update.
SomeHacker44 4y ago
I am just one person but a long-time user of JetBrains IDEs and have a personal all packs "subscription". I clicked the new UI and was so unprepared for the total lack of UX affordance that I literally could not switch back soon enough. I have plenty of screen space - please give me a UX that uses it to make things discoverable and easy to find!!
xbar 4y ago
Forcing UI changes for existing tools is immoral. It is ok to add new UI options. It is ok to make new tools that work differently. Such creative endeavors are the right of the software developer. It is a form of theft to spend someone else's cognitive load on a UI change without consent. It does not matter if some people like the change. It does not matter if the UI Product Manager knows that it will lead to a better universe. It is wrong, but you will hear a lot of reasons why software folks tell you it is the right of the software developer and that the consumers do not have the right to retain the UI to which they have become familiar.
- andix 4y ago
  Life ist constant change. Without change there would be no improvement.
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    More relevant, without change there would be no deterioration.
  - dijit 4y ago
    Yet toilets, sinks and cookers still operate almost exactly the same. Hell, even the dial pad on your phone screen or the QWERTY keyboard are there for historic reasons more than anything else. It might sound snarky, but it does make you wonder if people think changing their UI is ok because they're much less used, or alternatively if they think the developer is more important than things like sinks, phones, cookers and keyboards..
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      If by "toilet" you mean "a seat with a hole in it" then, yeah, sure, toilets "still operate almost exactly the same". The way they collect and dispose of the waste has changed dramatically over time. And even in modern day, there's a huge range of toilets out there in the world: from basic outhouses and primitive developed toilets, to portable toilets, to composting toilets, to squat toilets. All of which operate in slightly different ways. Many might have bidets, seat warmers, deodorizers, etc included. Some bidets might be in the form of an integrated nozzle, or a hose, or a separate bowl. There's a lot of variations in toilets, most of which improve on a basic idea. But they all still are improvements or changes, the equivalent of UX changes discussed here.
andix 4y ago
Most people who hate it, just don’t like change. Interestingly a lot of IT folks hate change even more then other people. Just ask around how many would love to have a windows 11 that looks like windows 2000. There is just no other explanation for it.
- switch007 4y ago
  Most people who change it, just like change
- foepys 4y ago
  Bold assumption. What I severely dislike about the new UI is all the negative space. All "modern UI" makes me feel like I'm using a 1024x768 pixel display again instead of UHD because of all the margins around everything. Everything seems to be designed around touch nowadays and it really is the wrong design choice for PCs with a mouse.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  Change for change's sake? Definitely. I welcome change where it makes sense, and still configure my systems to look like they did 20+ years ago. The (very limited in my case) brain capacity should be spent on something more productive than relearning the same thing every year or two.
- adql 4y ago
  New doesn't mean better. For many people the change is "I got used to X then I need to get used to Y". While there being zero benefit in using Y over X, just a cost to change. Case in point (for me, YMMV of course): For what I use (start a machine, run a single app and maybe a browser or two) there have been zero improvement in windows UI for last 2 decades. It's just moving shit around with occasionally wasting some more space coz tablet users need to click things and keeping separate theme for them is impossible to do for trillion dollar corporation. And I don't even use it for a living, just occasional gaming and app that needs windows. > Interestingly a lot of IT folks hate change even more then other people. Just ask around how many would love to have a windows 11 that looks like windows 2000. There is just no other explanation for it. Not "hate change". Improvements are welcome. Change for change's sake is not. If you're not well versed in windows quirks you might think that's just grumpy people getting grumpy but we got from one control panel for a thing to old panel with some features, new panel with some other features, missing the features of old panel, coz microsoft couldn't be fucking arsed to migrate all of it properly when they changed the UI. Or some stuff was hid in registry somewhere. It's akin to cars deciding that climate controls need to be on touchscreen now, behind some menu. It's not "new, better", it's "new, worse". To reiterate: it is not aversion to new, it is aversion to designer being fucking bored and changing stuff that worked fine into something else for no good reason.
fHr 4y ago
I like it a lot used it for 1 month now and used the "old" UI for 5 years.
bobobob420 4y ago
congrats on hacker news hug of death!
joshstrange 4y ago
I tried it for a few months and overall I was fine with it after I got used to it. I finally had to call it quits when I couldn't figure out how to stop the file browser from scrolling to my active file or the open files tab bar from scrolling the current open file into view if my mouse left the tab bar for even a millisecond. I want both those scrollable areas to not automatically move on me. I think there is now a way to disable that functionality but I haven't gone back to try.
- fotta 4y ago
  Oooooh VS Code does this too and it's really annoying. I don't use it enough to figure out how to disable though.
latchkey 4y ago
It was ok, but I reverted because it is missing a critical feature 'Window -> Merge Project Windows'.
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  Just add a keyboard shortcut like so: https://imgur.com/a/IDAlzKp https://imgur.com/a/IDAlzKp
quaffapint 4y ago
The one thing I didn't see a setting for is what the default windows to show are. For example, I would always like to have the tests window in a tab versus having to tell it to show first. It's a minor thing, but people like personalizing to their workflow.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  I agree. That’s my only issue. Despite mainly using the mouse, I like the new UI.
fotta 4y ago
My unsolicited opinion: I like it, I especially like the new dark theme, but I can't use it full time until some features in the old UI make it to the new one (vertical splitting tool windows, primarily).
rubyn00bie 4y ago
I’ve been using it and like it well enough. It’s got more focus by getting rid of a lot of the “clutter” but I also use the IdeaVIM plugin so I don’t much anything besides keyboard shortcuts. The one thing I still really want from JetBrains UI is, and has been, truly glowing/neon text (like VS Code can do). I was and continue to be disappointed to know their proprietary rendering engine used for text doesn’t support it.
shagie 4y ago
For me, the thing that had me switch back to the old UI was that I like the text associated with the lesser used icons and that some of the pane locations (if I recall correctly) were gone. The difference between `left top` and `left bottom`; and `bottom left` and `bottom right` are useful to me. It could be a "I just need to get used to it" thing, but that was my first impression (I tried it for a bit). However, the general impression of it was favorable and if I started with it, I likely would be completely OK with it.
jansan 4y ago
Did anyone else get irritated by the new "usages" code vision labels that were recently introduced? They take a huge amount of real estate, and since I am not running any popularity contests for my variables I had no idea what they were supposed to do (unused variables were highlighted previously anyway). This was really disturbing for me and I considered canceling my subscription to stick with the current version and avoid such "surprises" in future. I now completely disabled Code Vision and hope to never see it again.
- foepys 4y ago
  I also disabled it. The feature got inspired by Visual Studio. It had this feature for ages and it is working fine there, well integrated with the code. The annotations only look clunky in JetBrains' products because they are the same size as the editor font, taking up way too much space. VS uses a font about 2 sizes smaller and decreases the line height, too, resulting in a smoother experience.
- tylergetsay 4y ago
  Why get irritated, especially when you can easily turn them off? I welcome new features like this and don't mind companies trying to 'advertise' them within their own proudct as long as I can easily turn them off. With the usage labels, I believe they even prompted you to turn them off on first start if you didn't like them.
  - jansan 4y ago
    Turning off only the usages label through the prompt made it worse. After that, there initially was an empty line for each label when opening a file, which then collapsed. It was like watching a code reformat each time I opened a file. The only way to avoid this was to switch off code vision entirely and I will keep them switched off.
xg15 4y ago
Author has it exactly backward here, I'm sorry. Subtractive UI is exactly what disrupts long-time users, because it breaks all their workflows and muscle memory.
calderwoodra 4y ago
To me, visually and functionally, the UIs are the same. But the frame rate and performances of the new UI is much slower.
jansan 4y ago
The content area looks good enough, probably better than before. But what is the point of having a single menu with a huge nested menu tree and keeping the major part of the title bar empty? If I enable the separate menu bar, the menu bar and project bar take as much space as both bars plus the tabs did previously. This feels like trying to be stylish at the sacrifice of usability. Here I clearly prefer the old UI.
xwowsersx 4y ago
Sorry this crapped out. I'm running this on Lightsail on a little 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 20 GB SSD. Taking a snapshot and going to create a beefier instance.
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  Should be good to go now.
TrianguloY 4y ago
I personally liked it, but the lack of multiline tabs support (when you have a lot of them opened) is what made me switch back until they implement it.
cosmotic 4y ago
The toolbars, buttons, etc are all providing more than just methods of invocation, they provide information, status, and feedback. I, personally, don't find the window chrome and tool windows distracting. There's been a mode to hide it all for many years.

45 points by xwowsersx 4y ago

gjvc 4y ago

minority opinion!

sbuk 4y ago
Peanut gallery?

indymike 4y ago

I tried them too, and honestly, just didn't feel like they were better. Just different for the sake of chasing fashion.

conradfr 4y ago
Jetbrains designers have been followers for some time. They used to copy Adobe products, I guess now they want to copy Visual Studio Code. They should remember that when Firefox copied Chrome it didn't make it more successful.

sasakrsmanovic2 4y ago

Pople don't like change; there is a reason why Amazon or Ebay look the same for all these years, despite all their UI/UX shortfalls. That said, anything closer to VS Code will likely be perceived well.

abeyer 4y ago
> That said, anything closer to VS Code will likely be perceived well. Citation needed Personally I have the opposite reaction to people cloning the VS Code UI: I find VS Code's model absolutely awful for most things, and even assuming someone _does_ find it useful, most attempts I've seen to clone its UI don't even come close to matching up to the quality of the original. I'm not sure why someone would ever have positive perceptions of an application trying to shoehorn itself into a competitor's UI to capitalize on another project's popularity.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Wait, do people consider VS Code's UI good? I only use it because it's less-minimal (in the UI department) than Sublime, and free.
bdw5204 4y ago
A good UI/UX is one that the user is familiar with. A bad UI/UX is one that requires the user to put in extra work to relearn how to get their work done. Redoing UI/UX is also a major accessibility problem because it gets harder for people to relearn how to use a program as they get older (anybody who's ever seen elderly users try to figure out how to use a "new and improved" UI/UX knows this). If you insist on redoing the UI/UX because you think a different design is "better", then you should keep the old UI/UX as an option. But you're almost always better off not redoing it. For software that doesn't have an existing UI/UX, the best UI/UX is one that your potential users are already familiar with. Specifically, one that resembles whatever other programs on your target platform do. The reason for this is because your users are already using those other programs and are familiar with how they work so doing something different for the sake of being different will confuse them (this is why its good that gaming controllers and control schemes in games are largely standardized these days). If you're emacs or vim, it makes sense to stick with your archaic shortcuts because your users expect them and would be confused if you changed them but new programs should stick to ctrl+s for save, ctrl+x for cut, ctrl+c for copy, ctrl+v for paste, etc.
foepys 4y ago
VS Code is only used this much because it is free. If Microsoft were to charge only $10 for it, its market share would be in the single digits. It's the same with MS Teams. A bad, sluggish program full of bugs and weird behavior that is only the most used conferencing software because it is included in the Enterprise Office subscription anyways.
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  > If Microsoft were to charge only $10 for it, its market share would be in the single digits. This might be true. I wouldn't stop using it because I dislike it though. Only that if I'm going to give money, I'd rather do it to pretty much any company that's not Microsoft. I would probably pay for JetBrains stuff at that point, even though I could never get used to their products. > It's the same with MS Teams. A bad, sluggish program full of bugs and weird behavior Teams is the worst. VS Code OTOH is not bad (subjective, of course), definitely not sluggish (it's faster than emacs on my laptop, except when opening it the first time - which happens at most once a day) or full of bugs (at least none that get in the way of me doing my job efficiently).
0x457 4y ago
Amazon does not look the same for all these years. I remember having a different amazon page on nearly every refresh, with different checkout flows and different buttons styling/location. Even AWS console goes through changes.
conradfr 4y ago
Why would I pay for a Jetbrain IDE if it's the same as the free one? Although to be honest I kind of pay for it more for the git integration than the editor (especially as the non-official Elixir plugin is not that great) and I guess they won't change that.

kstenerud 4y ago

> I suspect part of what’s behind the pushback is the way some people are using JetBrains’ IDEs, which is that they actually point and click on all the buttons and toolbars, etc. Precisely. And that's what I look for in an IDE: Good mouse support. > You will be 10x (barely an exaggeration) more productive if you learn to use the keyboard shortcuts. No, you won't. If the majority of your time isn't spent thinking rather than typing or clicking, you're doing it wrong. > I die a little bit inside anytime I watch another person reach for their mouse and navigate around the editor at a glacial pace. Then do it quietly, please. > Even if you don’t know a shortcut, it’s usually faster to search for that action (cmd + shift + a). Oh god no. > So, I personally don’t really get the pushback. Right, you don't. So don't rag on those who do. This new UI is terrible for my workflow because it removes the things I reach for the mouse to do. That's not something for you to judge me on.

armatav 4y ago
VSCode has a good balance of clickable + vim extension + command palette that helped solve this difference years ago.
hrunt 4y ago
> > So, I personally don’t really get the pushback. > Right, you don't. So don't rag on those who do. This new UI is terrible for my workflow. In my experience, when people say, "I don't get" something, what they usually mean is, "I don't want to get" that something. The author does not want to understand why people are pushing back; they just want people to stop pushing back. Note that I include myself in "people." I have done this myself and recognized it upon reflection (not with the JetBrains UI, but in other situations).
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  Sure, but the "I don't want to get something" comes from: "my system works for me, I don't need a change, it's being imposed on me". Change that is evolutionary can be good, that little tweak that REMOVES pain that you maybe don't even notice but feel better. There also can be change that is imposed by either product managers who have run out of ideas and need to anything to stay relevant or also by designers who don't use the product themselves but find lets say large padding to be aesthetically pleasing. For them the disruption is not felt, the information density is not lost. It looks good on a powerpoint slide.

ddyevf635372 4y ago

Agree. Using it for weeks now and happy with it. Faster, more focused, more space for code. Love it.

cirrus3 4y ago

I didn't expect to like it, but I do. Everything is still there, and almost in the exact same spots yet it gets out of the way so much better.

wolpoli 4y ago

> Learn the keyboard shortcuts. You will be 10x (barely an exaggeration) more productive if you learn to use the keyboard shortcuts. I die a little bit inside anytime I watch another person reach for their mouse and navigate around the editor at a glacial pace. Some of us spend quite a bit of time doing tasks other than development. We use the IDE's UI and if we do a particular task a lot, then we start to look for/memorize the shortcut key.

Akronymus 4y ago
> We use the IDE's UI and if we do a particular task a lot, then we start to look for/memorize the shortcut key. I use an extension that gives a small popup in the bottom right corner with what the relevant keybind is. If I do something often enough, it eventually sticks in my memory. Still wouldn't want to be forced to use keybinds.
probablynish 4y ago
I recently installed the "Key Promoter" plugin. It shows a popup message in the bottom right every time you use your mouse for an action, telling you what the keyboard shortcut for that action is. I've picked up a couple of shortcuts since installing it, it cuts out the 'let me go and look this up' part of the process.
- mrlonglong 4y ago
  Nice one! I'll give that a try.

danuker 4y ago

I am still using PyCharm 2021.2.3 which I think is the best version. New versions have messed with the diff window which I use in my workflow. In addition, I have to "trust project" when opening a new project. I don't want to trust ANY project to run code on my machine without me inspecting it. And every time you open the project it nags you to do so. Paradoxically you need to suffer through the nags while you figure out what the project wants to run (IF anything). I mailed them about this, and their response was to open a ticket in their tracker. I couldn't be bothered to reset my forgotten password. Judging by the screenshots, this new UI shows 2 more lines on the screen for the cost of having to click around until you learn what the new icons do. What is the point of removing the text labels? The toolbars are mostly blank anyway.

5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
> New versions have messed with the diff window I only remember one significant change for the past several years: moving it into the main git panel (which is at the bottom of the screen and is hidden behind alt+9 if you're using the default settings). It's fully configurable. Ctrl+Alt+A → "show diff preview". And then (optionally) this: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-276156/Regular-Show-Diff-opens-a-new-window#focus=Comments-27-5124243.0-0 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-276156/Regular-Sho...
- danuker 4y ago
  Preview Diff is entirety is pointless to me. I don't understand how people use it - it is uncomfortable reading a diff in the tiny docked view. Making it default alienated me (and the "trust" issues finished the job). Version 2021.2.3 does what I want out of the box, and I think I'll never update.

SomeHacker44 4y ago

I am just one person but a long-time user of JetBrains IDEs and have a personal all packs "subscription". I clicked the new UI and was so unprepared for the total lack of UX affordance that I literally could not switch back soon enough. I have plenty of screen space - please give me a UX that uses it to make things discoverable and easy to find!!

xbar 4y ago

Forcing UI changes for existing tools is immoral. It is ok to add new UI options. It is ok to make new tools that work differently. Such creative endeavors are the right of the software developer. It is a form of theft to spend someone else's cognitive load on a UI change without consent. It does not matter if some people like the change. It does not matter if the UI Product Manager knows that it will lead to a better universe. It is wrong, but you will hear a lot of reasons why software folks tell you it is the right of the software developer and that the consumers do not have the right to retain the UI to which they have become familiar.

andix 4y ago
Life ist constant change. Without change there would be no improvement.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  More relevant, without change there would be no deterioration.
- dijit 4y ago
  Yet toilets, sinks and cookers still operate almost exactly the same. Hell, even the dial pad on your phone screen or the QWERTY keyboard are there for historic reasons more than anything else. It might sound snarky, but it does make you wonder if people think changing their UI is ok because they're much less used, or alternatively if they think the developer is more important than things like sinks, phones, cookers and keyboards..
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    If by "toilet" you mean "a seat with a hole in it" then, yeah, sure, toilets "still operate almost exactly the same". The way they collect and dispose of the waste has changed dramatically over time. And even in modern day, there's a huge range of toilets out there in the world: from basic outhouses and primitive developed toilets, to portable toilets, to composting toilets, to squat toilets. All of which operate in slightly different ways. Many might have bidets, seat warmers, deodorizers, etc included. Some bidets might be in the form of an integrated nozzle, or a hose, or a separate bowl. There's a lot of variations in toilets, most of which improve on a basic idea. But they all still are improvements or changes, the equivalent of UX changes discussed here.

andix 4y ago

Most people who hate it, just don’t like change. Interestingly a lot of IT folks hate change even more then other people. Just ask around how many would love to have a windows 11 that looks like windows 2000. There is just no other explanation for it.

switch007 4y ago
Most people who change it, just like change
foepys 4y ago
Bold assumption. What I severely dislike about the new UI is all the negative space. All "modern UI" makes me feel like I'm using a 1024x768 pixel display again instead of UHD because of all the margins around everything. Everything seems to be designed around touch nowadays and it really is the wrong design choice for PCs with a mouse.
5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
Change for change's sake? Definitely. I welcome change where it makes sense, and still configure my systems to look like they did 20+ years ago. The (very limited in my case) brain capacity should be spent on something more productive than relearning the same thing every year or two.
adql 4y ago
New doesn't mean better. For many people the change is "I got used to X then I need to get used to Y". While there being zero benefit in using Y over X, just a cost to change. Case in point (for me, YMMV of course): For what I use (start a machine, run a single app and maybe a browser or two) there have been zero improvement in windows UI for last 2 decades. It's just moving shit around with occasionally wasting some more space coz tablet users need to click things and keeping separate theme for them is impossible to do for trillion dollar corporation. And I don't even use it for a living, just occasional gaming and app that needs windows. > Interestingly a lot of IT folks hate change even more then other people. Just ask around how many would love to have a windows 11 that looks like windows 2000. There is just no other explanation for it. Not "hate change". Improvements are welcome. Change for change's sake is not. If you're not well versed in windows quirks you might think that's just grumpy people getting grumpy but we got from one control panel for a thing to old panel with some features, new panel with some other features, missing the features of old panel, coz microsoft couldn't be fucking arsed to migrate all of it properly when they changed the UI. Or some stuff was hid in registry somewhere. It's akin to cars deciding that climate controls need to be on touchscreen now, behind some menu. It's not "new, better", it's "new, worse". To reiterate: it is not aversion to new, it is aversion to designer being fucking bored and changing stuff that worked fine into something else for no good reason.

fHr 4y ago

I like it a lot used it for 1 month now and used the "old" UI for 5 years.

bobobob420 4y ago

congrats on hacker news hug of death!

joshstrange 4y ago

I tried it for a few months and overall I was fine with it after I got used to it. I finally had to call it quits when I couldn't figure out how to stop the file browser from scrolling to my active file or the open files tab bar from scrolling the current open file into view if my mouse left the tab bar for even a millisecond. I want both those scrollable areas to not automatically move on me. I think there is now a way to disable that functionality but I haven't gone back to try.

fotta 4y ago
Oooooh VS Code does this too and it's really annoying. I don't use it enough to figure out how to disable though.

latchkey 4y ago

It was ok, but I reverted because it is missing a critical feature 'Window -> Merge Project Windows'.

xwowsersx 4y ago
Just add a keyboard shortcut like so: https://imgur.com/a/IDAlzKp https://imgur.com/a/IDAlzKp

quaffapint 4y ago

The one thing I didn't see a setting for is what the default windows to show are. For example, I would always like to have the tests window in a tab versus having to tell it to show first. It's a minor thing, but people like personalizing to their workflow.

Semaphor 4y ago
I agree. That’s my only issue. Despite mainly using the mouse, I like the new UI.

fotta 4y ago

My unsolicited opinion: I like it, I especially like the new dark theme, but I can't use it full time until some features in the old UI make it to the new one (vertical splitting tool windows, primarily).

rubyn00bie 4y ago

I’ve been using it and like it well enough. It’s got more focus by getting rid of a lot of the “clutter” but I also use the IdeaVIM plugin so I don’t much anything besides keyboard shortcuts. The one thing I still really want from JetBrains UI is, and has been, truly glowing/neon text (like VS Code can do). I was and continue to be disappointed to know their proprietary rendering engine used for text doesn’t support it.

shagie 4y ago

For me, the thing that had me switch back to the old UI was that I like the text associated with the lesser used icons and that some of the pane locations (if I recall correctly) were gone. The difference between `left top` and `left bottom`; and `bottom left` and `bottom right` are useful to me. It could be a "I just need to get used to it" thing, but that was my first impression (I tried it for a bit). However, the general impression of it was favorable and if I started with it, I likely would be completely OK with it.

jansan 4y ago

Did anyone else get irritated by the new "usages" code vision labels that were recently introduced? They take a huge amount of real estate, and since I am not running any popularity contests for my variables I had no idea what they were supposed to do (unused variables were highlighted previously anyway). This was really disturbing for me and I considered canceling my subscription to stick with the current version and avoid such "surprises" in future. I now completely disabled Code Vision and hope to never see it again.

foepys 4y ago
I also disabled it. The feature got inspired by Visual Studio. It had this feature for ages and it is working fine there, well integrated with the code. The annotations only look clunky in JetBrains' products because they are the same size as the editor font, taking up way too much space. VS uses a font about 2 sizes smaller and decreases the line height, too, resulting in a smoother experience.
tylergetsay 4y ago
Why get irritated, especially when you can easily turn them off? I welcome new features like this and don't mind companies trying to 'advertise' them within their own proudct as long as I can easily turn them off. With the usage labels, I believe they even prompted you to turn them off on first start if you didn't like them.
- jansan 4y ago
  Turning off only the usages label through the prompt made it worse. After that, there initially was an empty line for each label when opening a file, which then collapsed. It was like watching a code reformat each time I opened a file. The only way to avoid this was to switch off code vision entirely and I will keep them switched off.

xg15 4y ago

Author has it exactly backward here, I'm sorry. Subtractive UI is exactly what disrupts long-time users, because it breaks all their workflows and muscle memory.

calderwoodra 4y ago

To me, visually and functionally, the UIs are the same. But the frame rate and performances of the new UI is much slower.

jansan 4y ago

The content area looks good enough, probably better than before. But what is the point of having a single menu with a huge nested menu tree and keeping the major part of the title bar empty? If I enable the separate menu bar, the menu bar and project bar take as much space as both bars plus the tabs did previously. This feels like trying to be stylish at the sacrifice of usability. Here I clearly prefer the old UI.

xwowsersx 4y ago

Sorry this crapped out. I'm running this on Lightsail on a little 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 20 GB SSD. Taking a snapshot and going to create a beefier instance.

xwowsersx 4y ago
Should be good to go now.

TrianguloY 4y ago

I personally liked it, but the lack of multiline tabs support (when you have a lot of them opened) is what made me switch back until they implement it.

cosmotic 4y ago

The toolbars, buttons, etc are all providing more than just methods of invocation, they provide information, status, and feedback. I, personally, don't find the window chrome and tool windows distracting. There's been a mode to hide it all for many years.