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Designing GitHub for Windows
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- noselasd 14y agoScott Hanselman also got Tim Clem and Phil Haack talking about this on the recent podcast, http://hanselminutes.com/320/developing-github-for-windows-with-phil-haack-and-tim-clem http://hanselminutes.com/320/developing-github-for-windows-w...
- gagabity 14y agoA beautiful piece of software and a great help for those of us that loathe the command line. I was just looking through GitHub today trying to figure out how the look was achieved since I couldn't find any Metro controls in VS.
- EToS 14y agoI really like the native development approach for UI, too often the design of ported apps feel like an after thought, unless your on the OS it was originally developed on
- aggronn 14y agoThis is the first time I've heard raving reviews about XAML from people familiar with HTML. XAML has just been total let down since I've had to learn it for an ongoing Silverlight project. edit: Some people have asked why I didn't like XAML. My pragmatic concern has to do with the workflow and design of UI elements. You shouldn't need blend to edit validation styles efficiently. I know you don't need blend, but you can't just go in and add a single line to change the color of an invalid toolbox border--the alternative to blend is to (afaik) copy the entire style resource that the element uses from MSDN, dig into it to find the appropriate 10 lines of useless markup that surround one word property. CSS is infinitely more simple than XAML style resources. I'm also very partial to the pseudo separation of concerns where HTML is for semantics, and CSS is for style, and JS is for effects. Tying all of those things into one XML based language just doesn't make sense. That said, the whole MS C# stack has really been great to work with outside of XAML and its default elements.
- eatporktoo 14y agoI personally like XAML. What part of it do you think was a let down?
- soofaloofa 14y agoPersonally I've always found XAML and C# to be an incredibly productive programming environment. I wish I could work with the MS tool chain more often.
- ayi 14y agoi actually like xaml. can i ask what parts of it makes xaml let down?
- aggronn 14y agofrom my main post edit: edit: Some people have asked why I didn't like XAML. My pragmatic concern has to do with the workflow and design of UI elements. You shouldn't need blend to edit validation styles efficiently. I know you don't need blend, but you can't just go in and add a single line to change the color of a border--the alternative to blend is to (afaik) copy the entire style resource that the element uses from MSDN, dig into it to find the appropriate 10 lines of useless markup that surround one word property. CSS is infinitely more simple than XAML style resources. I'm also very partial to the pseudo separation of concerns where HTML is for semantics, and CSS is for style, and JS is for effects. Tying all of those things into one XML based language just doesn't make sense. That said, the whole MS C# stack has really been great to work with outside of XAML and its default elements.
- powertower 14y agoThe majority of people that I've heard criticize XAML are people who are just starting out with it (and hence are clueless, literally). Everyone else, including myself, see it for what it is, one of the best ways to build up, iterate/change, and maintain a UI. Nothing else even comes close. edit: I write XAML mostly manually, not via a designer. I also don't subscribe to any particular rule-set about using or not-using code-behind, particular ways of databinding, etc.
- gbog 14y agoGenuine question, did Github consider doing a local web app? If I want to browse my local code I may be more familiar with the HTML interface.
- lucidquiet 14y agoI kind of wonder if Spotify for Windows would have benefited from these design decisions. I'm happy to see that Github embraced the OS/platform rather than treat it as an ugly inconvenience. I'm very much platform agnostic, but when something works well on one platform and then terribly, or sub-optimal, on another, I feel like the programmers are making some statement about their preferred OS/platform rather than making solid software.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoAFAIK, Spotify's "app" is mostly a Chromium shell on all platforms.
- Ineffable 14y agoIndeed. It feels surprisingly native despite this, though.
- pacomerh 14y agoGreat design. I wish windows in general looked like that, a complete redesign that would get rid those ugly thick transparent borders.
- gouranga 14y agoWindows 8 fixes that.
- jcromartie 14y agoIt's nice to see Github building apps for each platform, without taking shortcuts. It's so much more pleasant to build AND use native apps with things like XAML and the Metro UI vs. making kludgy HTML shell apps.
- pjmlp 14y agoSpot on, it about time people realize that HTML apps are a kludge. HTML is for documents.
- DigitalSea 14y agoNow if only they can fix the constant crashing and then I'll be happy. No point in having a nice design if the application crashes so much that people can't see it.
- tclem 14y agoSend us an email at support@github.com if you are having trouble and we'd love to sort it out.
- nwienert 14y agoAnyone else find the font, especially the bold, grating? I don't think it's just the rendering but also the size and actual font (feels so big and cluttered in that merge request page).
- kennu 14y agoI wonder if I'm the only one who doesn't really like the GitHub Windows user experience? The most confusing thing is what you see when you select a repository. It shows you the commit details and diffs of the latest commit. That makes you feel like something is wrong or pending so you need to respond to it. The latest commit and its diffs are really not the main point of interest in that situation. I would much prefer to see a tree view of the current files in the repo (and maybe the README), just like on GitHub. That would be the most natural way of browsing the files, opening them by clicking, and seeing what has been modified. That would make you feel that you are in control and understand what's going on right from the beginning. Even if you're a newbie or non-tech guy.
- citricsquid 14y agoThat annoys me too. Also the cryptic error messages, the Windows client is (I assume) for people that aren't all that familiar with git and would prefer a UI so when my commit fails and I get an error message that a) when googled produces 0 results b) doesn't link to a help doc and c) has "open shell" as the solution it's very frustrating.
- damian2000 14y agoGood to see a bit of love for XAML and WPF on HN. I've been developing with it for the past 2 years - don't know how I worked without it.