Monthly Archives: July 2012

Finally, GitHub listens! The importance of attention to detail in UX

Posted by Wes McKinney on July 15, 2012 2 comments

I like using GitHub, as do apparently a lot of other people. When doing pull requests, I’ve been annoyed for a long time by the amount of clicking necessary to get the git URL to the contributor’s repository (which must be added as a remote, etc.):

  • Click on new contributor
  • Locate pandas fork on their list of repositories
  • Copy git link from their fork, git remote add and I’m in business

    • But, GitHub is about using git, so why should I have to go fishing to get the git link? Earlier in the Pull Request UI, there was a help box that contained the git url (which I used), but then they took it away! So fishing it was. This might seem very minor, but after adding many dozens of remotes like that the annoyance had accumulated. It seemed obvious to me that the branch names should just be links:

    Each time GitHub tweaked the UI, I complained on Twitter, like so:


    Fffffff @ changes the pull request UI again but the branch names still are not links to the repository?
    July 13, 2012 1:29 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
    @wesmckinn
    Wes McKinney

    Finally, someone noticed:


    @ Great idea. Links added as of a few minutes ago.
    July 13, 2012 4:32 pm via Tweetbot for MacReplyRetweetFavorite
    @cameronmcefee
    Cameron McEfee

    Small victories, I guess. Enjoy.