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Comment by sauravc | Hacker News Reader

"And at the same time, we can de-emphasize the branch switcher since it’s so rarely used."

WRONG. This is why designers shouldn't be "redesigning" stuff they don't use.

Branching and merging with ease is what makes distributed scm's so much better than the previous generation. Why would one want to de-emphasize this?

And let's talk about what really used. Github is great for viewing code easily and making comments. So what did they do to the code view div in the latest redesign? They made it smaller! Unbelievable!

So now I have to use a Chrome plugin to fix it: https://github.com/sauravc/github_wideload

These "designers" aren't entirely to blame though. A lot of what the author suggested makes things better. Unfortunately, coders are a tough crowd to please.

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Hold on.

I don't mean to pick apart your comment but since you started off with a big bold nasty "WRONG" I don't feel so bad.

First, "branch and merging with ease" has nothing to do with "distributed SCM" tools. The branching model in Git is great of course but Mercurial for instance has a far different branching strategy. Bookmarks, which mimic Git branching, were added much later.

Second, while I do a lot of branching in Git, that has nothing to do with the branch selector on the Github UI.

Now, something that DOES, is the branch selector in the Pull Request screen which wasn't mentioned by the author but IMO should've been because that's the single worst part of the Github redesign.

>Second, while I do a lot of branching in Git, that has nothing to do with the branch selector on the Github UI.

My thoughts exactly.

> First, "branch and merging with ease" has nothing to do with "distributed SCM" tools.

Local branches tend to be a feature of distributed SCM tools, so I'd say you're wrong.

Hm you mean that's the main feature? Oh hm yeah it is.

I, for one, do a lot of branch selection in Github's UI. The problem is not that this guy has made a mistake but that he doesn't seem to realise the importance of consulting the user and testing designs.

If you don't discuss and test then you'll make a mistake. Unless you're Facebook, your company cannot ride roughshod over your customers.

Don't worry, I use it: https://github.com/ianstormtaylor

The branches selector is something that is not very useful on github itself for most applications. The network graph on the other hand, is very useful.

But its something that is used. When you want to review something someone is working on its good to be able to jump into a branch and look at the commits.

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