What's the point of this? Github's UI seems reasonably well done and reasonably responsive to me. And it's not like you're removing a dependency, which is defensible.
I'm probably missing something here - what?
Now, if there were something like this but for Gitlab, whose UI is distractingly slow and just plain weird in a lot of ways, then I'd be very interested.
A page such as this[1] requires javascript to be enabled to be viewable on github. Viewing any and all "/blob/" pages on github requires javascript to be enabled now. It didn't used to be this way ~1 year ago but github is slowly making javascript necessary on many pages for some annoying reason.
I could set up a redirect to the '/raw/' pages but then the syntax highlighting is gone.
The same page is perfectly viewable over plain html on gothub[2] though.
Github also seems to be hiding their "Assets" (binaries et al) on the "/releases" page for some projects behind javascript(especially older versions).[3] Something else that wasn't the case about ~1.5 years ago.
Would be great if gothub could unshackle the links to those as well[4], but that doesn't seem to work at the moment[5] .
This project appears to be a more performant(measurably so), more privacy friendly(as Microsoft won't have a record of your interest in certain projects) alternative front-end for "non logged in" github users.
Outside HN (and similar crowds) barely anyone has an issue with web pages running JavaScript. I understand the sentiment but don't think it's practical or useful/meaningful. That's how the web works, mostly. And that definitely does not justify the existence of this project -- the github website is generally fine and the use of JavaScript greatly enhances the experience especially after recent updates.
I have no problem with javascript. I think javascript can greatly add to the web experience.
"Add to" being the keyword there. Not "in lieu of".
You want to add javascript to enhance UI/UX outside the scope of what can be accomplished with plain html? Great!
You want to use javascript to add a feature that simply can't be done over plain html? Great!
You want to use javascript to hide a bunch of text on a public webpage, so those who have javascript disabled on their web browsers can't see the text, and will be forced to enable javascript, just to look at some text on a webpage? Unforgivably garbage design!
I will remind you that github used to work perfectly fine without requiring javascript merely a year ago. At least for basic perusal.
I think it is extremely silly design if I'm required to enable javascript, just to look at some text on a public webpage.
Again, nothing against javascript. But don't make it mandatory is what I'm saying, especially for casual browsing.
What will need to happen that "but JS" stops being a self-serving argument?
If it performance poorly, as with anything else, let's hear it. But I do seriously wonder: Is there a sport in breaking a websites legs and point at it, while it's lolling on the floor?
Reinventing links detracts from the UX. You can't hover over the link and see where the link goes. Modifier keys often aren't respected meaning you can't open a link in a new window/tab with just one click. Fake links also break things like screen readers.
Reinventing the text widget means you're invariably going to miss something. Maybe you'll miss a "power user" feature like keyboard navigation. Maybe you'll miss something esoteric like rendering Chinese characters or find on the page. Maybe you'll break a rarely used feature like scrolling. Maybe you'll just display random characters.
To me it seems like a large part of the pain of requiring javascript is less about breaking nojs and more that devs are using javascript to poorly/partially reimplement key browser features. I'm reminded of the "Just normal web things" post the other day.
I see it is an instance thing like invidious or nitter which might be valuable for browsing github because it obscures you from microsoft but that makes it read-only because the moment you identify yourself you lose that benefit. That's assuming you can even do that on this. Basically I don't know because I never browse github. I am there for read-write purposes.
I guess. I've felt that Github's UI has been on a downward trend for a while, call it "enshittification" or "feature churn" if you'd like. A few things I can remember now: the redesign of the old dashboard; nothing improved, things just became harder to find, and maybe a designer at Github got a promotion. The dreaded "For you" tab that Github tried to force to be the default for a while. Profile "achievements". The latest changes to the editor/file browser have slowed down my workflows. Ah, and the latest UI refresh that shifted tabs around and forces a *hamburger menu on desktop viewports*.
There's a lot to like for sure; I still prefer Github to Gitlab. But there's also room for improvement, hence why people make these frontends to begin with.
Their point still stands. If Github makes a change you don't like to their UI tomorrow, there's nothing you can do. An open-source frontend provides an opportunity for you to customize the way you browse Github.
Check out the discussion threads where Github solicits feedback. The latest update is a regression in pretty much every sense.
In terms of performance, pages were slow to render because Github reinvented the textbox widget. Even searching within the page was fucked because redrawing was so slow. We're talking nearly a second of lag even though this virtualization bullshit was done ostensibly "so that the page is faster to load and snappier responsively".
The UI itself is increasingly cluttered with random widgets. A symbol explorer that cannot cope with non-default branches. A news feed of github.com related news that I can't dismiss. A personalized news feed full of repositories I'm not even remotely interested in. Ads for copilot.
The whiz bang text widget failed to account for multibyte characters. Emoji and non-Latin characters weren't displayed properly, and in one of the feedback threads an end user had to explain how strings work in Javascript.
The site itself is completely broken in the version of Safari that I use. Elements get positioned off the page.
There are tons of visual distractions e.g. that symbol explorer pops up when you click on some symbols, making text selection more difficult.
Keyboard navigation doesn't work (as it's not been implemented in their custom whiz bang text widget). I saw a few complaints that the whiz bang text widget randomly adds parens and indents and becomes blurry while scrolliing (as there are occasionally mismatches between the Github custom whiz bang thing and what the browser does).
The nav bar is a mess. The initial public release even eschewed any branch navigation, so if you scrolled down you couldn't easily jump to another or tell what branch you were on. Now they only hide branch navigation some of the time, depending on which size navbar you're allowed to have at the moment. As you scroll through a page the navbar itself jumps all over the place and changes size a few times.
The hyperlinks generated from Markdown are broken in a variety of ridiculous ways, the hyperlinks from the site itself are often no longer anchor tags (breaking accessibility and common sense).
Like everything else, code search is not branch aware. Given how much Github was hyping up the new search I really hope the ability to search a non-default branch is just hidden. But given how much the Github UX team loves scattering notification badges everywhere to highlight new features, I doubt it. Searching within the page got similar treatment and is more or less incompatible with the whiz bang text widget (Firefox only seemed to find things that were on the currently visible section of the page).
I've no idea if it's related but issue search has become nearly useless (for me). If I search for a term there's an awful good chance it isn't actually used in any of the issues returned.
I'm probably missing something here - what?
Now, if there were something like this but for Gitlab, whose UI is distractingly slow and just plain weird in a lot of ways, then I'd be very interested.