It seems like no one can defy the change towards "flat-design" in modern software. Don't get me wrong, I like it for the most part.
But who actually designed the new SourceTree UI, stepped back, took a deep breath and thought "Yeah that looks good"?
The UI had lots of changes in the past and most of them made it worse in terms of usability and readability, which is a pitty. The lack of contrast and outlines makes it a total mess for me.
Hi everyone,
I'd like to start by acknowledging that we should have done better in communicating our intentions and how we are resolving concerns around this very passionate topic.
As noted previously in thread, the substantial UX redesign was first introduced nearly two years ago for both platforms with additional changes as necessary. One of the goals was and is the fidelity of Sourcetree between platforms as well as with the rest of the Atlassian family. And in an effort to tackle the very common complaint of interface bloat, we also removed several buttons from the toolbar and other areas that were either redundant or infrequently used.
Since this admittedly rocky start we've listened to your feedback and made some changes:
One of the most contentious aspects was the removal of the treeview (sidebar) from Sourcetree for Windows. Jens, our Head of Product, recently posted an official response in SRCTREEWIN-7176 to help move us all forward.
Thank you for your patience and feedback around the pain points you’ve experienced with the UX changes. We do strive to improve the experience overall for the wide variety of users in our community but don't want to strip away everything you've come to know and love. We have work to do internally to better communicate and listen and I hope you can help us by staying positive and encouraging!
Brian GanningerProduct Manager, Sourcetree
I always try to take UI changes with a grain of salt. There's always a backlash when you change UI in programs people use for non-recreational/social purposes. They're using them to accomplish a task and they don't generally appreciate changes that slow down their workflow.
That said, I don't appreciate the new changes. Most of the colors were removed and make it a lot harder to read. The ones that were kept were conversely made brighter and more annoying (like the modified file icon went from a golden circle to a bright yellow box that's hard to really differentiate between the merge conflict light-orange triangle). The status pane on the left side is hard to read now because it's all various grey/black silhouettes that all merge together.
I probably would just motor through the changes, but I ran into 3 major bugs in the span of about 20 minutes using it. I'm saddened that this was released as a production release. I think it would help if there was a beta test release channel for whoever is brave enough to want to try it; because clearly there wasn't a huge amount of real-world testing before this was released. I rolled back both my windows and OS X versions. I'm not sure what Atlassian will need to do to entice me to move forward, but I'll need to see some serious indication that they've tested this and the community has accepted it.
Just installed 1.8 and my first response was WTF and not in the good way.
Flat colourless design is impossible to read. When there were colours on the menu I didn't need to think about where I needed to click, just went for the colour of my intended action.
Now I literally have to read every single menu item from left to right word by word to try and work out which is the one I need to click.
The flat, outline icon style too is unreadable too. Because it's just wire frames - every single icon looks the same as the other one. I really have to stop and stare to try and work out what it means.
Same thing with the tree-view on the left. Everything looks the same and I can't tell the difference between a branch, a tag and a folder.
With zero colour, everything on the whole interface moulds into a single colourless blob - no differentiation between elements.
I must add my voice to the masses here.
The new UI is just a mess, there is no contrast to anything at all.
The folders and repository view on the left hand side is just a mess of text, there is not enough of a visual difference to be able to distinguish between anything.
The buttons on the top row are lifeless, the designs of the icons might be cool but when the fetch pull and push are almost identical, it forces you to have to read the text, then the icon become pointless because you need to read it to be able to see what it does.
Also, why is text being centred on the read panel. It looks extremely awkward like this and not what I would expect.
SourceTree.PNG
I have yet to play with this for more than 5-10 minutes but so far I am now impressed with the design of the NEW improved sourcetree.
Also has anyone else noticed that the GIT flow option in the menu takes a five or six seconds to loads ?
TreeView on Windows, a feature that has been asked for years with people being quite pushing to have it, is now removed!?Why? https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-391Go there and comment on this ticket? We waited more than 2 year to get that ticket done, I hope we don't have to wait other two. If many people comment maybe we can convince them to do something.Tree views are a standard in any software, how come that SourceTree has so many problems with them?
Removing the statusbar makes it impossible to see on which branch you're on (when you have the branches collapsed in the treeview and if your not on Log/History view).
If the branches are collapsed within treeview, you have to expand all subfolders of branches to find which branch you're currently on (if your not on Log/History view)
What a crap that the bookmarklist does not highlight the currently opened repository - as there is also visible which branch the repositories are on - but as the current repository is not highlighted, you cannot easily see which branch you're on ...
I hate missing the status bar and the "unconnected" bookmark list (no highlighting of current repository) ...
Agree. Nothing much to add to the above.
Is a UI rollback possible?
Heir heir, what an annoying superfluous change... And making it worse really should not be presented as an update with a whole new installer.
Please everyone have a look (and upvote): https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/37042920
Sorry but the new status icon colours are a horribly garish and unattractive combo. Yellow icons on a white background cause them to visually bleed. And saturated yellow, purple and green are a very unattractive combo. The menu icons are uniform and dull pencil lines that are not at all useful in picking out a function quickly. I remember when Firefox for Mac went through a phase like that over ten years ago. Fortunately they got over it quickly.
The items in the repository pane are almost mashed together. Little thought was given to spacing.
Who decided to make the diff view show changes in blocks that are centered? This looks awful.
Image 002.png
Why not make the whole background white and align things on the left, just like it is in a real code editor?
I agree completely, it looks horrific
@Jesse Temple That's unfortunately a bug.
Oh, well that I can live with. That means it'll get fixed.
+1 vote to reverting the icons. Seems all that should be said has been said in regards to them.
Another thing is, as seen in the above screenshot, there's no margin/padding around the line numbers on the left, so it looks ugly as hell.
I think it is a huge improvement. I waited better design so long and finally it is here. Atlassian, thank you very much.
Icons are awesome, hunks separation in diff pane is more convenient, flattish is beautiful.
However, there are some potential improvements:
Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE went the same path shifting from icon to flat monochrome glyphs and eventually made some colorization to it. So now it looks good: flat colored (glyph like icons) what helps to differentiate them. I think Atalassian should do the same.
+1 for additional color through the product. In the main toolbar for sure and additional color for the top level nodes in the tree view of file status would be appreciated as well. Also color coordinating branches in the tree view and the branch view would be helpful. Color makes it easier to skim, locate UI elements quickly, and to see relationships faster.
image2016-2-25 8:36:14.png
I just allowed SourceTree to upgrade itself from 1.7 to 1.8.2.2, the latest version available at the moment.
My first thought was that the UI looked uglier in general, but I can live with that. Now I'm starting to run into lots of usability regressions as well, though:
I've filed bugs for these & hopefully they'll be fixed soon.
SourceTree's UI up to 1.7 was good enough that it was worth putting up with the app's overall slowness. This new focus on performance seems to be coming at the expense of the one thing that made SourceTree stand out - and frankly, the performance doesn't really seem to have improved that much anyway.
As a Mac user, I have two quick notes about the new UI that would be easy to implement and would make a big difference:
Also: I'm not currently using Git Flow but its removal from the toolbar seems inexplicable.
Reverting to 2.1 until some improvements are made.
Git Flow button is back in the latest version.
Thank you for your kind words Stanislav. Removing the gradients is on the roadmap in the next non-minor release as well as increasing overall app contrast.
Are you seriously kidding or working for Atlassian?
Do you like the new diff window showing everything centered with gigantic grey padding? It was close to perfect in 1.7. I've never experienced a UI getting this much worse!
image2016-2-25 20:38:57.png
@Magnus Bondesson Sorry about that – that issue was my fault and caused by a library that was updated, but not included in the last release. This is a known bug and it will be resolved in a release in a few days.
You can track it here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-4889
1.5.2 has both performance and readability
And why do I have to connect to the internet to upgrade/install the software? It's already registered and now I can't use it. It's back to the good old, stable v1.5.2.
I had to go back to 1.7 straight after updating. Not only did I have the generic monochrome skin, that makes you work harder as you have to check you clicking the right thing every time.
But also, SourceTree told me, after the update, it could no longer see any of my repositories!! I couldn't open any of them.
Very poor effort guys...... really disappointing.....
Personally I don't like the new interface, I found the old one way more readable. But I must also admit that using habit can change things a lot: first 1.8 was terrible for me, now I'm getting used to changes so it's a bit better...
But:
Today I upgraded to 1.8.2.2 from 1.8.2:
Enough! I reverted back to 1.6.25, which was perfect for me. In doing so I discovered that I had 3 entries in control panel Programs and Features (1 per each 1.8.x upgrade). After uninstalling the most recent, all of them were still there. In the end i had to remove entries manually with CCleaner.
I literally reverted back within 10 minutes because the new version is an unusable mess from a design perspective.
The new design suffers from a serious lack of understanding for the purpose of the tool or its functionality. It is as if a bunch of designers, who have little to no understanding as to the use of the tool and its design choices, were placed in a room and told to peck away at the UI design until all the elements conformed to an arbitrary flat "design vision"; and that these changes occurred in a vaccuum without an understanding of how those changes impact programmers or build engineers who actually use the tool on a regular basis.
This is just a suggestion, but if you want to make design changes to a programming productivity tool, you should actually consult programmers who use the tools regularly for their input.
Atlassian & @Mike Corsaro, responding to the only positive responses, when the bulk of the responses is negative, is lip service. You guys need to seriously rethink how you're handling the PR of this. If people are upset, ignoring the pleas for sensibility is a sure fire way to upset your users more. You guys are a lot better than this with all of your other products, so this is really disappointing to see coming from a company with otherwise great tools.
I just downgraded to 1.7.0.32509. 1.8.2.2 is randomly crashing when I commit. Good thing I keep old versions laying around; you don't make the older versions easy to find on your site.
Even with the latest fixes, if I try to create a patch, I still can't check individual files. It's all or nothing.
Totally agree. The first versions of Sourcetree showed deep understanding of git and its use. the last few versions showed a total lack of understanding. Just a few designers moving buttons around and changing colors. I am sure the new bugs will eventually get worked out but the damage that has been done to a formerly very productive tool will be hard to get undone.
I reverted back in about 2 mins... as it no longer saw any of my repositories... when I tried to open one from the bookmarks.. it said it was not found and asked if I wanted to remove from bookmarks. When I looked on the filesystem it was still there... I reverted back to 1.7 and hey presto everything worked again.....
It was a great product... I really hope they just roll it back to 1.7 and then start beta testing new releases.
I don't think they will. ST is now a free product, what means that YOU are the real product.So now they need to expand the user base at any costs in order get whatever revenue they wants from it. Dumbing down the U.I. is a way to do so, as there're far more inexperienced/ignorant/whatever people in the world than experts that need a specialized tool.What's nuts, because such audience would not pay for the Atlassian services anyway.I don't like the smell of this.
I agree, version 2.2.2 on the mac is NOT good. it's going backwards. Suddenly half of the stuff does not work. The flat design is a bad idea.
I am going back to the previous version. What was the thinking. If you improve design (allegedly) don't break the features. That's not helping.
I'd like to point out that I've seen different improvements. Real improvements. But it is still not as good as the design before.
The main toolbar on top looks all the same. When I get tired, it's early in the morning or I just don't have much time I struggle to find the right icon for what I'd like to do.Additionally if you look at the repositories details (the panel with "File Status", "Branches", "Tags", "Remotes", ...), its the same problem. Plus, the active element (for example the active branch or in the revision list the checked out element) has the tiny circle. As it is the only color thing in there it is dominating in the reception and looks like a major tree entry. In the revision list its not enough to find it when you are fixing bugs and jump all around revisions "binarily", especially when there are a bunch of branches and tags around.
I don't know if its just me, but I'm not having an easy time with the new design and I hope there's room for improvement.
I completely agree... Working with a monochrome interface is like having a conversation with someone that has a very thick accent and not a very good grasp on your native language. You can work with them, but it takes way more effort to extract the information you need, and increases the opportunity for error...
+1 The new UI is terrible. Please revert.
Yes. And Atlassian had the cheek to send me an e-mail today, telling me what a wonderful year they had had, and would I like to watch the highlights. Clearly the Atlassian PR machine going into overdrive.
That's the scary thing. They probably do think all the changes / "improvements" are wonderful.
Corporate ego in action. It's the kind of blindness that can bring an organisation to its knees. It only requires a single start up to offer a decent alternative.
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