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
Do NOT remove the customize-ability of a software when the majority of its users are programmers who are accustomed to tweak and customize every single corner of their tools.
Alas, like the other competitors there would never be a switch to activate the old theme.
<rant>Don't be surprised if they remove the menu bar and switch to a ribbon, or a minimalistic design. MSFT, GOOG and AAPL are competing on their designs and the fire has spread everywhere.</rant>
I like the new UI. But the hunk view was terrible and the app still crashed randomly while I used it.
I was alerted today via my support ticket that 1.8.2.11 was available. I just installed it and the hunk view is much better; more like 1.7.
The flat design is still there, but I never had a problem with that. I just need something that's fast and reliable.
New icons are TERRIBLE and BROKEN, because they're almost invisible and indistinguishable from each other.
Please return coloured icons!
SourceTree became so awful with that release. Please fix annoying bug: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREE-3426
Everyone, old version can be downloaded from http://downloads.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/SourceTree_2.1.dmg — also it have coloured icons!
Too bad we have a new generation with daltonism
Colors are essential UI parts red = delete, green - ok ? right?
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-5558
After 5 minutes of use went back to the older version (2.0.5.8). Completely agree with all previous comments about terrible flat icons and UI.
I've lost the checkboxes next to the files in the staging interface. I'm trying to get 2500 tests under control, so I make a scripted change to lots of makefiles then review them in the staging dialog. Formerly, I could click the file to view the diffs, then check the box to add the file. Now I'm having to mouse all over the UI and make sure I hit "stage selected" rather than "stage all" which is right next to it. Diabolical! Couple that with the UI losing track of its state when the filesystem notification fires, and suddenly I'm paying more attention to UX issues than my problem domain.
Still current.
I recently purchased a new Mac and reinstalled everything. I am really shocked by the new UI, switched back to an older version.
Those new updates are terrible in terms of user experience (i use web conflu). I sent several feedback messages with no response, and now i cannot even revert to the old version now, which was far superior. I can start creating tickets to list things to be fixed, but it's just so much of this stuff, that i would be doing the job your designers and analysts should have done in the first place. Not to mention that it is slower every day.
Tomasz, your comment makes me extremely nervous. I and my entire team are using version 1.7 of SourceTree for Windows and it's an extremely valuable tool for us. We have no desire to switch to the massive cockup that is the newest version.Exactly what error are you experiencing when trying to use the old version? Is it during installation, when registering your license, or something else?
I just realized, my rant is about confluence - but google took me here
I switched to command line, and I was surprised to learn that I don't regret.For instance, visualize a nice graph with
git log --graph --oneline --decorate
There are of course other commands and tweaks to reproduce other aspects of SourceTree.
Ah, OK. Well I've never used Confluence, but I'm confident SourceTree takes the "Most useful product butchered beyond redemption by its own development team" award by a wide margin :-)
The new UI sucks bad. I can't find anything. atlassian must have had to decide to either lay off their designers or give them BS busy work to do screwing the uI up. Why do companies fix things that are absolutely not broken. The old interface was so simple and easy to use, the new one sucks
Can anyone tell me where the file status view totals have gone. To the right of the commit text area, to the left of the Atlassian logo. I used to use these totals to compare file numbers & status types between different repos?
In fact, where has the logo gone? Maybe, Atlassian are trying to tell us something. They are ashamed to put their logo against this version of SourceTree;)
Downloaded 2.5, after being on 1.7 for a while. Flat design is a retrograde step in my opinion. There's no coherent structure, and affordance of the various screen elements is restricted. The tabs are a a prime example. I used to be easy to see at a glance which tab is active, not any more, I mean even Windows 3.x got that right.
I also don't like the wasted space to the left of the diff pane. Just so a lozenge can be shoehorned in presumably to make screenshots look "sexy" or "funky" or something. Always blame marketing
Have been looking at alternatives.
Windows users can download what I think of as the "latest stable" version of SourceTree (1.7) here:
https://downloads.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/windows/SourceTreeSetup_1.7.0.32509.exe
For the record it still works great and is an extremely useful tool. I have not found the need to search the market for any other solutions.Be sure to save the Exe file locally, just in case Atlassian decides to remove it in the future. They seem to be very intent on self-destructing.
Thank heavens for this link to version 1.7. I am going to change immediately. The newest version has removed a really useful feature. There used to be file status totals for untracked, modified, removed & renamed files underneath the commit comments box. I used to rely on this so that I could compare changes between local repos using the same code base.
The reason software companies change products that aren't broken is so that they can justify keeping their development team employed. Plain & simple. It is an awful justification, but I really cannot see any other reason.Adding new functionality & fixing bugs is fine, but completely revamping the UI & removing useful features, is totally unacceptable. Even worse, which seems to be the case with SourceTree, is removing features to allow the new UI to function properly. It is never a good idea to prioritise style over substance.
Very sad to see a lack of care from Atlasssian on this once go to product. I to am looking for a usable replacement.
I understand wanting to make themselves more new with the UI but how hard is it to keep existing functionality OR leaving a original UI mode that with their usage stats would should most will would use.
The replacement product is SourceTree v1.7. It's really good actually :-)
If more software companies asked their loyal user base, how best to improve their products, success would follow, quickly & efficiently. Many of the suggestions in this feed, would have gone a long way to improving SourceTree. It is a great shame that Atlassian have used a negative feedback loop to achieve this objective. How about asking the question before releasing the update, rather than ignoring comments, once the damage has been done. Atlassian have missed a trick.
@Daniel Do Binau I have, though I'm going to try using VS Codes git more.@Charles Robertson Totally agree, funny though they did say that they did, the obvious question after that was WHO the hell did they ask!
Apparently someone at Atlassian still thinks this horrible new UI is a good idea - they just removed the option to opt out.
It's pretty sad how they destroyed a tool that was almost perfect. Since 1.7 pretty much everything they did made things worse.
That's the thing - if this was a media player or a normal user app the flat new UI would be totally fine.
This is a developer productivity tool. The aim of it is speed and accuracy and to make developers lives easier.
We don't want "sexy" we want "functional", if a UI is ugly as anything, but if it helps me do my job faster or better that's perfect.
Same as the icons down the left, in the old I could tell which were branches, folders, tags or remotes in a quarter of a second without even having to focus my eyes or read it. In the new one they all meld into one and I have no idea what's what.
I can't stand the wasted use of screen space.
Up vote this ticket! https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-69044
Er, I think you're in the wrong thread - this is about Sourcetree (which has never had the option to "opt out" - you upgrade it to a version which has a poor UI)
Is it possible to revert to the old CSS anymore?
Don't expect an answer from the Atlassian team, anytime soon, Alex. These people don't seem to care less about their loyal user base!
The new interface is horrible, how did this get past QA? The checkboxes don't have any meaning, when you check something, you expect them to do something with an ACTION event, such as Indexing them for commit, or selecting them for a Reset command, but no, those don't do anything, only the Selected item gets the Commit or Reset.
Well, I totally found the new versions useful in terms that they improved my skills of working with the console!
That's probably the evil super-secret master plan!
In reality I think Atlassian has lost interest in SourceTree and has outsourced it to some cheap offshore developers who don't know what they are doing.
In that was the case, they should simply release the code onto Github and donate it back to the community as open source.
.
I'm going to close this thread since it was originally started in 2016 and may be a little confusing -- but feel free to reopen a new thread to discuss new changes to the Sourcetree UI.
So will there be any action coming out of this thread on Atlassian's part?
@Alex Gottschalk the Sourcetree team asked me to hold off on closing the thread so they could post a response. Then conversation can continue in a new thread.
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