New 2.0 tab interface unusable

Michael Marshall April 28, 2017

The second I opened 2.0 and saw the new tabbed interface, I utterly hated it.

In the previous interface I had a nice list on the left of all open/active projects and could see the status of each in one glance: Project A has changes to commit, Project B has server updates to import, etc. Worked perfectly; there was never a question about each project's status.

The new interface shows me absolutely nothing about the status of any of the visible projects. Even if they did, more than a few tabs and they'll scroll out of view...

The only way to see overall status is to click the + button, but that's not what it's for...

And there doesn't seem to be any option to restore the previous view.

So back to 1.10 for us. Seriously, how did such a clearly defective design change get approved?

52 comments

adriangreen April 30, 2017

Agreed this new UI is un-usable. I have bookmarked hundreds of repos into a folder structure that allows me to quickly locate what I need.

Now, for each and every repo I need to visit, I have to click "+", then click on a folder (or search "All Repos"), open the repo (If I actually managed to find it). Then click "+", then click on a folder (or search "All Repos"), open the repo (If I actually managed to find it). Then click "+", then click on a folder (or search "All Repos"), open the repo (If I actually managed to find it)....

At least in the old system - everything could be made visible. The status of each repo was clear. I could open 10 repos in a matter of seconds!

I LOVE that the bookmarks are now filterable - a totally awesome feature that should have been there all along. However this new bookmark system is just torturous. Cruel and unusual punishment. I've got work to do, not click around all day looking for things.

Please reconsider this 'improvement'. (but KEEP the filtering!).

Josef Micka July 17, 2017

i really miss left side tree view for my bookmarks, i have categorized repos, grouped by themes and such, now i can see it only when i want open new tab, and even then it's flat, single level, you need to browse to 2nd/3rd level ...

 

how do i navigate fast between different repos and sources now?

i still keep 1.9 on my work computer, because 2.x is unusuable for my regular work. i have 2.x only on my home computer, where i don't use it that much.

Blair Davies May 2, 2017

Agreed with the use case and agree with Adrian Green.

Pros:  New repo listing is actually usable.  Drag and drop import of local repos to sourcetree is huge (random drag and drop of the old bookmark list would cause entire folders to vanish from the app).  Searching/filtering is great

Cons:  No "dashboard" to see statuses of local repositories.  Those of us with literally hundreds of repos (enterprise microservices...) are not well suited to the + button.  Tabs do not show enough information - which repo am I on?  What is it's name, address, folder path, breadcrumb, etc?  

Big con for me:  Custom actions are harder to use.  I use custom actions to merge releases to master and develop (gitflow) in one click, launch visual studio solutions in one click, etc.  Custom actions aren't available except by right click, and not by right clicking the branch. Right clicking the history view is unintuitive.

Toastie May 3, 2017

I can only agree with this. The missing project overview panel is a great step back in usability.

Me and my co-workers are working with 15+ projects. The project names are all beginning with the same prefix. When I need to find a special one, there is no way to distinguish them in the tab bar as the names are not fully displayed with so many projects open. So finding the right project often means to check multiple tabs to find the right project.

How could anyone think, the project panel is not needed anymore???? And if someone thinks so, why isn't there a way to turn it on or off???

Just a REALLY BAD design idea. Try to switch back to a previous version now. Currently using version 2.0.19.1.

Ken Domino May 3, 2017

I agree. This GUI is terrible. I cannot tell which tab is actually the one I select as there is only a 1 pixel boundary change to "highlight" the selected tab. (See red-circled items in the image below.) Further, in the old GUI, I could right click a tab, and get a context menu that would have an option to delete the repository. After fishing through every menu item, all the icons under the tabs, it looks like I can't even delete a repo within Sourcetree now. Just terrible UI design.

2017-05-03-e.png

kcrumley May 10, 2017

I just installed this an hour ago, and haven't used the new version enough to co-sign what the OP says about the overall changes, but let me say (scream) "+1" to what Ken Domino says about the styling on the tabs. I switch between tabs multiple times a day, and the different between "light gray" and "5% lighter gray" doesn't visually read as any tab being highlighted at all. I upgraded to 2.0.20.1 from 1.9.x, so I don't know when the tabs started looking this way. I've seen multiple 2.0.x screenshots where there was apparently no border at the bottom of the selected tab (which makes a huge difference), so it's possible that things only got screwy quite recently. But this is a huge step backward from the tabs in 1.9.x.

At first, I thought maybe it was my Windows display settings, but changing themes and turning on high contrast mode did nothing for me. I haven't tried this on a non-4K monitor yet, so I guess it's possible that this issue only pops up in higher DPI mode? But I really don't know how anyone at Atlassian could be using this on Windows and think it's useable. 

Why have a border at the bottom of the tab at all?2017-05-10 (3).png

kcrumley May 10, 2017

I take it back, just used a color picker and both the selected and non-selected tabs are #f5f5f5.

kcrumley May 10, 2017

I went back into Display settings and tried changing the DPI setting. Changed the "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" slider from 150% (the recommended setting for my 3840x2160 native resolution monitor) to 125% and 175%, and both options made the border at the bottom of the tab go away. So, at least on my machine, this is an issue of high-DPI scaling, at the specific setting of "150%". This also explains why everybody else's screenshots looked OK, and why not everybody is complaining about this.

But... 150% is the right setting -- the correct balance of readable-sized text and fitting a lot of stuff on the screen. I'm not going to rescale everything on my computer to make the latest version of SourceTree have useable tabs. Please do something about this.

Mike Corsaro
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 25, 2017

Hello! A fix for this is rolling out in 2.1 right now. Thanks!

Mia Shani June 7, 2017

Oh good! 
I, too, really need the option to see an overview of ALL my projects! 
when will it be released?

thanks!

Alex Steffes May 3, 2017

Please bring back Show/Hide Bookmarks (Ctrl+B)

 

In another discussion, Please re-implement the repository treeview, Ana from Atlassian said :

removing the repository treeview was a decision
made by the SourceTree team based on our user feedback

My question is who are these users giving feedback? Did Atlassian survey these users at all? How many repos did they have bookmarked on average? Are these people employeed at a small or large company? 

This feature is why I use SourceTree and is what I believe makes it powerful and unique.

Trang Dinh Van May 6, 2017

Bring back the left folder structured pane as previous please!

Deleted user May 8, 2017

Bring back the left folder structured pane - maybe as an Option to choose between new and old Interface

David Campbell May 8, 2017

Totally agree with this; please bring back the left pane displaying all of my bookmarked repositories displaying their 'git status'.

Which users did you get feedback from? Did they only have one git repo?

The tree structure allows you to be more productive. I may have a single project with 8 or more repositories. I can see immediately see which changes I need to pull to ensure I have the most current changes.

The folders allow all sorts of categorisation: you can group by repos by drives (C, D) or by location (eg. github) or anything else you could imagine.

If GitKraken brings in a treeview, I think many 1.9.10.0 sourcetree users will start using it, even if they have to shell out some cash. It has a compelling and beautiful design.

Atlassian should take a good look at GitKraken and hire a professional UI designer.

Geoff Sokoll May 9, 2017

Agree - bring back the bookmark treeview.  We have many repos (> 75) and this release is unusable without the bookmark pane.

Deleted user May 9, 2017

Agree - bring back the bookmark treeview. We have many repos (> 75) and this release is unusable without the bookmark pane.

In my case, I have different "projects" (about 65) a few with the same name. The only way to know on which I'm working is the path ... and it's not displayed.

 

Vladislav Kiselev May 10, 2017

Hello guys, here are two issues about this problem:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-7176

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-7163

Please vote on them. Probably it helps.

Geert van Horrik May 10, 2017

A combination of using the old bookmarks treeview and using CTRL + T (with the *focus on the filter automatically*) would be fantastic.

Most of the time I know which repo I want to open. Being able to use CTRL + T with a simple filter (e.g. OC for Orc.Controls) would be really awesome.

But sometimes I need to manually go through all the repositories in a group (folder) which is really awkward with the new UI.

Simon Adams May 10, 2017

Agree totally with almost everyone commenting!!!  We use ~15 repositories regularly, and name them with common prefixes (namespaces) so of course many tabs show the exact same label!  Also cannot tell status of my current repositories!  This kinds of tells me the Sourcetree development team does not use Sourcetree :o

What were they thinking?  Do they not test with more than 3 or 4 repositories?  Do they not feel being able to tell the status of repositores at a glance is important?

To make matters worse, I just received an email from Atlassian recommending everyone to upgrade to Sourcetree 2 (for Windows) because of a security problem with all older versions ("We are writing to inform you of a security vulnerability that exists in SourceTree for Mac starting with 1.4.0 but before 2.5.1 and SourceTree for Windows starting with 0.8.4b but before 2.0.20.1.").

I don't know if I should re-install 1.9 (a version I can work with) or stick with the faster (but labotomized) version 2.0. (sigh)

Erik Blake January 12, 2018

You can avoid the security issue by:

  • Use external git/mercurial and keep that updated
  • Remove the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\sourcetree so that the problematic URI vulnerability goes away (of course, you lose the option to use sourcetree:// links, but for me that's not an issue).
ThermoX May 10, 2017

I just started using 2.0.20.1. I gotta say, the biggest issue I have so far (after playing with it for about 30 minutes) is the lact of path info on the repos.

I often have 2 instances of the same repo, residing on 2 different machines.  One instance is on the development machine, and the other instance on the test machine.  Previously, a quick glance at the path confirmed which one I was currently viewing.  Now, there's absolutely nothing differenciating them in SourceTree, by default. I have to rename them with specific names as soon as I add them to the bookmarks.

Of course, I could use the new Folder feature to group them by target machines, but that would only be useful when looking at the bookmarks under the + tab.  Once the 2 repo tabs are up, they are identical if I don't rename them. And I can see no way of knowing which one is which, at that point.

A T May 10, 2017

Utterly horrid UI now.

The windows 8 bricks feel hit me in the face however the loss of the repo / project tree is a kick to the pants.

So we can't go back because of security vuln. cant use this as is...

Erik Blake January 12, 2018

You can avoid the security vulnerability by:

  • Remove the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\sourcetree so that the problematic URI vulnerability goes away (of course, you lose the option to use sourcetree:// links, but for me that's not an issue).
  • Use external git/mercurial (not the ones that ship with the old versions of sourcetree) and keep them updated.
mathias herbaux May 10, 2017

Unusable, how to manage our repositories, before removing it, it would have been smarter to have an option to display it or not. And because you collect data about user usage, you could made the right decision later ????

Jonas Ströbele May 11, 2017

Entirely unusable for anyone with large project counts.

We'll be issuing a recommendation both inside our company as well as our external partners not to update SourceTree to 2.0.

Sam Mackrill May 11, 2017

Not unuable, but pretty painful to use with multiple repros now.

DragonFyre May 11, 2017

I totally agree myself.  +2 thumbs.  

I want my bookmark list on the left where I had.  The #1 advantage of this is being able to see that status of all my local repos in one glance at any time no matter what repo I have currently selected/open.  I can see that, "oh, someone added a fix in github available for me to pull in xTools repo!"  Rather than having to open up ANOTHER tab just to see the list.  

In fact, I NEVER liked the tab view.  I'd rather have only the bookmarks on the left side and simply double-click on one to open it up on the right hand view window...  I only need (or can) look at one at a time anyway.  Why, then, have all the tabs in the first place?  Is it to make it conform to current browser standards today, Firefox, Chrome, IE, Edge, etc?  If that's the case, then it still doesn't make sense to have this layout for sourcetree.  It's not a browser and just because standards are what people are used to should not necessarily mean they apply to every application - just my 3 cents.

Please, Atlassian, bring back the Bookmark left-hand menu and do away with the tabbed interface!!

Janet Cross May 11, 2017

I agree with pretty much everything said here. I really need the bookmark list back. I too manage multiple repos for multiple projects at a time, and being able to easily see where I need to sort out commits or pull down changes is really imprtant to me. The tabs don't support this easily at all. For me, this version is unusable. And if Atlassian are saying it was a choice based on user feedback, what users?! Why not just make it an option to show or hide it based on preference rather than removing it altogether?

rice103 May 12, 2017

Very bad UI. I choosen SourceTree for simple and direct interface but now isn't it!. Please give us the old interface!

Przemyslaw Lusina May 12, 2017

Hi,

First I really like this software ( missing it on linux platform )

And then:

1) 2.0 is slower

2) Please add search box for branch checkout !!!!

3) Pushing selected branch to origin box show all branches also those which are not local, why ???? it's impossible to scroll this in bigger projects.

4) remotes in side menu are blinking ( by expanding for a while during pull ) this make this interface even slower

I are doing grate job! but please focus on usibility not apperance ... like you do for last two releases

 

Regards

Przemek L. 

chhabs
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 12, 2017

Thanks for writing in and expressing your concerns with the sidebar. We've received an overwhelming amount of feedback regarding interface bloat and performance. Removing the repository browser and giving it its own tab allowed us to offer a simplified workspace and better use the window real estate. Additionally, we were able to improve performance across the board by offloading any background tasks to be called on demand.

Additionally, we were able to improve performance across the board by offloading any background tasks to be called on demand.

That said, we understand that the repository browser was used in many different ways. We will continue to explore solutions to address the dashboard-like functionality that doesn't compromise the experience or hurt performance.

Thank you for your understanding.

Rahul 

Product Manager | SourceTree

Andrey Ovsiankin July 16, 2017

When the faster version will be available?

2.1.2.5 is unusable at all!

Software Licenses Virtamed July 25, 2017

Thank you for acknowladging. I am not sure why showing the updates for repositories is a Performance constraint.

Unfortunately the 2.X version got slower every time I got an update. Currently, it distracts me from work, as the auto-refresh -that actually refreshes the things I am not interested in - is so slow, that it locks up the entire tab content rendering Sourcetree unusable.

We now reverted to 1.10 version of sourcetree and maybe I try 2.X again in the future.

That said. I really like the effort, but I am not sure you are targeting all audiences with the changes you made.

 

NDE-Agentur August 9, 2017

Sorry this only sounds like a poor mans excuse. You didn't even think about users pain, did you? Even with only a few Repos open, the client sucks performance like ever before. So at least give us back some usability.

Tudor January 12, 2018

Performance is 0 excuse for UI design. If you understand data oriented programming you can implement a world like GTA V without lagging. Why exactly is your interface lagging in either one of your UX Design choices?

Jeremy Louden May 12, 2017

Cannot use

Gianluca Greco May 13, 2017

I've found this page searching the net for a way to restore the bookmarks sidebar after the upgrade to version 2.0.

I just want to add my voice to the request to get it back.

I have a real lot of repos and cannot work this way, so I switched back to version 1.9.13.7 (I think it is the last 1.9 released).

Thank you for your work and bye.

Software Licenses Virtamed July 25, 2017

The same that we did!

 

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