Hi everybody,
Let me start by once again reiterating our intent to improve Sourcetree by listening to your feedback. One of the top issues for Windows, SRCTREEWIN-7176, focuses on the removal of the bookmarks sidebar/treeview. Jens Schumacher, our Head of Product, summed up your well articulated frustrations with the current implementation:
difficult to get the status of repositories at a glance
Starting from these functional requirements we set out to explore what pattern(s) might work best. We put all the options on the table and evaluated the pros and cons of each. Before getting into what we're leaning towards I'll touch on a few of the concepts we discussed and why they didn't survive to the final round.
Ultimately each of these failed to deliver on our goals in one way or another. Some came with renewed performance concerns, others had a lack of information density and/or persistent visibility, and many lacked cohesion with either Windows, Atlassian, or Sourcetree for Mac.
In the end we settled on the following set of changes to offer the best balance for all our users:
As you might suspect this is a non-trivial amount of work to accomplish. It also requires revisiting certain fundamental assumptions in the Sourcetree for Windows architecture, especially around focus and state, and we want to make sure we get that right. The quality bar for this experience is high and we're committed to delivering a modern, flexible UX you'll be happy to use every day.
We've put this feature on the roadmap for later this year after we wrap up the current projects in flight. As we ramp up work on this we'll be sure to share more information. This isn't set in stone though - post your constructive feedback about our proposed direction in this discussion. We're listening and we'll keep the conversation going! (please keep it positive and encouraging)
Thank you for your enthusiasm, input, and patience.
Brian Ganninger
Product Manager, Sourcetree
Update: check out this comment for a visual preview and clarifications
Hi folks,
Rather than proceed down a path that didn't meet your needs we went back to the drawing board. The final result is a more modern interpretation of the sidebar that returns the functionality you know and love. We previewed it today in a blog post and I started a new discussion here on Community for us to continue the conversation. Please join in there.
Cheers,
Brian Ganninger
Principal Developer, Sourcetree
Interesting and sad to see debate (and users) still raging on this.
I liked the old 1.x SourceTree because it had a clean UI and some great usability improvements over Tortoise. IMHO the UI did not need to be any simpler. You only needed to resolve (or manage) the performance issues.
The 2.x versions are overly simplified. Remember your target audience are software developers that regularly use tools with complex UIs - like the Visual Studio UI you posted earlier on. Sadly I see the GitKraken team are also using lists instead of trees. I'm sure you are smart enough to watch what others are doing and look for ways to do things better and differently.
As a professional software developer that tree of projects is my natural environment. It is not a list.
Atlassian the only way you will win back a significant number of these users is to reinstate a TREE view that provides a way for the developers to navigate their SOURCE projects. I think even one that does not visualise the pending incoming/outgoing changes would be an improvement. If it works quickly and effectively, lots of developers who are using (or switching to) other tools might consider SourceTree.
The Windows Explorer still has a tree view control basically the same as introduced in the original File Manager. For competent (technical) users this is the right solution for the problem - a list view is not.
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The exact same mockup with the larger row height was posted to the SourceTree blog over a year ago. In fact, the only difference I can see is the badges in the toolbar and tabs. That seems to indicate to me that there's a commitment to the larger row height. Or maybe you just found that old image, stitched them together in Paint and added some badges. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2017/05/18/windows-2-0-gets-a-fresh-look/
https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/files/2017/05/after.png
But anyway, moving on...
What's the plan for the Repository and Actions menus if there's no menu bar on secondary windows?
And as others have said, it's seems like you're trying to make a sidebar without actually making a sidebar. If I understand this correctly, the intent is to be able to drag the "new tab" tab out to a new window, dock it to the edge of the screen and treat that as a sidebar.
Based on what you've said here as well as what you confirmed in @scottgoddard's comment here, that means when we do drag this "new tab" out to a new window and treat it as a sidebar, if we then double-click on a repository to open it, it will open in the _sidebar's_ window, and then we need to drag that repository tab out of that sidebar window and into the other window.
The "tearable" tabs seems like a really convoluted hack to create a sidebar that's not actually a sidebar.
window docking with edge snapping will be fully supported
Unless I've misunderstood what you mean, this is just natively supported by Windows. Today I can already snap SourceTree to the edge of my screen. Is this what you're referring to, or did you mean something else?
P.S. You may want to rethink calling them "tearable tabs" before someone decides to call them "terrible tabs" 😁
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@Black Hat I wouldn't infer too much from the screenshots beyond the sidebar, and even then keep in mind that it's a mockup for this discussion, not the final product.
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Because obviously there is a very stupid and arrogant person on top of that team.
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It seems you're trying hard to give users something kinda sorta like a sidebar as close it can get without it actaully being a sidebar (what users including me request)
I wonder why that is ?
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Why don't you just bring back the old Panel 1:1 and let users decide if they want to use?
I mean - all this talking, you could have done it twice in this time. 2x is not any faster than 1x. And even if - you would admit that manually checking and struggling around with tab navigation is really time consuming.
Just bring it back an everybody is happy. And if someday you have a genius new idea let people choose.
I don't understand why you take years for such a simple but so important thing.
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These are realy lame excuses. Please just get the work done and bring back the sidebar. There is nothing to bla bla about that. Running 2.x i cant even measure any performance improvents that could be lost. and even if there are performance improvements they are useless as a cant use the software anymore. maybe its running faster. but now i have to check all my repos manually. Get it?
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First thoughts based on those mock-ups...
a menu bar is only present in the first, or 'primary', window; it doesn't follow the 'New' tab or move to any other windows
This is going to be really confusing. Apart from the menu, the windows look identical to each other, and I can see myself looking for the menu on a window that's not the "primary" window.
The Repository and Action menus (currently) apply to the selected tab. To use those menus, I have to find the primary window, which could be on another monitor, or maybe it's even been minimized. That's a big usability problem.
I like the icons for each repository. 👍 That'll really help with quickly locating a repo, but where do the icons actually come from?
While it's not pictured we're also considering how to incorporate at least one more level of folders in the 'New' tab's local repositories list for more advanced groupings
So, it'll sort of be like.... a tree view? 😉
A few asides:
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Certainly looks like an evasion. It's weird, but it'll do.
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Hi Brian
This seems like it would meet all my requirements and allow me to switch from V1.* at last. It is unfortunate that this has been such an unnecessarily long and frustrating process but at least it seems like we are on the final straight now.
Scott
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It does seem like the team is desperately trying to work around a decision that they made (or was made for them), rather than delivering a commonly used UI paradigm of a docked panel. Trying too hard to give users a sidebar that they have been clamouring for, without calling it one.
Anyway, "window docking with edge snapping" sounds close enough to a docked panel, except it will have its own window and tab controls. If those tab controls are hidden when the "new" "tab" is the only thing in that window when it's snapped to the primary window, and "tabs open in the currently focused window, not the ‘primary’ window" no longer applies in that case, this will finally let them get away with a sidebar without having a sidebar.
Again, that's a whole lot of effort to have a sidebar without calling it a sidebar. Team, are you guys being held hostage to a mandate from superiors to not give a sidebar that users are asking for? Do you guys need help? We could make an online petition. Blink twice if this is close to the truth :|
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Hi Brian,
Thanks for the update
A question: is it possible you're fighting the underlying UI framework here, or is there another reason it is not possible to have docking? Just asking because I'm wondering about that, and because having docking ability would pretty much solve all requests regarding 'bring the old sourctree back'.
Alternatively, if the above makes it, does it also persists window layout/open tabs in between program launches? That would be close enough (as in: one could always keep the 'new tab' open to get the reposittory overview and then next to it a window with just repository tabs, which would visually match the old ST).
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That looks slightly more promising, what would be great is if that 'New Tab' with the repo listing was simply docked to the left and always visible and not a tab itself (which seems odd anyway)..you could double-click on a repo to open it in a tab, it would essentially be like the old SourceTree and what most of us are looking for.
This does give me hope that it's at least heading in the right direction though. :)
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Greetings everybody,
Thank you for your feedback and comments, we're reading each and every one of them and discussing amongst the team. I'm back today to share a more visual update about the tearable tabs proposal and to hopefully clarify any questions that have come up so far.
Here's a mockup (not final) of what this all looks like together:
And here's the prototype from our tech spike in action:
While it's not pictured we're also considering how to incorporate at least one more level of folders in the 'New' tab's local repositories list for more advanced groupings while retaining our original goal of a simpler experience more akin to the modern Windows one.
Cheers,
Brian Ganninger
Product Manager, Sourcetree
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This is exactly what I would like to see Jared! Especially points 2,3 & 4.
If this is re-instated/implemented, I will move from v1.5.2 (indications are that the performance improvements are worth it).
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+1
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From the SourceTree 1.x I miss the most the tree arrangement of repositories. Flat folder structure is insufficient for me. For example I want folder for opensource projects and subfolders in it for projects where I am maintainer, another subfolder for Spring projects, another folder for other opensource projects etc. I have many repositories cloned and it's a problem for me to find something in a flat structure of folders.
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We're working on these currently.
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