Forking with the Edit Button | Hacker News Reader

Forking with the Edit Button

github.com

104 pointsremi9 comments

Github is really doing an excellent job of presenting the power of git via a web interface. So now they've condensed the process of fork, change, recommit (and possibly pull request?) to one Edit button. Imagine a new workflow for wikis, where github's patchset approval and merge process is used to allow other people to fix a page in a controlled manner, and you don't need git to do this--just a github account and a web browser.

>and possibly pull request?

you would know this if you had read the page

>When you are done with your edit, we will write your change into your new fork automatically and send you to the pull request page so you can tell the owner of the repository.

Yes, I did see that, and it wasn't clear to me whether that will be an intuitive step to non-git users or not. I haven't used the feature yet.

I think this will be huge for things like READMEs, where I'll often spot lots of typos or examples that could be improved.

This is okay, but it would be even better if it popped up the file in a at least moderately useable programming text editor (like bespin or something).

Maybe the solution here in the mean time is to use this with the bespin bookmarklet(https://bespin.mozillalabs.com/bookmarklet/) or something.

You could also use the Cloud9IDE at http://cloud9ide.org . (It's based on the Ace editor, which Bespin/SkyWriter merged with. [1]) Log in with your Github user/pass, see your repos, and commit.

It's not as seamless as if it was on Github, but impressively powerful.

[1] http://mozillalabs.com/skywriter/2011/01/18/mozilla-skywrite...

Now if Cloud9 had an android app I'd buy it or at least try their service. Thats going to be the make or break for any of these fancy cloud services for me. Basic utility increase.

Do you really want to write code on your phone? If you do, wouldn't you rather just shell into your server and use vim? It would probably be better UI and more responsive than using a graphical web-based editor on the tiny screen, no?

This looks neat and all but I'm still waiting for Github Issues 2.0 API.

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