Cool to see this landing on HackerNews! I built this as a side project over a few weeks to test out some ideas we had, let us know if there is anything we can improve, would love to hear your comments
16 karma · joined December 10, 2017
Yes and no We did have this section, but only about half of the items in the left sidebar were initially included. This was an oversight from our teams, and we managed to get most of that fixed over the last 2 milestones (more refinements coming up as well, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to create an issue).
> And to be honest, I've always found each iteration of the UI better than the previous one, so there's that.
That's amazing to hear and proves our high focus on iterating fast and improving each time. Thanks so much for your feedback!
You bring up quite a few great points. We have worked hard on bringing every tool from the DevOps lifecycle into our platform, and I agree with you that quite a few areas have become overwhelming, especially for new users or people who don't use our entire set of features.
We are actively working on refining that, but as you can imagine, that's no easy feat, as we have a vast variety of project types, workflows, use cases, user types, etc...
One of the most problematic areas, as you perfectly mentioned, is the left sidebar. We already enable project administrators to remove items from there by going to Settings -> General -> Visibility, project features, permissions, and then toggling off the areas you would like to remove. However, this is a project setting, not per user.
At the same time, we also work on making that left sidebar better for everyone, in multiple smaller iterations. As first step, we are making some small changes to the visual design (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/322680) and make the navigation easier to understand (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/322687). We are also aware that our left sidebar has become too crowded with too many top-level/sub-level items, and we are validating an idea that would be the first step for us to get out of this (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/-/issues/1421). There are already a few follow-up ideas (e.g. grouping items into larger groups or pinning most important items per user), but they are a bit further away.
I hope that gives you a better understanding how our UX team at GitLab thinks about this. Let me know if you have any other feedback or ideas
The code base I created is super flexible, if you let me know what your area of work is, I might be able to set something up.
I built a Chrome extension that displays a random travel destination combined with the cheapest flights from airports 200km around your current location. You can also test it out here: https://awaytab.com/demo