General review as an occasional user
I've used Gitlab during various work related projects and sometimes when linked to it (iTerm being the main user for me). I am on a Macbook with Chrome. I've been using Github since 2009 and other stuff before that (it was a mess) and after that sometimes, but mainly a daily Github user.
- Your template has a typo: "categorised" -> "categorized"
- I load the main page: 5 seconds (as a logged in user)
- "New project": that's the Jira/PivotalTracker/Trello terminology, I expected a "New repository"
- No sure why there is "project name" and "project slug"
- I try to create a repo named "files" -> "Path files is a reserved name" (I settle for data...)
- In general there is lot of IMHO useless texts everywhere, I'm welcomed to my new repository with:
- "You won't be able to pull or push project code via SSH until you add an SSH key to your profile"
- "The Auto DevOps pipeline has been enabled and will be used if no alternative CI configuration file is found. More information"
- "Project successfully created"
- "You can automatically build and test your application if you enable Auto DevOps for this project. You can automatically deploy it as well, if you add a Kubernetes cluster."
- Again more texts, I'm going to stop pasting all of them.
- Admittedly adding an SSH key is better than on Github.
- Where is the ssh URL? Got to reload the page to have it appear (ok, there was a "clone" button too)
- "Auto DevOps enabled", what's that? Why would I want it? I don't want my code running on random servers by default
- Lot of whitespace for no reason (in commit view for instance)
- Noticeable lag when clicking on emoji/reaction picker
- https://gitlab.com/help/user/project/quick_actions, sounds cool (why is there too random emoji in first, sounds like a Discord bot)
- Your Web IDE shows the last line as a new line while Vim doesn't show it as a new line for instance (that Web IDE is really cool BTW)
- I use T often in Github, here it takes a bit to load (still okay) then shows a custom view for the list, I would expect a consistent view personally
- Not sure why I would want to download as another format than ZIP
- Disabled Auto DevOps too late, still tried to execute my code... not cool
- I have no idea what's going on in this view: https://i.imgur.com/66AwPvI.png (I wanted to delete the build, doesn't seem possible)
- Lots of links leading to nothing, maybe enabling those things (e.g. Releases, Board, Label, Milestone, etc.)
- The most annoying part is the new Pull Request view and participating in a Pull Request in general, too much clutter, not enough importance of the user content (e.g. PR description and comments)
- This is what it looks like, can you spot the actual content? https://i.imgur.com/ud91myk.png (admitelly contrived example but the idea is there
- Creating a new PR should show changed by default, this way I can review one last time before submitting
- Settings could be simplified too, e.g. having the most used/useful settings first instead of categories / sub-categories / expand
- Contrast should be used to separate block of content (e.g. the idea behind material design)
- No need to show "[icon] 0" everywhere
- Top Menu / navbar:
- projects should show my projects / projects I participate in (or just anything at least) instead of an empty list
- Explore projects (which I clicked on by mistake) is not very informative, it just seems to show random projects without descriptions for instance, a curated list would be much better (e.g. iTerm showing up there wouldn't surprise me)
- Not sure why I would want to use Snippets
- Again lot of options / menu that lead to empty lists
- Search is slow (that's an issue in almost every project)
- I search for iTerm, I get random projects, not the correct one
- I'm in a project, search should indicate that I'm searching within a project
- I got the correct iTerm2 project by going to Milestones :) https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues
- Placeholder for images that are loading should be better than just a white box with a shadow
- Loading closed/all issues is very slow
- I have to scroll on the right sidebar to see if there is something interesting (not in my case looking at iTerm2 issues) (I mean everything is just unfilled / blank / default value)
- The background color on hover of the buttons is annoying (white text is pretty much unreadable)
- "Email an issue to this project", oh that's really cool!
- Also the +1 / -1 showing up when there isn't any isn't helping with the clutter
- Search just says "loading..." when I search "gitlab" for instance
- Also not sure why the search field clears itself when I click
- I see for gitlab, I get: https://gitlab.com/magyarb0201/gitlab-ce
- Anyway, using the correct URL: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce
- (Side note, I'm a rubyist, and I want to understand the Gitlab code for instance)
- Every click on a directory / file takes a bit to load up
- Why do I have a red delete button on gitlab's project
😄 (I guess I could submit a PR deleting a file, doesn't seem common though) - The syntax higlighting doesn't have contrast high enough (especially for comments) IMHO
- Not sure why I need to expand to have the commit description
- "2.92 KB" of a ruby file, not sure if that's helpful
- I type "views", I get view specs (file name) while I expect to match the directory name
- Source code looks neat though
- "loading commit data" -> why is this not cached?
- No sure why "Releases" has only one release, but might be how it's supposed to be: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/releases
- In general most tooltip aren't useful or with duplicate information
- Wow: "Less than a minute response time", let's see
😄 - There isn't any feedback when I click on a sidebar link, e.g. I click on one then the other, an active state on the link and a turbolinks-like top loading bar would be useful
- That graph is quite impressive but also unreadable: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/network/master (can't see the commit messages for instance, can't horizontal scroll)
- Not sure why the light grey on white: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master/charts
- Even your repo has an empty view :) https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/path_locks (boards too actually but probably because I can't read it) (Service Deck too) (e.g. it's not just my test repo)
- There is a styling issue with your tables: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/26510
- (back to my test repo, I was not sure why the "Commit..." was a disabled button (e.g. there was no changes because I committed the previous ones))
- That's a lot of labels, not sure if they all need to be shown: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?label_name%5B%5D=Contribute+for+prize
- Not a fan of the red inline code thing
- And I got a random chrome "Want notifications?" popup (admittedly other sites like Google and Reddit do it too, but still annoying)
- Oh Snippets are Gists, okay, I guess I would call it Paste like pastebin
- For the emoji reactions, at least you could show the most popular ones first
- Not sure why such a prominent link to embed the snippets
- Showing who doesn't have 2FA, very useful if I need to get commit access
😄 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/project_members - I thought everyone agreed icons without texts is hard to parse? (e.g. top right navbar menu links)
- "Are you looking for things to do?", very funny
😄 https://gitlab.com/dashboard/todos?nav_source=navbar - Merging a PR counts as a TODO, hmmm okay, I thought it would be my curated list of personal TODOs, anyway, could be useful
- Your "subscribe" image doesn't load (on my profile)
- Small detail but there is a space between the "Settings" and "Log out", may be on purpose, but I expected the whole area to be clickable.
- Not sure why I would need my user ID when my name is unique
- "Don't display activity-related personal information on your profiles" -> not a default, not cool, not cool (hmmm, looked like it was about showing the private contributions activity but it wasn't, that option could be better named)
- Chat accounts but can't add any: https://gitlab.com/profile/chat_names
- That annoying left sidebar is going back to the top once a page is loaded so I lose my scroll position
Anyway, @sumenkovic you asked me, so here is my little review, sorry if a bit harsh but wanted to show my frustration, I really want Gitlab to succeed and there is a lot of cool stuff in the project. Like I said on HN, main issues are interface and performance.
Otherwise lot of great stuff, made me revisit Gitlab.
(and I'm not gonna split those in separate issues