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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.

  1. Your template has a typo: "categorised" -> "categorized"
  2. I load the main page: 5 seconds (as a logged in user)
  3. "New project": that's the Jira/PivotalTracker/Trello terminology, I expected a "New repository"
  4. No sure why there is "project name" and "project slug"
  5. I try to create a repo named "files" -> "Path files is a reserved name" (I settle for data...)
  6. In general there is lot of IMHO useless texts everywhere, I'm welcomed to my new repository with:
    1. "You won't be able to pull or push project code via SSH until you add an SSH key to your profile"
    2. "The Auto DevOps pipeline has been enabled and will be used if no alternative CI configuration file is found. More information"
    3. "Project successfully created"
    4. "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."
    5. Again more texts, I'm going to stop pasting all of them.
  7. Admittedly adding an SSH key is better than on Github.
  8. Where is the ssh URL? Got to reload the page to have it appear (ok, there was a "clone" button too)
  9. "Auto DevOps enabled", what's that? Why would I want it? I don't want my code running on random servers by default
  10. Lot of whitespace for no reason (in commit view for instance)
  11. Noticeable lag when clicking on emoji/reaction picker
  12. https://gitlab.com/help/user/project/quick_actions, sounds cool (why is there too random emoji in first, sounds like a Discord bot)
  13. 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)
  14. 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
  15. Not sure why I would want to download as another format than ZIP
  16. Disabled Auto DevOps too late, still tried to execute my code... not cool
  17. 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)
  18. Lots of links leading to nothing, maybe enabling those things (e.g. Releases, Board, Label, Milestone, etc.)
  19. 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)
  20. 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
  21. Creating a new PR should show changed by default, this way I can review one last time before submitting
  22. Settings could be simplified too, e.g. having the most used/useful settings first instead of categories / sub-categories / expand
  23. Contrast should be used to separate block of content (e.g. the idea behind material design)
  24. No need to show "[icon] 0" everywhere
  25. Top Menu / navbar:
    1. projects should show my projects / projects I participate in (or just anything at least) instead of an empty list
    2. 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)
    3. Not sure why I would want to use Snippets
    4. Again lot of options / menu that lead to empty lists
  26. Search is slow (that's an issue in almost every project)
  27. I search for iTerm, I get random projects, not the correct one
  28. I'm in a project, search should indicate that I'm searching within a project
  29. I got the correct iTerm2 project by going to Milestones :) https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues
  30. Placeholder for images that are loading should be better than just a white box with a shadow
  31. Loading closed/all issues is very slow
  32. 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)
  33. The background color on hover of the buttons is annoying (white text is pretty much unreadable)
  34. "Email an issue to this project", oh that's really cool!
  35. Also the +1 / -1 showing up when there isn't any isn't helping with the clutter
  36. Search just says "loading..." when I search "gitlab" for instance
  37. Also not sure why the search field clears itself when I click
  38. I see for gitlab, I get: https://gitlab.com/magyarb0201/gitlab-ce
  39. Anyway, using the correct URL: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce
  40. (Side note, I'm a rubyist, and I want to understand the Gitlab code for instance)
  41. Every click on a directory / file takes a bit to load up
  42. 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)
  43. The syntax higlighting doesn't have contrast high enough (especially for comments) IMHO
  44. Not sure why I need to expand to have the commit description
  45. "2.92 KB" of a ruby file, not sure if that's helpful
  46. I type "views", I get view specs (file name) while I expect to match the directory name
  47. Source code looks neat though
  48. "loading commit data" -> why is this not cached?
  49. 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
  50. In general most tooltip aren't useful or with duplicate information
  51. Wow: "Less than a minute response time", let's see 😄
  52. 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
  53. 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)
  54. Not sure why the light grey on white: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master/charts
  55. 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)
  56. There is a styling issue with your tables: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/26510
  57. (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))
  58. 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
  59. Not a fan of the red inline code thing
  60. And I got a random chrome "Want notifications?" popup (admittedly other sites like Google and Reddit do it too, but still annoying)
  61. Oh Snippets are Gists, okay, I guess I would call it Paste like pastebin
  62. For the emoji reactions, at least you could show the most popular ones first
  63. Not sure why such a prominent link to embed the snippets
  64. Showing who doesn't have 2FA, very useful if I need to get commit access 😄 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/project_members
  65. I thought everyone agreed icons without texts is hard to parse? (e.g. top right navbar menu links)
  66. "Are you looking for things to do?", very funny 😄 https://gitlab.com/dashboard/todos?nav_source=navbar
  67. Merging a PR counts as a TODO, hmmm okay, I thought it would be my curated list of personal TODOs, anyway, could be useful
  68. Your "subscribe" image doesn't load (on my profile)
  69. 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.
  70. Not sure why I would need my user ID when my name is unique
  71. "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)
  72. Chat accounts but can't add any: https://gitlab.com/profile/chat_names
  73. 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 😄 )

Edited by Pedro Moreira da Silva