Focus on minimizing the friction to doing the most common tasks.
Ex. by far the most common thing I'm doing when going to a repo is looking up a file and doing something with it. So why isn't a file list the first thing which comes up when I open a repo?
Also, generally work on visual hierarchy more. GitHub does a great job of this and it makes the UI both efficient and pleasant. For example, you show the latest commit on a repo's homepage but it is very poorly differentiated from the content around it. This makes scanning the page much harder.
> Ex. by far the most common thing I'm doing when going to a repo is looking up a file and doing something with it. So why isn't a file list the first thing which comes up when I open a repo?
You can set this as default in your profile at /profile/preferences! Note that with GitLab 8.4 we now also have the quick-files finder which you can open from any page in a project by typing `t`[0].
We're working hard on improving the UI and UX and improving visual hierarchy and especially providing context to the current view is very high on our list. I hope the many changes in the last and upcoming releases will help, but any more specific feedback is very welcome.
In fact, GitLab 8.5, due the 22nd of this month, will heavily improve many views for mobile. This has been something we've been holding off on and we'll be slowing working more and more on it, as our UI matures.
GitLab 8.5 will have responsive views for most pages, but their functionality will be slightly limited compared to a full-browser, as we chose to hide certain elements (rather than a separate mobile view).
The mobile experience for github is not amazing either. It rearranges everything for no apparent reason and makes it harder or impossible to access what I want.
Ex. by far the most common thing I'm doing when going to a repo is looking up a file and doing something with it. So why isn't a file list the first thing which comes up when I open a repo?
Also, generally work on visual hierarchy more. GitHub does a great job of this and it makes the UI both efficient and pleasant. For example, you show the latest commit on a repo's homepage but it is very poorly differentiated from the content around it. This makes scanning the page much harder.