GitHub introduced a new notification system, which is better than the previous one, but it introduced it badly.

On August 6, 2012, a news article appeared on the Github blog dedicated to the introduction of a new notification system and stars. I intend to first retell the news in detail, and then briefly mention what I do not like in this news.

(In the retelling, it is appropriate to use all the illustrations from the original source - and there are eight of them, and, moreover, their size is significant. Therefore, I recommend mobile users to get to the free Wi-Fi point before reading , to pay for traffic to Internet lounges, And so on and so forth.)

Notification interface

The first and most noticeable novelty is to change the notification interface:
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First, the indicator of new notifications has undergone a cosmetic change. Previously, it was located to the right of the user’s name, was like a radio mast and contained a bright orange rectangle with a number of new notifications. Now it is located directly to the right of the Gietgab logo and looks like a button with a circle indicator in the center, usually gray, but acquiring a bluish-blue color when there are new notifications. The change is cosmetic, but the binary indicator (“whether or not”) has become less informative than the indicator with the number of notifications.

Secondly, the list of notifications is divided into groups by repositories. Previously, the notifications were located simply in reverse chronological order as they were received, that is, in a solid heap. The current order is more logical: it allows the reader not to switch his attention from the repository to the repository.

Stars

Another novelty is the emergence of a star system. To express your interest in the repository, it was previously accepted to add it to the watched (watched), and now all the repositories previously labeled so you go to the stars page :



You can mark a repository with a star (or remove a previously set star from it) using the “Star” button, which is located on the repository page on the place where the “Watch” button previously occupied ; The new “Watch” button, which controls the behavior of the new notification system, is slightly to the left:



Previously, all news (problems, forks, merge requests, wiki edits, commits, replicas in discussions) from all the observed repositories came to an area called dashboard feed (as I understood it, this is the main part of the GitHub.com main page shown to the logged in user ). These observable repositories turned into star-marked ones, but tagging with a star no longer leads to the arrival of news in the dashboard feed .

Notifications and Observations

Notifications now come from repositories that are on your list of watched repositories , which is updated with the above-mentioned new “Watch” button.

If you are watching some repository, you will receive notifications about all replicas in its discussions:

• Issues and comments on them.
  
• Pull requests and comments to them.
  
• Comments on commits.

Information about activities in monitored repositories also goes to the dashboard feed .

If you do not observe, you will receive notifications only about the discussions in which you participate:

• Mention your login (in the form of " @ login ").
  
• Assignments
  
• Remarks in those commits that you have written or accepted.
  
• Replicas in the discussions in which you participated.

Automatic observation

The list of observed repositories was automatically created and filled with those repositories to which you had direct access (push access). You can go through the list and click "Unwatch" in front of those repositories that are not interesting to watch. It also has a check mark on the right (set by default); until it is removed, each assignment of direct access rights (push access) to a certain repository will result in automatic addition of the same repository to your watch list:



Each time you automatically add an email to you, you will receive an email:

Distribution of notifications by topic

Replicas on the same topic (for example, comments on the same problem or to the same commit) will be grouped into one line, and not prolific:



They promise approximately the same behavior of the corresponding notification letters arriving in GMail or in modern mail programs.

Simplify Settings

Notification receipt settings are simplified to the limit. Now there are only four ticks:

Mail routing with notifications

It happens that one project is done for the soul, and the other for a salary. Now you can configure the address to which the notification will come from the repository, depending on the organization that owns the repository:



The type of postal notifications has also undergone a significant improvement .

What I did not like

I retold the news, and now, as promised, I’ll tell you what I didn’t like.

First and foremost, the system was implemented in a perverted way, disrupting Github’s previously configured user behavior.

As it was before? Notifications of activities in the observed repositories came to the dashboard feed , and notifications of those discussions in which you participate, came to the notification page. (Maybe, and not only about them - it depended on the notification settings, of course).

How did it become now? Notifications about activities in the observed repositories come to the dashboard feed , and notifications about those discussions in which you participate, come to the “Participating” section on the notification page.

So now everything is almost like before? No, because the list of observed repositories was forcibly cleared, removing its contents to the list of stars! And until you manually replenish the list of observations to the previous state (by entering the repository from the list of stars one by one and clicking the “Watch” button on their pages ) - until you see a single notification about them, unless also push access rights. Accordingly, the dashboard feed will be as hung up until then.

Secondly, the counting of stars is in fact much worse than the counting of observers. You understand, I hope that earlier the number of forks in the project meant the number of people who are not too lazy to try to work with its code, and the number of observers meant the number of people who are not too lazy to read news about its development day after day (in the mail or at least in dashboard feed , if notifications are not configured). Both of these numbers on the counters were very informative. But now the wonderful former observers counter was removed, and instead of it, the number of stars was placed next to the number of forks - but this is just the number of people who are not too lazy to click the Star button once, which only adds the repository to some list of “interesting” and does not affect anything else. Like the Google "+1", but only more lightly.

Thirdly, the notification settings have simplified not just to such an extent that any fool can use them, but even to such an extent that when using them you feel fooled. Previously, I could turn off sending messages to me from all those places where I left cues (after all, well, you never know where I left them? ... I won that commit, full of sombre humor, commented once), but turn it off separately: leave notifications about "@ Mentions", appointments, and more. Now it's over, so what?

The day before yesterday on Habrahabr I praised GitHub and said, in particular, that it was difficult for me to say something bad about GitHub (and I don’t hear anything bad about GitHub before others). However, as it turned out, the day before yesterday I should have refrained from making such speeches. The new change in the notification system that had taken place by that time, with all its obvious and joyful merits, already contained as many as three subtle and nasty shortcomings. GitHub pawed me, as they say, a pig.

It's a shame, gentlemen, how shameful it is! Do not forget, and now you can check what your lists of notifications will be like, whether you need to refill them from the stars page.