I'm increasingly thinking that the biggest competitor we have isn't other forum software (who aren't innovating), but Github.<p>Our startup ( <a href="http://microco.sm/" rel="nofollow">http://microco.sm/</a> ) is working on improving communities, which most people read as vBulletin, phpBB, Discourse... but my view is simply that if you have a group of people together around some interest (topic, locality, project) that they want to communicate, share, transact at every level.<p>And that, the fragmented experience of going to Google Maps, Facebook Events or Eventbrite, Wikipedia, review sites, eBay, etc... just to bring the last 5% into a community... well that's frustrating and a poor user experience.<p>Instead the first 60-80% of the functionality elsewhere should just be in the tool. Where the community already is.<p>And we're starting with forums and going outward, in every direction (it feels). And here is github, starting with the code, and also heading outward, in every direction.<p>I've a great deal of love for Github (as a dev, how could I not)... so I wish them well. They're solving things from a dev/work perspective, and we're aiming at consumers/users/hobbies/interests... but still, I've no doubt that we've a lot to learn from them, and when we're up to speed perhaps we can teach them a thing or two.
I wonder about priorities when I read this. For example, how do I diff two commits via Github? There is a blog post describing this feature:<p><a href="https://github.com/blog/612-introducing-github-compare-view" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/blog/612-introducing-github-compare-view</a><p>However it seems the UI has changed, and the only way I could find to use it was to manually construct the URL.<p>I'd love for someone to show me some obvious UI I've missed. Diffing is really fundamental for a VCS. I'd much rather Github cleaned up the UI for existing features than added these little flourishes that I can't imagine even 1% of users use.
I am curious if anyone has any insight as to what GitHub's strategy is with this move?<p>It seems that they are steadily tracking towards a browser-based cloud IDE. GitHub also seems to be a popular choice for devs hosting their blogs. I wonder if they're hoping to be a more all-round app hosting service?
I'd love to know where these ideas come from. All the way from the top? Product? Developers with a 20% time window? They've always been innovative and despite size/growth/scale seem to be able to keep that up.
The downside of this seems to be that it discourages users from using the superior format TopoJSON by Mike Bostock, as it outputs in plain .json: <a href="https://github.com/mbostock/topojson" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mbostock/topojson</a>.
Since GitHub is starting to feel Emacs-like, why not go fully in this direction? Add a "dotfile" repository for everyone to manage their own client-side JavaScript extensions for Github that would be loaded by default. And then let people collaborate, share and create extensions and "configurations". Want a better map? Fork the official one and modify it. And then let others fork from you.
Hmm, neat. I've added all the bike sharing networks I can think of to a repo[1], and for all you NY bike sharing lovers, there you go[2].<p>I don't think I will update it to work in 'real time' because it would not make much sense, but it was fun to play with.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/eskerda/cb-geojson/blob/master/networks.geojson" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/eskerda/cb-geojson/blob/master/networks.g...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://github.com/eskerda/cb-geojson/blob/master/citibikenyc.geojson" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/eskerda/cb-geojson/blob/master/citibikeny...</a>
I wish they would just make HTML previews work instead of hardcoding specific use cases with 3d models and geodata.<p>Eg why can't github just let visitors preview this html file: <a href="https://gist.github.com/dergachev/5769111#file-index-html" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/dergachev/5769111#file-index-html</a><p>For now, I have to link bl.ocks.org, which is nice but far from perfect. And check out <a href="http://htmlpreview.github.io" rel="nofollow">http://htmlpreview.github.io</a><p>(I understand that there are security concerns, but I'm sure they can be addressed with an iframe or by clicking an external link)
Well they have a file system(git), now they add ways to interact with data, up until they create a fullblown operating system. Something that Google is already onto with ChromeOS.
Cool stuff - had not heard about the 3D rendering linked in the article either. These are not trivial features to implement or maintain and seem to have a somewhat narrow audience. GitHub has such an amazing team and the core functionality seems pretty complete. I wonder if the "ship code" ethic and loose management structure (both of which I think are great) will inevitably lead to a bloated, feature overloaded product eventually. This has happened so very often in the past to others. So far they have been pretty good at closing down unused features.
This is really cool! However, I would be remiss to not mention that I would love for Github to focus more on Git. I have been using git for about two years, but I am far, far, far from being a git ninja. I suspect that I am not alone based on what I see at stackoverflow with questions tagged "git."<p>What if they spent their time improving:
1. Github Pulls - Have you seen the hoops one needs to jump through to submit a single-commit pull request? One needs to be extra careful about the workflow.<p>2. Let me determine the Project/Repo language - How many repos do you have that are labeled Javascript when its really a Python, Ruby or something else Project? Not critical, but seems really silly that I have to wade into the src to determine something like base lang.<p>3. Make git, itself, more intuitive - Surely if they can add the crazy cool features they've added, making the management of git repos DEAD simple should be a priority. Look at the questions tagged with "git" on stackoverflow and see how many you could devine an answer from using github.<p>4. Git fast forward - Could github provide an way to see what is going to happen to a repo when issuing git commands? All these cool visualizations online and we have to experiment with git locally seems a bit odd.<p>Free idea; Gitfiddle. See what your crazy ass commands will do to your repo before you spend the next 4 hours figuring out why you didn't want to do that.<p>Ie. Find the merge base between your branch and master: ‘git merge-base master yourbranch’
Assuming you’ve already committed your changes, rebased your commit onto the merge base, then create a new branch:
git rebase –onto <basecommit> HEAD~1 HEAD
git checkout -b my-new-branch
Checkout your ruggedisation branch, and remove the commit you just rebased: ‘git reset –hard HEAD~1′
Merge your new branch back into ruggedisation: ‘git merge my-new-branch’
Checkout master (‘git checkout master’), merge your new branch in (‘git merge my-new-branch’), and check it works when merged, then remove the merge (‘git reset –hard HEAD~1′).
Push your new branch (‘git push origin my-new-branch’) and log a pull request.<p>the above from: <a href="http://steveko.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/10-things-i-hate-about-git/" rel="nofollow">http://steveko.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/10-things-i-hate-abo...</a>
Hmm, on Firefox 23.0a2 I just see a white box with nothing there. Usually this means an addon is interfering somehow. But I turned off AdBlock, Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, Flashblock and Greasemonkey, which is basically everything, and reloaded, and still nothing. Anyone else?<p>(Edit: All fixed, thanks Oompa!)
A little UI feedback if anybody from GitHub is listening:<p>When you click and hold to move the map, and you scroll the mouse all the way off the map, the map acts like you are continuing to hold the mouse button down, even if you let go of the mouse button. When you return the mouse to the map, it acts like the button is still pressed and the map sticks to the pointer...for which you have to click again to get out.<p>This is unexpected behavior, especially if you are trying to scroll through more than one screen with repetitive mouse drags. The map scrolling should maintain the same behavior of the mouse button hold even if you scroll off the map.
A terrific feature would be to have the same in gist, embeddable everywhere.<p>Want to show a place or some directions on your website/blog/... ?<p>Just create a gist with geojson format and embed it on your blog, as programming blogs embed code gist right now.<p>Congrats!
I look forward to the day when git is the defacto way to collaborate, and I'm so happy to see that GitHub is leading the way forward. This kind of stuff is great!
Wow. Speaking of Leaflet.js, modern web-technologies are powerful and elegant.<p>And GitHub is becoming a whole universe. What a wonderful service, idea, design, usability! I am really amused.