GitHub is "Pausing Command Palette Deprecation"
Posted by Planet9_@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 35 comments
Thanks to everyone's feedback GitHub is now pausing the command palette deprecation!
Update: Pausing Command Palette Deprecation We’re pausing the planned deprecation of Command Palette. Your feedback highlighted how integral this feature is to many developers’ workflows. And the specific examples you shared helped us better understand its value beyond what our usage metrics captured. While we continue exploring improvements to navigation and evaluating our overall approach, the Command Palette will remain available. We appreciate everyone who took the time to share their perspectives. Your input was instrumental in our decision to step back and reassess our plans.
TadpoleNo1549@reddit
good reminder that real user feedback still matters more than just metrics, command palette is one of those things you don’t realize how essential it is until it’s gone, also shows how important workflow tooling is, same reason platforms like runable focus so much on not breaking how people actually work
shevy-java@reddit
I actually never heard of that palette thingy to begin with. Was it important?
Actually, I'd like for github to improve the wikis. The issue discussions are great, but the wiki could really need more UI improvements. Right now they are almost as bare as the old phpwiki. That's not necessarily bad, but phpwiki is quite ugly compared to e. g. mediawiki. I am not saying github wiki must become as good as mediawiki, but right now they are soooo lackluster that they really could need some more UI improvements. I've actually said this first perhaps 3 years ago already and it seems nobody among the github team seems to really want to improve the wiki, which is unfortunate, because Google search sucks nowadays, so more people using and improving the corresponding wiki sites in their github projects, would REALLY be helpful. Kind of like amplifying the use case of documentation - that would be quite important.
wildjokers@reddit
The first improvement will be to let me extend the edit box to the very bottom and the sides of the browser. I hate the force me to edit in a very small box and it the box can only be expanded downward a little bit.
Then the next thing they should do is not to force me to read wiki content in a narrow div that doesn't resize when the browser is made wider.
wildjokers@reddit
Can't use it if I have never heard of it.
Worth_Trust_3825@reddit
Why would anyone want to spend more time on github than necessary?
Kjufka@reddit
...the fuck is a github command palette?
Planet9_@reddit (OP)
An amazing feature that has been locked up behind a Feature Preview flag for too long. GitHub Command Palette Documentation
wrosecrans@reddit
Ah, at long last, a way to do stuff related to my git repositories... by typing in commands. I love when tech stuff goes full circle and the convenient GUI site for the git command line tools without needing to type text commands, adds a convenient way to run commands.
syklemil@reddit
I think I have (or had?) an extension to disable the bit where Github hijacks
/so it doesn't open the browser's search and instead forces me to use^F.I think for those of us who've used something like pentadactyl/vimium/tridactyl/etc the github command palette just makes some stuff work in unexpected ways.
shevy-java@reddit
Aha! I used to think this was a Google specific thingy. I noticed this only in Firefox.
kronik85@reddit
yeah, never heard of it. telling coworkers tomorrow. not that they care about efficiency.
Lermatroid@reddit
Great to see that they are listening to the community. The metrics sounded really skewed for [alot of reasons](https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/166528?sort=old#discussioncomment-13796055).
Jestar342@reddit
Surely they have measured the usage of those who have enabled the feature, and are not comparing its usage to the entire user base?
vincentofearth@reddit
Probably offered it to a certain number of users, and measured the number of those who activated and then number who kept using it actively.
It’s totally possible that it has “low usage”. I’ve never heard of it for example and I use GitHub 5-6 days a week. But just because something has low usage doesn’t mean it isn’t absolutely critical to a workflow. I don’t use ripgrep very much but I still consider it absolutely indispensible. Likewise, I can imagine someone who mostly interacts with github via git, gh, or editor plugins, but the few times they’re actually on the website a command palette is tough to live without.
Lermatroid@reddit
I would hope so, however even so, the % of people who are diving into the settings pane to toggle a feature flag is not really a proper audience to form usage metrics on. The post is the 14th most voted post on that disscussion board ever and 2nd in the past year w/ posts generally seeing \~ 100 votes at most, so obviously there was a disconnect between their metrics and the real world use if so many people are willing to go out of their way to make their voice heard on it.
Jestar342@reddit
Have they shared the metrics?
Lermatroid@reddit
No, but I've rarely seen a company share data for feature usage so not really expecting that of them.
Jestar342@reddit
Then what is the basis of your speculation that
Lermatroid@reddit
Because due to its very nature of being a random toggle in a sea of toggles, not alot of users are going to go to settings to find and toggle a specifc feature flag. Generally with metrics you want alot of data to form a clear picture. If the audience is small then you don't really have a clear picture of what factors could be externally driving usage and aren't able to form patterns.
Somepotato@reddit
I do have a good amount of appreciation for the GitHub devs. Despite being a megacorp at this point, they do seem to actually care about DX.
Lermatroid@reddit
Agreed, I think they offer a really great service and have been invaluable to open source and the software space.
audentis@reddit
I love Alot.
Lermatroid@reddit
F
Uristqwerty@reddit
Telemetry only answers questions you know to ask in the first place.
Entire use-cases may be invisible because either you don't have the right data, or because you aren't looking at it from an angle where it's easy to see. Anecdotes from users are far more important, because they give you vision into the unknown unknowns you'd never know about otherwise.
To those who have become complacent, relying purely on the numbers, I hope this is a reminder to diversify your data sources before using statistics to justify removing functionality.
QuickQuirk@reddit
Now that I've been striesanded with this, I'm finding it hard to even figure out how to enable it. That's how well github have buried this. They couldn't have made it worse if it was intentional.
QuickQuirk@reddit
Holy shit, the command pallette is *fucking amazing*.
game changer.
Chii@reddit
github:*hides feature* github: why is noone using this feature? Let's deprecate it
UpsetKoalaBear@reddit
Big companies keep managing to do this.
When Chrome removed JPEGXL, they hit it behind a feature flag and then claimed that there’s not enough interest in JPEGXL.
Why do none of the product people in these companies understand that a feature flag is not the best way to gauge public interest in a particular feature.
It’s a good way to test the feature and get feedback but is no way to get an idea of user adoption.
shevy-java@reddit
Google just doing more evil things. And then discarding it onto the google graveyard.
I kind of transitioned into the .avif format. For me it seemed the best trade-off. Many others use .webp. I heard that JPEGXL is even better (well you read a lot on the internets...) but at this point I wonder if JPEGXL has any chance for greatness. I already lazied onto avif so I'll likely just keep on using it; in my environment avif is better than gif, jpg and png. Webp probably may be better too but for some reason I went with avif.
In my experience so far github isn't that enthusiastic about users ideas or perhaps it needs a larger group of people asking for the same thing. I gave more specific ideas how to improve the github wiki, for instance, but no response from github and I think part of this is also because not enough people support similar idea(s). Momentum is important. I am just one person; not enough time to try to get up momentum.
loptr@reddit
That's a bit overdramatic, it's literally where every other opt-in Preview feature is and has been located for the past several years.
frymaster@reddit
today is the day I learned that github has opt-in preview features
loptr@reddit
They are very active in changelogs/blog entry/announcement from them because they constantly announce their features in various preview stages (Technical/Closed Preview, Public Preview and General Available when released.), and it's even in the right hand side of the user feed.
The Feature Preview right above Settings in the menu is worth checking in on every now and then. Bur reading github.blog once a week (they tend to release some new feature(s) or setting(s) daily) and githubnext.com occasionally prepares you for upcoming things as well since it's often talked about before entering preview phases.
vytah@reddit
And yet some other preview features have been enabled by default.
QuickQuirk@reddit
had no idea it was there. They've done a good job of notifying people that there are interesting new preview features.
Planet9_@reddit (OP)
Official Blog Post Update on the matter: "Update: Pausing Command Palette Deprecation"