The option to undo mistakes with the click of a button is one that software engineers haven’t had before when making changes in Git, until today.
Axosoft, the project management software company, released their new developer tool GitKraken, in private beta, at Git Hub Universe in San Francisco last week.
“We have been working on our secret product GitKraken for over a year and we are now ready to unleash our repo,” CEO Axosoft Lawdan Shojaee said.
The GitKraken team looks to attract new users, creatives to developers, to the platform.
“I love Git because it’s super powerful, but it scares people and can break your stuff if you do it wrong,” Max Korp, lead product engineer said. “[That is why we are] making one of my favorite things easy to use and enjoyable.”
John Haley, another lead product engineer, said they are addressing manual problems that teams face when editing code, updating versions, dealing with multiple editors or reconciling drafts; the main focus is to increase team productivity and flow.
Another goal for the product is to “help bring in people who aren’t developers, but people who might need to interact with the code base, such as designers, to the platform, but might be afraid because [they] don’t want to break people’s changes,” Korp and Haley explained.
The GitKraken features include:
UNDO/REDO – We’re all used to this feature working in documents, why not in code? Developers won’t have to worry as much about screwing up and spending manual hours fixing code with this helpful feature.
“As you work in Git, we don’t want the user to be afraid that they will lose data-and if you screw up by accident, we got your back,” Haley said.
Cross Platform – the product can be used across Windows, Mac and Linux and the user interface remains constant.
Standalone – developers won’t need any additional dependencies to run the app, just install and you’re ready to go.
Modern UI – The GitKraken team revamped the command line into a beautiful aesthetically pleasing, organized and clear visualization of ones’ data and work at that moment. “The UI is really where it shines,” Korp said.
Enhanced Search – this feature helps developers cut down on wasted time finding code anywhere in a repository.
“It’s a powerful search engine with a full index of data. It takes fractions of a second to search through your versions-faster than anything on the market,” Haley said.
What was exciting to Haley about this project was that “we get to work with ground breaking stuff and bring a super helpful application to a wider market, making it more accessible to people who are less technical but still work with code.”
To try out the product, users can request access on the GitKraken website.
“What was once a developer’s tool, can now be open to the whole team,” Haley said.
Logo and Website Creation
Aside from the product, the design of GitKraken’s logo and website was a lengthy creative process for Axosoft’s rollout.
The website provides another insight to the dynamic and radical shift a user will experience when they enter GitKraken. The video used for the background is titled “Ink Drops in the Water.” Creative director Shane D. Rymer designed the video by having his team drop various color of dye into a fish tank filled with water. Rymer wanted to create this sense that one was underwater in the depths of the ocean where the kraken would hang out and bring users into the Git abyss.
In the Axosoft blog, Rymer said, “When people see this swirling underwater world on the Axosoft’s GitKraken.com page, they think we went deep sea diving to capture the footage. That was the intention: create an entire, abstract world–one where a kraken might hang out–to introduce our new Git client (that doesn’t suck).”
The varying stream of colors represent “a new way of understanding basic Git actions such as: push, pull, commit, and merge, with the evolution of hues through space and time,” Rymer said.
Updated
Since our original post, the company’s usage and adoption rate has skyrocketed by more than 300 percent in the last 30 days, according to Sara Breeding, marketing representative for GitKraken. Among Beta users, GitKraken fast speed has been one of the most talked about features. Jon Stole (@jonstodel) on Twitter said, “Really loving @GitKraken. It looks nice, but most importantly: It’s fast!” Prashant Deva (@pdeva) on Twitter said “ok @GitKraken is definitely the fastest git ui i have ever used!”
Read more about the design of GitKraken “Ink Drops in Water” here.
Read more about Axosoft and their #ItWasNeverADress campaign that has gone viral.
Read more about software advancement in Arizona
