Is the jetbrains team going to listen to the majority of users?
Is jetbrains considering bringing back classic ui as a built-in option? I know that classic ui will stop being supported soon even with a plugin. I really hope this will not happen.
Check out the comments on the posts:
https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2024/07/08/the-new-ui-becomes-the-default-in-2024-2/
https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2024/10/bridging-the-gap-between-the-classic-and-new-uis/
https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2023/03/new-ui-enhancements-in-intellij-idea-2023-1/
https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/06/addressing-the-new-ui-comments/
https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/05/take-part-in-the-new-ui-preview-for-your-jetbrains-ide/
Most users don't like your new interface for many reasons. You wrote earlier that you will not remove the old interface until you are sure that most people like it. But you've already removed it and you're going to remove the plugin that brings back the well thought out classic interface.
Why couldn't there have been a public poll where users could have voted for what they liked better? Removing the classic interface is more like fascism and enforcement.
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Main goal of introducing a new UI was to make the IDE more beginner-friendly and update the codebase to be able to implement new features and fix bugs faster.
New UI is highly customizable. With a few clicks, you can make it look and feel almost identical to the classic one. To see it for yourself, refer to this guide: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/articles/SUPPORT-A-649/How-to-configure-the-new-UI-to-behave-more-like-classic-one
New UI is constantly evolving thanks to the feedback we get from users. So if you are unhappy about a particular feature or feel like something is missing that you loved in the old UI, PLEASE DO LET US KNOW: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/newIssue?project=IDEA. If the issue is not fixed already, we will make sure to address it in one of the future releases.
We are committed to maintaining the 'Classic UI' plugin until at least July 2025. It means that it will be tested and supported for all IDE versions we release until then.
@Arina Efremova, I don't know who you have prepared an answer for, but definitely not for me.
Can you do a poll among users to see which UI they prefer more? The problem is that you still haven't made very important changes and you are already planning to disable the old UI:
Over 1 year ago: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-43772/Allow-horizontal-bottom-position-of-tool-window-stripe
5 months ago: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-158776/NewUI-Make-tool-window-names-in-sidebars-vertical-to-save-space
2 years ago: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-59816/Allow-Top-right-Top-left-tool-window-placement
I don't understand why you can't leave users a choice.
Sometimes as developers, we have to admit when we are wrong. In this instance the new UI is “wrong”. We have already had 3 developers just switch to admittedly inferior products (QtCreator[macOS] and Visual Studio[windows]) because of the new UI. Essentially I just wasted my money on these subscriptions.
It was possible to change the UI to make it easier to update and fix bugs without changing the entire UI experience. The UI experience is _why_ we came over to CLion in the first place.
Beginner coders use VS Code. Once those users get to a point in their project size or coding career they realize VS Code just does not cut it anymore and they seek out a better IDE: Visual Studio, QtCreator, Xcode and CLion all pop up on that list. The usability of the user interface will get them to CLion. It wasn't even a competition for my engineers after watching me use CLion on conference calls. They all wanted CLion to use. Now they are asking for Visual Studio instead because we all agree that the new UI in CLion is so egregiously bad that almost anything is better.
Looking at this from the JetBrains side of things, you have now spent a lot of resources getting this new UI up and running to almost no-one's liking. You can bump my subscription price up a bit if you keep the classic UI going otherwise JetBrains is, in all likelihood, just going to lose 3 more customers. I'll go back to QtCreator at this point.
I effectively stopped updating CLion so I don't have to deal with a UI that doesn't make sense and breaks years of built-up muscle memory. If CLion were only 1 year old and still in development I could understand these changes.
Let me articulate what the issues are:
* Rail thin fonts
* Rail thin icons
* Removed critical color information from icons
* There is no window title bar any more? WTH? You understand you are going against 30 years of muscle memory on millions of users of operating systems? Why?
* Mashed together UI elements that don't need to be mashed together. (Window title anyone?)
* Now you put all the icons down the side, but when I also have the names of the tool window icons you render them horizontally, thus taking up any space that you thought you saved. Render those vertically, like in the classic UI.
The more I have to look at the new UI as opposed to the classic, I'm convinced you let a graphic designer do the UI work and not an actual HCI engineer with a degree in HCI (Human Computer Interaction). My cognitive load is increased because I have to “find” things that just “stuck out” in the classic UI. This modern tendency to just make all elements of the UI a monotone mess is the worst thing to happen to UIs in a long time. There was significant studies done all through out the 80's and 90's on fonts, spacing, use of color and I feel like the “New UI” just flushes all that hard work away and for what reason? Change for the sake of change? Change should be made if the change lowers the cognitive load on the user, not increases it. CLion classic was low friction. CLion with the new UI is high friction.
As of DEC 1, 2024, there are over 152,000 downloads of the “Classic UI” plugin. If that isn't telling I don't know what is.
Mike Jackson, Most likely your message will not be read by anyone from the jetbrains team. Arina Efremova decided that she answered my question and marked the thread as “answered”. Strange, I'm not the one who decides if my question has been answered or not.
I am on your side Windows8prew. ‘Answered’ status is applied to open posts automatically whenever there is a reply from a JB rep. It does not mean the post is forsaken along with your feedback.
Our developers are hoping to address the issues you mentioned, and some other highly voted ones, before sunsetting the Classic UI plugin. As a support engineer, I try my best to help get problems fixed faster so that people don't suffer the injustice for too long. I added a personal note for developers to IJPL-43772, IJPL-158776 and IJPL-59816 asking them to consider your and other people's recent feedback that I've managed to gather, review the issues and raise their priority.
Mike Jackson thanks for describing your use case.
It should help to disable the option to ‘Merge main menu with window title’ under File | Settings | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance, UI Options.
The issue with fonts can be related to current configuration or selected runtime, or it could be an already known bug for which there is a workaround. Can you attach a screenshot of where in the UI the font appears thin?
Other mentioned problems are covered by the following tickets, which you are welcome to upvote: