Why do you want to ruin everything with new UI?

Answered

The existing UI is awesome, why are you messing with it and ruining your product?

I like the old textual panels, they are compact and descriptive, I can organize them to my liking. I don't like these large icons and I do not understand what do they mean. I need to click and guess to find a panel I want. I don't like the amount of space these panels take.

I don't like that hamburger popup menu. Who gave you idea that a smartphone style popup menu is a good idea for a desktop product?

I'm sure that third-party plugin developers won't be dedicating much effort to own icons with consistent design, so all these panels will look like a crap zoo of ugly icons of different shapes and sizes.

I've been using JetBrains products since 2004 (ReSharper) and 2009 (IDEA) and you're destroying everything.

Find another way to occupy yourself, put your hands off the existing UI, no one asked you to do it, so just don't do it. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

If you want it to look like VS Code, then I will rather cancel my subscription and switch to VS Code. At least they have a larger community for the same iconish UI.

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164 comments
Official comment

We value our customers’ feedback and continuously work to balance the introduction of new features and UI improvements with the habits and accustomization of our users. The world is changing, and to keep innovation and move forward, some changes have to be made. 

We respect and listen to our users and are very grateful for your constructive feedback and criticism. Actually, the feedback we got on the new UI greatly helped us make the new UI better – we fixed more than 2,000 bugs and made many improvements. 

We did not remove Classic UI in 2023.3.1 and we did not have plans to turn it off entirely in 2024.*. We will continue to evaluate the feedback on the new UI and decide how long we will continue to support the classic UI. You can find some more details in a dedicated blog post.

Thank you for your continued loyalty and your feedback 🙌

I believe a lot of users will unsubscribe if you get rid of the old UI. We pay for this product instead of using VS Code because we don't want to use VS Code, and are paying for that privilege. You should stop trying to emulate a free product and leave the UI alone - I realize with an excess budget and too many idle hands it can be hard to "do nothing", but sometimes doing nothing and bug fixing is the best course of action. Take the money you have as a company and realize it as profit, rather than using it to actively destroy your great UI like a lot of other companies have done in the visual dumbing down trend. Analyze your target audience here and ask.. "does it really make sense to sunset a UI that people are paying us to use?". If you become too much like VS Code, I'll simply use VS Code instead.

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This seems to be an unstoppable global trend, everything becomes simplified and minified, customizability and complexity disappear. Sad that IntelliJ no except from this. Something is handy and perfect, then has to be changed. I hope current UI keeps up as long as possible.

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The new UI is just ugly.

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Leaving this to support that the current UI is at its best, is COMPACT + easily accessible + easily customisable per liking and  there is really no need for new UI, the statement it comes up with: `removing visual obstacles and clutter`, thats absolutely not true, the clutter mentioned is the easy to reach configurable menus I and many devs use per day basis, so finding them elsewhere is like adding a pain point in daily workflow.

If u do wish to continue new UI support, then I can just say please dont discontinue the traditional one.

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Totally agree with "We pay for this product instead of using VS Code because we don't want to use VS Code, and are paying for that privilege." statement. The day old UI will see it's sunset will be the day I'll (and pretty much our whole company) return to Visual Studio (not the overrated notepad called VSCode, but to the full Visual Studio IDE). I know, this thread is for IntelliJ, but new UI is pulling it's tentacles to the whole Jetbrains IDE ecosystem

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I am using JetBrains IDEEs for the last 10 years, one of the key factors was the nice UI and how well all tools are connected with it. Moving to the new UI, it seems you are forcing me to use VS Code - and I don't really like it. This is probably the last year I am going to renew my personal license and as Architect - I am not going to advocate for renewing the license in my company (30 licenses less) 

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So will you support both UIs for the long term? Or will the new UI replace the old in the near future?

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@Jetbrains: It's fine if you experiment a bit. However, please note that the old UI is simply more convenient in terms of navigation. Real developers care about actual usage, not looks, so please continue to support the old UI if not even canceling the new UI and completely reworking it.

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Ekaterina Valeeva

For example, the fact that you have to expand a lot more before you can access everything that was previously in the toolbar at the top. The old UI simply requires fewer clicks there. With the new UI, you have to click a lot more, which is a disadvantage for developers who aren't very familiar with shortcuts, which would be much faster naturally. However, it seems that the majority still use the UI a lot by clicking. In my opinion, it would be better to have more buttons like in the old UI instead of expanding everything.

Also, the new UI has fewer labels and relies more on icons, which is better in part because it allows for a more compact design, but sometimes causes confusion. I would be a bit more careful there.

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I agree with leaving the old UI alone. But the real issue is when members from the JetBrains team, like Nadia, write that, "For now, we have no plans to eliminate the traditional UI". The problem is the "For now" part, which indicates that they plan to get rid of the traditional UI at some point and probably already have a date when they intend to make it final... quite similar to what Microsoft did when first introducing Windows 10.

It comes down to money. Yes, I said it. I really think the introduction of the new UI stems from this industry being a competitive market. Let's not forget that this is a business and JetBrains are trying to get more customers - make more money basically.

I don't think it comes from a place of JetBrains having analysed feedback from current customers who have said they want the UI to be changed because it's clear that we don't want it to be changed. At the very least, JetBrains have probably lost customers (lost money), former customers that jumped shipped and are now using VS Code or another tool. Also, as others have mentioned, they are trying to attract more customers (make more money) by mimicking VS Code. If and when they remove the traditional UI, I will discontinue my subscription.

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Hi Nadia thanks that's reassuring. One thing I don't like the look of is the lack of text next to icons (eg: "Notifications", "Database") etc. There should be an option to keep this as I don't want to memorize icons

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I tried the new UI and very strongly dislike it. All the feature seem to be gone (or most likely hidden away somewhere). I hope you guys are doing some UI studies to understand if people actually like the new UI.

Especially Bazel integration is not working well with the new UI. For example the target configuration (which you access from the top right) doesn't show most of the info in the old UI.

I agree that the new UI needs a reboot, where it is actually better than the old one.

 

 

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The world is changing, and to keep innovation and move forward, some changes have to be made.

No, no they really do not. There is literally nothing forcing you to make changes. “Innovation” is not some fundamental cosmic force. 90% of the time when someone says “innovation” in the context of UI, it actually means one of two things: “investors want increased engagement/profit” or “there's a new fad that we simply *must* follow”

To wit: what have you actually innovated? You've done nothing more than rip off VSCode. There is nothing new, unique, or innovative. It's the same bland, inscrutable, boring, actively hostile, and useless UI that most garbage-tier software uses nowadays. You've brought *nothing* new to the table.

Feedback we got greatly helped us make the new UI better - we have fixed more than 2,000 bugs

You mean you *created* more than 2,000 bugs for no good reason and spent unknowable amounts of money and developer time fixing the new bugs you've created instead of actually improving the software. This is not a point to be bragged about.

Having said that we realize that UI/UX changes are one of the most crucial for users

Have you ever considered that the old UI was perfectly fine and did not require any changes? Why can't the new UI be a non-bundled half-working optional plugin? Do you care more about new users who aren't giving you money yet, or old users who have been paying you for years?

including making the UI less cluttered and more clear

Do you know what's more clear than an unlabeled heiroglyph? Text. We've gone from a useful amount of information density to nothing at all. Programmers work with information. We have pages and pages of text open all the time. Why would someone who works exclusively with text be afraid of labeled buttons? Utter nonsense. “Clutter” is not some cardinal sin, nor is showing the user *any amount of information at all*. A dense UI is a *good thing* when your job is information. Programmers need easy and immediate access to information and common functions. Programmers do not need to waste their time hovering over inscrutable icons hoping a tooltip will show up. That is a huge waste of time.

Jetbrains IDEs were best in class. Period. Now we have the exact same slop that every other software house is pumping out. Why should I pay $200 a year for this software when I can get the same awful experience from VSCode for free? Seriously, give me one reason. I can even get ReSharper on VSCode. If there's no difference, why on earth should I pay you anything?

I'm a professional. I rely on these IDEs as a tool to do my job and feed my family. If you're going to make my job harder for no reason, there's really no point in continuing to pay you. I'd be far better off using Eclipse, or just emacs. I certainly won't be recommending Jetbrains products to anyone, much less convincing my boss to buy licenses for the whole office.

Honestly at this point Jetbrains is just the VSCode we have at home. Worse performance, worse UI, and very high cost. Hell, you're even forcing “AI" on users just like Microsoft. It's normal and expected for Microsoft to show this level of disdain and disrespect for users. I expected far, far better from Jetbrains.

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And now we continue evaluating your feedback to fix remaining issues and pain-points.

Here's my feedback: the new UI is a huge pain point for me, I want the old UI back as an option. I don't mind people who want to use the new UI, but don't be Apple who just removed the headphone jack for profit innovation. You'll be the loss innovators by alienating your loyal, paying customers.

Well, if loyal customers mean nothing to you, I guess I can learn the new UI directly from the people who made it - from VS code itself, at least I won't have to PAY THEM for the “privilege”.

It's kind of funny how you expect people to pay you to experience pain. I thought you were in a different kind of business. Oh well. It was a good program, thanks for everything, bye.

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I tried the new UI (for PyCharm Professional especially). Not everything is bad, but I noticed somewhat "different" behaviour of the menus. They do not feel "native" anymore (which is bad of course). It feels like kind of an Electron app (or worse). Do you use another GUI toolkit for the new UI? (I'm on Ubuntu and on WIndows).

One general comment: I do not like the pure Icon based toolbar; the textual one was better for fast recognizing the tools.

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All it ever takes is one individual, with a passion to hold on to something that was perfect, to incorporate a new company, make a new IDE, and attract a customer base from a company that abandoned them. I hope Jetbrains has thought this through that abandoning their loyal subscribers in the hope of offering a copycat tool (VSC clone) to a new generation of developers is worth it. A tool this new generation can already get for free that they must somehow now pay for by switching to a new company? Doesn't make sense to me.. but what do I know, I'm just one person.

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It's fine to create another UI if you feel the need to copy VS code for the script kiddies, but forcing it on your paying customers is quite a stunt. The day the “classic” UI is not supported anymore I will not support you anymore with the money of my company.

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I'm really torn. I honestly hate the new UI. I program mainly in Java and have been a personal license holder for the past 8 years I believe. If I'm going to have to learn a new tool it might as well be VS Code (instead of a paid copycat version). i had played around with VS Code to do some quarkus programming but it was so limited and crappy compared to Intellij. I guess i'll just write the last 8 years off as sunken costs and bite the bullet and learn how to navigate VS Code. terrible day for me. not sure what my company is going to do. we haven't had a requirement to move to new versions but a lot of people did when there was the intellij github token issue. hopefully, not all the devs will feel like i do.

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Agree wholeheartedly, I hate it and so does majority of experienced leads/seniors that I work with. 

The new UI is simplified to the point that it's tailored for newcomers and inexperienced users that cannot appreciate the old UI due to their inexperience ← do you see the irony ? 

Removing texts and replacing them with icons ? Hiding essential drop downs ?

We are building a software and making a living, not creating minecraft and roblox mods.

You are fixing something that was not broken in a manner that negatively affects your product. 

The plan is simple, make new ui default, provide old one as plugin until everybody just bites the bullet and eventually stops complaining when they will inevitably stop supporting the old UI.

 Classic corporate nonsense 101….

What you are trying to do is equivalent of adding bluetooth, RGB lighting and laser pointer to a HAMMER that is used for building houses. Nobody asked for it, nobody likes it.

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Sergey is absolutely right. The new UI is awful and no one asked for it. Especially not the long time users. 

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> Regarding the Java part - there are the following inspections configurable under IDE File | Settings | Editor | Inspections:...

 

Thank you ! I was not aware of that ! 

 

Overall it's a difference in how things feel to the person. My personal POV in this space is there's no reason why everyone should not be able to have what they want. As JB is the sole provider, I wanted to make you aware that this new UI is not what I want and maybe some insight as to why.  FFF - form follows function. A tool is only beautiful because it's beloved and it's only beloved because its useful. Working it the other way, trying to make it look like something sleek or cool is just driving down the street in the wrong direction. Sooner or later, reality is going make itself known.  

Regarding AI being online only, did you know  that Google is starting a pilot program to have their devs' machines DIS-connected from the internet while at work? Right now it's voluntary. Of course it's about security. 

Honestly I am happy to have all my eggs in one basket having JB be my sole provider for all things programming but if I can't get something potentially useful from JB,  I'll have to look elsewhere for that part of my tooling. 

The overall risk / benefit (not to say convenience) of having your dev machine being online will be different for each team and project , obviously. JB has to know that for some teams and people, it's absolutely no-go territory forever.

Just the way I've seen UIs go into devolution, I've seen security go into devolution too. The fact that companies are willing to put the technology and information which constitutes their own competitive advantage and corporate strategy online, and worse, into the hands of entities which are their direct competitors or known-to-be-unethical actors amazes me.

The idea that Microsoft is, for some reason,  not data mining 24 / 7 / 365 the internal correspondence of all the companies which use Office365 is a joke to me. The accumulated information they have access to is invaluable for everything from their finance department''s stock market investing to their own internal commercial strategy to which  companies they decide to buy / invest in and how they advise them. 

But that's OK because these same people happily put Alexa in their homes and  give China, via 23AndMe, their literal personal DNA and those of their families.  What could possibly go wrong ? 

So there's just a failure in reality testing, foresight and the concepts of adversarial analysis going on across all domains.

So,now you know more than you ever wanted to about how one of your customers sees things ! 

 

 

 

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The old UI is the product of the engineer, and the new UI is the product of the designer.

Only engineers know what engineers need.

I would recommend my colleagues to use it before, but after the new ui becomes the default, I will never do it again.

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“If you want it to look like VS Code, then I will rather cancel my subscription and switch to VS Code.”

- I fully support this opinion. If there is no support for the classic design in the new versions, I will cancel my subscription. 

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Andrey Dernov 

You may think in all honesty you are right or not. What you don't do is argue with a customer about how a customer feels.

At the minimum one would expect your post starts with “I'm sorry you feel that way” and then the rest. But no. Right from the beginning centered on how you guys feel rather than on us: “Sorry, but I think this is unfair to say that we do not care”. Poor guys… those evil customers that want to get satisfaction in exchange for their money. How dare they…

 That's impressive and tells me all I need to know about current state of things in JB. 

For the sake of completeness:

. None you said changes what I think(and that's self-evident) about the attitude in Nadia's post which is also technically “lying” if you just compare to the previous post on the subject from you guys, that I quoted.

. A given customer's satisfaction is not subject to judgement or opinions. Is a fact. May be relevant or not for your organization depending on the critical mass of how many are dissatisfied vs how many are happy + potentially new customers adopting the solution. That's up to you guys. I don't know the numbers. But anything else is irrelevant.  Words don't make up for outcome. If the final outcome is the one I'm satisfied with I'll stay if not I'll leave. Just common sense. 

. Innovation isn't the problem. I don't need to be schooled about how the world changes. I was the first one saying something had to be done to adapt to world's changes. I just think it's not what you did and that what you did doesn't work in my favor.

. “This thread becomes hard to follow and distill specific issues from comments. I would appreciate if anyone wanting to report an issue would start a separate thread or file an issue to YouTrack for us to address it.”. Got it: There's no point on writing here, never was.

I'm done here. Best regards.

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"Programmers need easy and immediate access to information and common functions. Programmers do not need to waste their time hovering over inscrutable icons hoping a tooltip will show up. That is a huge waste of time."

Couldn't agree more. Real coders value every second and suffer in pain any deviation of attention or unnecessary wait as insignificant as it may look to, let's say, less productive coders because they know the projected cost of focus loss and hate to waste time in an unproductive manner.

The menu deployment on hover and the preference of icons over text is one of those deviations. Whoever thought that's a good idea certainly isn't someone that values or even know about what some of us call productivity around here(and the kinds of reasons why we chose a JB IDE back in the day) and so will never understand our complains. It's a different league.

Now, when you add to it info like 2000 bugs “fixed on feedback” and “innovation” means look like VS-Code look and feel as measures of success, that's scary.

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More like this:

 

 

On hover, if you are lucky, something that may interest you happens

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Agreeing with people who blame new UI. Yes, I have seen people who use new UI and are fine with it. They are mostly young people with the background in VS Code. However I have not seen anyone from the old users of IDEA who liked the new UI. Literally no one. The only comment they have – «we tried it and it makes our life worse». Personally I failed to start using, but tried to start at least twice. I have more than 16 years of experience with Idea, and it gave me great productivity during these years, but with the new UI it feels just as you become handless, and this feeling is horrible. So please don’t do it default. As a side option for new comers – OK, but not as a default for everyone

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I see that JetBrains is moving towards a completely unnecessary minimalist trend. Even if the new UI works well and without errors, the distaste for this new interface will continue, and may even increase. I see on forums that programmers are organizing to migrate to other development platforms, stop renewing their licenses and encourage their companies to drop JetBrains products.
My suggestion is that you listen more to your users, really respect them and don't impose changes.

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