Please Atlassian, please: revert to the old Atlaskit website. Please. You're hurting our business

#1

Hi,

I’ve been using the new atlassian.design website since it’s inception and it is a extremely horrible experience for advanced power users. I know design people like shiny things, but this is costing us real money. And it’s hurting the success of our product, and as such the success of our mutual customers.

Can you please at least reinstate the old atlaskit.atlassian.com website and prevent it from redirecting core packages to the new and highly unusable atlassian.design website?

There is nothing wrong with having two different websites for different target groups. Atlassian Ecosystem partners are just not your average in-house developer or some hobbyist trying some new design framework. We deserve better than this window dressing nightmare.

Thanks!

Remie

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#2

We’ve changed our way of using Atlaskit. If we can use other open source components that are visually equal - we will use them over Atlaskit. Would love to change that back but we’ve started to spend too much time digging in the source code in order to get answers.

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#3

For us it’s the same as @danielwester. Our internal policy is to only use atlaskit components if it is dead simple (read: no research required), can be used as-is (read: doesn’t require any customizations at all), and if we cannot find an alternative open-source equivalent.

The net effect has been that we reduced our atlaskit dependence down to a handful of components, and the rest is open source, where we spent a few mins extra styling the component to look the way we need. This has led to a much more stable experience, and has allowed us to ignore most of the drama and poor decisions related to atlaskit.

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#4

Hey @remie, Thanks for the feedback!

I’ve raised this with the relevant folks on the team, but before they jump in, would you be able to share the specific pain points you are experiencing with the new website?

highly unusable atlassian.design website

Are there not enough examples? Is there information missing or harder to find than it used to be?

These details would really help us understand what’s missing and how we can best help.

Cheers,
Daniel

1 Like
#5

Hi @DanielDelCore,

Although I understand your question, I think the discussion should be on a meta level, not specific examples.

The problem is that the atlassian design team is trying to cater to two very distinct groups: the greater (atlassian) developer community (AKA the rest of the world) and a very small group of highly dedicated power users that actually try to enhance the atlassian product suite by offering the most seamless user experience possible.

Ithink the discussion should first be to see if we can agree that these are different groups. If that’s the case, and we agree that there should be a separate resource for marketplace partners, then we can discuss the requirements in a separate thread.

Cheers,

Remie

1 Like
#6

Also, and I cannot stress this enough: can you please make sure to involve the marketplace partners at the most initial stage possible next time you decide to overhaul one of our primary resources?

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#7

There are fewer examples on the new website, some components disappeared, Codesandbox link was removed.

Please have a look at this website, it’s a bit ugly, and poor from designer perspective, but software engineers will actually find it useful: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-devops/components

ps. Shameless plug: either publishing atlassian-frontend source maps, or sharing them with selected vendors under NDA would be also helpful for learning purposes. I have raised this question a while ago, but I did not get satisfactionary answer: Access to atlassian-frontend source maps. Maybe you can help? :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#8

I agree with Remie - please bring back the previous experience :expressionless:

We use AtlasKit extensively and the new interface is a notable downgrade - in terms of documentation and examples.

2 Likes
#9

Hi folks, James here, Head of Design System team.

Thanks for all the feedback re: the new website. At this moment in time we have no plans to revert to the old version. However, the good news is that we do have a number of internal tickets where we tracking this feedback and using that to help prioritise what we work on, so watch this space. We are committed to continually improving all of our offerings including our documentation site so please bear with us.

Thanks again for all your feedback.

James

#10

@fergo: thanks for the update!

Would it be possible to share access to those internal tickets with the Ecosystem? For instance, via a Trello board, like the Marketplace & Forge team are doing? That way we can give you direct feedback without duplicating the effort.

In addition, would it be possible to organise ways for the Ecosystem to provide feedback other than via this channel? For instance via one or more video calls? That would also make it easier for vendors to share their experiences.

Finally, I fully understand you’re not reverting, but would it be at least possible to stop the old AtlasKit website from linking to the new design website for certain components? It would make it easier for Power users and avoid context switching.

I’ve been a technical writer, I know how difficult it is. Especially when there are multiple levels of proficiency involved. But please be aware that at this point, as shared in this thread, Platinum, Gold and Silver Atlassian Marketplace Partners are moving away from AtlasKit and are sounding the alarm. That should account for something.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

5 Likes
#11

Hey @remie,

All of our tickets are internal I’m afraid and to make managing this easier we’d prefer not to make duplicate tickets in Trello etc.

I love your suggestion of more engagement with vendors with things like video calls. Let me chat to the team and give this more thought before committing to a specific solution.

Thanks for your candid feedback and for being a voice of the community. Yours and everyone else’s thoughts are extremely important to us.

Thanks again for being so open.

James