Improved GitHub tab blank-slate behavior

[smashwilson]

The current behavior of the GitHub tab when you have no repository or a repository with no GitHub remotes is really unhelpful: we either show a blank tab or a message saying "no remotes" that you can't do anything about until you go to the command line. We also don't have good support for the fairly common scenario where a user wants to push new branches to a different remote than the one they want to see pull requests from (say, when they've forked an open-source repository to contribute).

I'd like to redesign the GitHub tab's "empty" states to be more friendly, informative and actionable.

Prototypes

To access the prototypes I've used to create the screenshots in this feature request, check out the branch prototypes/aw/blank-slate, then:

• For the GitHub tab blank states: Open the GitHub package settings in the Settings view. Find the "Prototype scenario" setting and choose a value other than "none" to see the different mocks.
• For the dialog mocks: Run one of the following commands from the command palette. Focus the dialog and press esc to dismiss.
  • github:proto-clone-dialog-empty-search
  • github:proto-clone-dialog-search-results
  • github:proto-clone-dialog-github
  • github:proto-clone-dialog-nongithub
  • github:proto-create-dialog
  • github:proto-publish-dialog

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View rendered docs/feature-requests/005-blank-slate.md

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #2111 into master will not change coverage.
The diff coverage is n/a.

@@ Coverage Diff @@## master #2111 +/- ##
=======================================
Coverage 92.75% 92.75% =======================================
Files 219 219 Lines 12322 12322 Branches 1793 1793 =======================================
Hits 11429 11429 Misses 893 893

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[smashwilson]

Note to self: I should add an https/git protocol toggle to the clone and connect dialogs.

[smashwilson]

I think this is ready for more eyes 👀

[vanessayuenn]

Thank you for writing this up @smashwilson ✨! A lot of use cases are covered and is very thoroughly thought out. Since the main objective of this feature is to make it easier for users who are unfamiliar with git/GitHub workflow to get started, I think keeping any new UI and workflow simple would be crucial. I suggested some ways to further simplify the UI, as well as my thoughts on excluding the forking workflow on this iteration.

[smashwilson]

Thanks for the feedback, @vanessayuenn! As usual the UX is feeling worlds better after your comments 😁

[smashwilson]

I'm going to punt on the clone dialog enhancements, at least for now. It feels like searching for repos in Atom wouldn't be as much of a high-demand operation... pasting in a clone URL isn't that bad, for the additional complexity of the new dialog I was thinking about.

Calling this otherwise complete 🎉