It is however one of the first thing you want to do, and an important part of using github.
Much more so, as far as I'm concerned, than the ratio of various languages within the repository whose level of uselessness is only overtaken by the number of tags in the repo.
Agree, the ability to clone the repository should be a highly available/easily discoverable action. It will generally be the next thing the user wants to do (perhaps after forking) on first visiting a repository...
Also, the idea that he needs to change the clone URL box so that it can autofocus is wrong. In fact, his current workflow for cloning is flawed:
> "my current workflow for cloning of double-click to select + cmd-c"
He just needs to click _once_ on the button to the right of the URL, which has a 'copy to clipboard' tooltip pop-up. He even showed this icon in his UI wireframe sketch.
Perhaps it isn't noticed much by people because developers may have flash turned off, which is the mechanism used by GitHub to access the clipboard?
To be honest, I didn't know about the feature for a long time, and used to do the same thing - select URL then command-C to copy it - myself. It was actually something I found out about from the GitHub blog post about the recent re-design!
> 99% of the time you'll just type `git clone gh:user/repo.git`, or copy from the URL bar.
No, that's what YOU do 99% of the time. Do you think that accurately reflects 99% of GitHub's users? I know it doesn't reflect what I do (and I am a developer).
The clone/interact ratio should be very small, and this design encourages that. What you want is people to clone some repos and interact with them a lot, not clone a bunch of repos and never look at them again.
Emphasize the cloning/interaction interface at the same ratio that you want people to use the respective features.
Many people are simply consumers, clone a repo and then all interaction with it is local via normal Git usage. This group may really be larger than any other group. It seems a mistake to make life harder for what might be the majority of users.
That said, I much preferred the refactored design and its visual simplicity. It makes the new Github design look cluttered by comparison.
oh well, I think it is common to clone quiet a few repositories per user. I know its one of the most frequent things I use github for at least. Copy url, git clone url to local.
