UI Pull Requests

Working as a contractor last year I found that I would be working with pull requests related to UI changes that sometimes were not the most helpful in quickly understanding where in the application these changes impacted.

Below is a format I learned while working on a monolith MVC application involving tens of developers that I have continued to use working on projects of any size:

1. If it is something new include a screenshot(s)
2. If it is something that has changed include before and after screenshots
3. If appropriate include an animated gif (component hover effect, onClick, application flow…)

Examples:

• https://github.com/nodejs/nodejs.org/pull/357
• https://github.com/nodejs/nodejs.org/pull/113

Why?⌗

For the author it takes minutes. For the reviewers, it can reduce the mental effort of having to start scanning through the code to figure out what part of the UI is involved.

It may eliminate the need for them to pull down the branch. If reviewers do want to pull down the branch they know where exactly in the application to examine - as due to the nature of UI work you may need to take a look rather than relying purely on tests and the code.