Next time you stop by Launchpad.net you’ll notice it has a new look.
Canonical’s designers have given Launchpad’s landing page a lithe new look that allows text to breathe and is more in-keeping with Canonical’s other websites.
It’s the first major redesign to the project hosting site since 2016, and (to save you a visit) this is what the new homepage looks like:
Launched in 2004, Launchpad serves as the linchpin in Ubuntu development. It’s the hub through which developers collaborate, commit code, plan releases, file bugs, add translations, and tackle other tasks related to thrashing out a new release.
But Launchpad’s popularity extends well beyond Canonical’s immediate orbit.
The service is also used by tens of thousands of other free, open-source projects to handle all or some of their own development and/or distribution, and is come-upon by scores of end-user looking to make use of personal package archives (PPAs).
Open-source development skews more towards Git-based services, with Gitlab and Github offering similar issue tracking and planning features, while software distribution has shifted from PPAs to distro-agnostic formats like snap and Flatpak.
But even so: Launchpad remains relevant, and this revamp gives the site a fresh, welcoming appeal to those discovering it for the first time.
For now, the redesign only affects the homepage, and is focused on modernising and updating the design (so no new features have been added). All of the features found on the previous iteration remain present, including my favourite feature: stats!
The look and feel of the rest of the code-focused site may be worked on in the future, according to Canonical’s Inês Almeida, a software engineer who works on Launchpad.
Finally, if you load up Launchpad’s new homepage in a browser and you notice any issues, quirks, or glitches you can, of course, open a bug against Launchpad.net on Launchpad.