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I think a big issue with the new design is the trust issue I/people have that stem from Reddit's other design efforts. Take the mobile website. It looks a lot n

by onli 9y ago

I think a big issue with the new design is the trust issue I/people have that stem from Reddit's other design efforts. Take the mobile website. It looks a lot nicer than the desktop site, but is completely unuseable on a lower end (but current) android device - because instead of showing content immediately it does some javascript client rendering and shows some loading screen, and that regularly takes 10-20 seconds on bigger comment threads. At the same time there is still i.reddit.com, an ugly mobile site seemingly from way back when sites started to make dedicated iPhone-targeting mobile variants, and that one is as fast as a site can be. Actually usable. On mobile, if you visit the reddit site, they push a "use the app"-banner in your face. Every goddamn time. When they redesigned the profiles recently there was a lot of pushback. I did not necessarily agree with that, I thought and think the new profile sites are fine in general. But what definitely was an issue was the performance. Again some javascript client rendering leading to loading indicators, even on the desktop. They improved loading times after that, but still. So one big point of the new design is not actually "how will it look", but whether they will get the functionality/UX right. HN does, without client side rendering and redesigns...

josteink 9y ago
> When they redesigned the profiles recently there was a lot of pushback. There was massive amounts of pushback. Until the moderators started deleting posts, almost half the posts in the beta-subreddit was complaining about them, asking them to be rolled back. But did they listen to their users? No. They actively censored and silenced people who were complaining. That tells us that this new "redesign" is not for the users. It's for someone else.
- trophycase 9y ago
  Enjoy this sleek new UI so we can embed video ads in between content!
  - flukus 9y ago
    And then they'll shut off the API to third party apps that actually make the site usable on mobile.
    - m_eiman 9y ago
      They've got a serious design issue on mobile. Compare the two screenshots below: https://twitter.com/m_eiman/status/913863382364770304 https://twitter.com/m_eiman/status/913863382364770304 Which one is using text that is somewhat on the small side, and which one is a vast, empty vacuum of useless whitespace? :P
- Rainymood 9y ago
  I still hate the profile redesign, thankfully you can go back to 'legacy' mode somewhere hidden in the options ... but I'm afraid they will take that out soon as well.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    RES has a toggle which will auto-redirect you away from any new-style profile page to the old user profile page for that user. I rely on it heavily for moderation, since the mod toolbox extension has a search function over a user's history, but it only works from the old-style profile page (or at least, that was the case when I first had to turn on the redirect).
    - mynameisvlad 9y ago
      There's (currently) a toggle under Beta preferences: > View user profiles on desktop using legacy mode (by enabling this, you will view all user profiles in legacy mode) Don't know how long it'll be there for, but it should save you a bit of time since there's no redirect that has to happen.
      - ubernostrum 9y ago
        I'm not using the redesign beta.
  - klmr 9y ago
    My big issue with the profile redesign is that the the individual items in your feed (?) aren’t links any more. You can’t Ctrl-click, right-click or scroll wheel-click them any more. There’s (as far as I can tell) no way of opening them in a new tab at all^1. Every click will take you away from the profile. Which is a shame: visually I like the redesign. But it’s unusable. I’m honestly a bit in awe at this level of active UX hostility. ^1 … unless you enable the option causing all items to be opened in a new window. Obviously that’s also not what I want.
    - zeveb 9y ago
- blauditore 9y ago
  Just because there are lots of complaints doesn't mean the majority doesn't like it. Usually, unhappy users are more likely to say something than happy ones. There has been a similar situation with Ubuntu and Unity: A vocal minority kept on complaining that Unity be a step back from gnome. Now that Ubuntu has dropped it, many users state to actually have liked Unity and are sad about that change.
  - Scarblac 9y ago
    And that in turn also doesn't mean that the majority preferred Unity, it's simply the same phenomenons again: people tend to dislike change, and only the people who dislike the change let themselves be heard.
  - amorphid 9y ago
    I hate the mobile Reddit site. It's slow to load, obtuse to navigate, and pushes the crappy mobile app on me. Before now, I had complained plenty, just not to Reddit.
    - ryanmerket 9y ago
      To be fair, the mobile site was the last thing shipped by the last administration and hasn’t had much love since.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Why i go to i.reddit.com if i do not have a mobile device with an app (preferably Redreader on Android) within reach.
    - xkjkls 9y ago
      Why not use the app? That seems like a better investment of their time to optimize anyways.
      - yellowapple 9y ago
        I personally do use an app, but not the official one (because Slide is better). Still, though, for platforms that might lack a good reddit app, a good mobile site is kind of important.
- prolikewhoa 9y ago
  The new profile overview is terrible. I always switch it back to legacy since I can't follow the new overview. There is no way to keep it permanent in the legacy site that I know of. Uneeded changes like this was how Digg failed.
- heiie9292 9y ago
  Yeah when you trot out “actively censored and silenced people who were complaining” you may want to consider whether they were a vocal minority or not. Especially if your measure is “posts on forum in question itself known to be games by bots and spammers for the lulz alone”
- jamoes 9y ago
  > They actively censored and silenced people who were complaining. Forget the issues with design. The active censorship by both Reddit admins and power-hungry moderators is the real issue that Reddit is facing. Reddit used to be a bastion of free-flowing ideas and discussion. Now it's a hive of groupthink and curated brand-friendly content. I still frequent Reddit because it has enough network-effect to still be worthwhile to me. But that can change on a dime, often triggered by something unrelated, like a UI re-design (e.g. like what happened Digg).
  - gashad 9y ago
    I'm surprised the article didn't call out what happened to Digg during their redesign and subsequent flood of users leaving for Reddit. I figured that's why Reddit thought it was worth the money of hiring 20 designers.
matuszeg 9y ago
I have exclusively been using i.reddit.com for at least 5 years now and it isnt pretty or anything but it loads fast and works. I use reddit to get to the content. The ui is just a tool to get me somewhere. I do not want a mobile app and the real mobile website takes forever to load and half the time im on reddit im just scrolling aimlessly anyway and the mobile website cannot handle it also its paginated and i want infinite scrolling. Speed of content on a link aggregator site will always be more important than appearance. I fear they will remove i.reddit.com in the future because it does not have ads. It also does not have their fake posts that are actually ads and mark promoted that
- Tijdreiziger 9y ago
  > Furthermore, we do not have plans to do away with the current site. We want to give you more choices for how you view Reddit (we are looking at you i.reddit.com). source: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/starting_today_more_people_will_have_access_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...
  - onli 9y ago
    That's nice, but they actually already broke that i.version of that site. Some posts (those with images hosted on reddit?) open the regular mobile version of the site, making it cumbersome to use. Does not feel like an officially sanctioned choice.
    - _-david-_ 9y ago
      They seem to have fixed it pretty recently (maybe last week?).
      - onli 9y ago
        That's great to know. I was indeed confused when writing that comment and not being able to reproduce when exactly. Nice :)
      - 9y ago
dorkwood 9y ago
What sort of future do companies like Reddit envision for the internet, exactly? One where I have an app on my phone for every website I visit?
- Scarblac 9y ago
  One where you only visit their website, and only through their app.
- sli 9y ago
  On the lighter side, a complete monopoly over your internet use. On the darker side, I dunno... technocracy?
- tootie 9y ago
  This is Apple's vision because Google owns the browser market. PWAs could replace at least half the apps people are using. Reddit absolutely doesn't need native apps but there are a bunch because their mobile experience is so bad.
- crysin 9y ago
  Personally, I prefer apps over websites almost always unless the app is just a dedicated browser window to the company's website. I feel like the mobile experience on almost all websites is absolutely terrible when compared to a dedicated mobile app offering. Unless companies start investing more money into making their websites feel as good and snappy as their apps do, I know I'll default to the app over the website, always.
  - Splines 9y ago
    I usually prefer apps too but it's only because apps have native controls that are first-class citizens in the UI - they don't float around and aren't as prone to being mis-clicked. Apps generally have better performance than the website too. Sites that have more static text with large text controls are fine in the browser, but that's usually the exception.
  - phn 9y ago
entropie 9y ago
> and that regularly takes 10-20 seconds on bigger comment threads. I thought that was because my old device and or reddit sync, its not. Actually, i can get around that delay when minimizing the window and maximizing again. Wierd.
dom96 9y ago
Indeed, the mobile site is one of the worst I have ever had the displeasure of using. The banner it shows is absolutely horrible. I often just want to open a couple of links for offline reading like when I'm about to board a plane and I have dismiss all these stupid banners.
JacobAldridge 9y ago
The reddit mobile site actually just stopped loading for me at all a few months ago; I assume it was a redesign at their end paired with an update I ignored at my end - I just get a blank screen. Since I minimise the number of apps I install, it basically removed reddit from my mobile browsing. Now you've gone and taught me i.reddit.com which still works! (Actually, thanks.)
domevent 9y ago
I stopped using Reddit a while ago when it became clear that they had a pretty adversarial relationship with their users. Their moderation is terrible, the community ranges from unpleasant and repetitive to downright toxic, the content is better found elsewhere, and the administration is incompetent and amoral at best. I’ve never once felt like I missed out on something by eschewing Reddit, and every time I check to see if it’s changed for the better it is markedly worse. Reddit, Imgur, Instagram, Facebook, are just bad places to be. There are a couple of good subreddits to read occasionally, like askhistorians, but you don’t need an account to read it. Actually participating gets old, fast.
- prolikewhoa 9y ago
  I'm trying to get off of it right now. It's my last online "addiction". I've been there since 2009 and watched most things change for the worst. The community got more toxic and it's clear there is corporate control over some subreddits.
- andybak 9y ago
  I have a feeling there's a story here. Was there something specific that tipped you over the edge. Reddit itself hasn't changed very much. It's always been a strange mixture of toxic sludge and strangely amazing communities. > the content is better found elsewhere I really haven't found this. Every other website is either bloated, editorialized, dumbed down or some mixture of all three. Reddit (and HN) seems to walk a tightrope that reminds me of the best parts of the old days of the internet.
EamonnMR 9y ago
Not to mention that on an unreliable mobile connection it's very poor for getting feedback to know if you need to refresh or not.
makecheck 9y ago
Reddit is the reason I wish I could include the “request desktop site” action as part of a bookmark, instead of manually requesting it every time. On the other hand, I know their annoyances have slowly reduced my interest in even spending time on their site, which seems like a win.
- akkat 9y ago
  imgur is another reason to want that feature.
  - choward 9y ago
    And yelp
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  I think Firefox for Android will remember the "request desktop site" preference, but it has been a while since I've used that feature.
dapf 9y ago
They have had the good sense of not taking away http://reddit.com/.compact http://reddit.com/.compact
- meddlepal 9y ago
  That's the only usable mobile Reddit IMO.
- eikenberry 9y ago
  That appears to be another way to the same interface as on i.reddit.com.
  - matuszeg 9y ago
    If you go to i.reddit.com and click one of the subreddit links it goes to reddit.com/r/whatever/.compact or whatever. So they appear to be the exact same site. Just different links
twelvechairs 9y ago
Thankfully there are also non-standard apps that are better (i use one called sync). I think its tough to run a social network today and not be tempted to milk your users for everything a la facebook. Reddit does a reasonable job imo (and is being rewarded with good communities building there) though you can see the app is a bit of a grab in that direction (otherwise theyd just make the mobile web experience better). Hopefully their trajectory will stay positive though as always people will move on if bad decisions are made (a la slashdot, kuro5hin, digg, etc)
- pnloyd 9y ago
  I think the fact that the Reddit management got to witness the rapid death of Digg and rapid influx of users resulting from it let them learn a valuable lesson at Diggs expense (at just how fast your users can destory you if you piss them off). One thing I wonder though is where Reddit users would go in the event of such a collapse. I'm not aware of an established site in this format that's available like Reddit was available when the Digg collapse happened.
  - whywhywhywhy 9y ago
    It's been a while now but wasn't Digg killed off by an overly flashy and slow JS heavy redesign. Maybe it's so long ago that few of the people in charge at Reddit even remember this is what made their site.
    - pnloyd 9y ago
      I think that it was actually them manipulating the voting algorithms and it just happened to coincide with a site redesign.
      - nugi 9y ago
        Which reddit has been doing the last few years.
_asummers 9y ago
> On mobile, if you visit the reddit site, they push a "use the app"-banner in your face. Every goddamn time. It's not at all obvious, but if you go into the settings menu on the top right, you can tell it to not ask you this anymore. It seems to store it in a cookie, so you shouldn't be prompted if you don't use incognito or similar when checking it.
- flamtap 9y ago
  That's a good tip. One would think the same should happen after clicking "no thanks" on the banner.
virtzzz 9y ago
One thing I noticed was there Hamburger menu in the top left hand corner. It gives me, a web developer, a chuckle to see the hamburger menu as an actual hamburger... But regular users will have no idea what to do with that icon. Just a small example of the redesign I took away from it. I think JS rendering can definitely be a major issue, too. Uber (I know Uber is bad, but m.uber.com is a great piece of engineering) and Netflix have taken big leaps in rendering performance, they'd be wise to take a page or two away from them.
- onli 9y ago
  I thought the hamburger menu was an april's joke. It would fit into a technical subredddit, but the others really would not get it.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Serious question: Why do you think m.uber.com is a great piece of engineering? I've tried it on 3 phones, with 3 different browsers, and I've never gotten it to work at all. I'm not saying that your experience is invalid or anything, just that my impression is the opposite of yours, and I'm wondering why.
- mercer 9y ago
  Slightly less chuckling: 1. the menu appears as the page loads, and then pops out of view. 2. just loading the crucial bits takes 7 seconds, and that's on an off day with a fancy fast internet connection in one of the richest countries in the world (Netherlands). I'm generally less negative than others about style changes, but i loathe how heavy the whole thing feels. The fact that it's not taking into account accessibility at all (so far) is also problematic. For 'old' reddit I used RES and often disliked how clunky it made everything. But its features were generally worth it. I do not see what benefits the redesign offers that is worth the 'heaviness' of the whole thing.
nugi 9y ago
Its so bad on mobile, I just treat reddit search results like spam. No, I dont want an account, an app, or to enable any scripting to see a text discussion.

by onli 9y ago

josteink 9y ago

> When they redesigned the profiles recently there was a lot of pushback. There was massive amounts of pushback. Until the moderators started deleting posts, almost half the posts in the beta-subreddit was complaining about them, asking them to be rolled back. But did they listen to their users? No. They actively censored and silenced people who were complaining. That tells us that this new "redesign" is not for the users. It's for someone else.

trophycase 9y ago
Enjoy this sleek new UI so we can embed video ads in between content!
- flukus 9y ago
  And then they'll shut off the API to third party apps that actually make the site usable on mobile.
  - m_eiman 9y ago
    They've got a serious design issue on mobile. Compare the two screenshots below: https://twitter.com/m_eiman/status/913863382364770304 https://twitter.com/m_eiman/status/913863382364770304 Which one is using text that is somewhat on the small side, and which one is a vast, empty vacuum of useless whitespace? :P
Rainymood 9y ago
I still hate the profile redesign, thankfully you can go back to 'legacy' mode somewhere hidden in the options ... but I'm afraid they will take that out soon as well.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  RES has a toggle which will auto-redirect you away from any new-style profile page to the old user profile page for that user. I rely on it heavily for moderation, since the mod toolbox extension has a search function over a user's history, but it only works from the old-style profile page (or at least, that was the case when I first had to turn on the redirect).
  - mynameisvlad 9y ago
    There's (currently) a toggle under Beta preferences: > View user profiles on desktop using legacy mode (by enabling this, you will view all user profiles in legacy mode) Don't know how long it'll be there for, but it should save you a bit of time since there's no redirect that has to happen.
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      I'm not using the redesign beta.
- klmr 9y ago
  My big issue with the profile redesign is that the the individual items in your feed (?) aren’t links any more. You can’t Ctrl-click, right-click or scroll wheel-click them any more. There’s (as far as I can tell) no way of opening them in a new tab at all^1. Every click will take you away from the profile. Which is a shame: visually I like the redesign. But it’s unusable. I’m honestly a bit in awe at this level of active UX hostility. ^1 … unless you enable the option causing all items to be opened in a new window. Obviously that’s also not what I want.
  - zeveb 9y ago
blauditore 9y ago
Just because there are lots of complaints doesn't mean the majority doesn't like it. Usually, unhappy users are more likely to say something than happy ones. There has been a similar situation with Ubuntu and Unity: A vocal minority kept on complaining that Unity be a step back from gnome. Now that Ubuntu has dropped it, many users state to actually have liked Unity and are sad about that change.
- Scarblac 9y ago
  And that in turn also doesn't mean that the majority preferred Unity, it's simply the same phenomenons again: people tend to dislike change, and only the people who dislike the change let themselves be heard.
- amorphid 9y ago
  I hate the mobile Reddit site. It's slow to load, obtuse to navigate, and pushes the crappy mobile app on me. Before now, I had complained plenty, just not to Reddit.
  - ryanmerket 9y ago
    To be fair, the mobile site was the last thing shipped by the last administration and hasn’t had much love since.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Why i go to i.reddit.com if i do not have a mobile device with an app (preferably Redreader on Android) within reach.
  - xkjkls 9y ago
    Why not use the app? That seems like a better investment of their time to optimize anyways.
    - yellowapple 9y ago
      I personally do use an app, but not the official one (because Slide is better). Still, though, for platforms that might lack a good reddit app, a good mobile site is kind of important.
prolikewhoa 9y ago
The new profile overview is terrible. I always switch it back to legacy since I can't follow the new overview. There is no way to keep it permanent in the legacy site that I know of. Uneeded changes like this was how Digg failed.
heiie9292 9y ago
Yeah when you trot out “actively censored and silenced people who were complaining” you may want to consider whether they were a vocal minority or not. Especially if your measure is “posts on forum in question itself known to be games by bots and spammers for the lulz alone”
jamoes 9y ago
> They actively censored and silenced people who were complaining. Forget the issues with design. The active censorship by both Reddit admins and power-hungry moderators is the real issue that Reddit is facing. Reddit used to be a bastion of free-flowing ideas and discussion. Now it's a hive of groupthink and curated brand-friendly content. I still frequent Reddit because it has enough network-effect to still be worthwhile to me. But that can change on a dime, often triggered by something unrelated, like a UI re-design (e.g. like what happened Digg).
- gashad 9y ago
  I'm surprised the article didn't call out what happened to Digg during their redesign and subsequent flood of users leaving for Reddit. I figured that's why Reddit thought it was worth the money of hiring 20 designers.

matuszeg 9y ago

I have exclusively been using i.reddit.com for at least 5 years now and it isnt pretty or anything but it loads fast and works. I use reddit to get to the content. The ui is just a tool to get me somewhere. I do not want a mobile app and the real mobile website takes forever to load and half the time im on reddit im just scrolling aimlessly anyway and the mobile website cannot handle it also its paginated and i want infinite scrolling. Speed of content on a link aggregator site will always be more important than appearance. I fear they will remove i.reddit.com in the future because it does not have ads. It also does not have their fake posts that are actually ads and mark promoted that

Tijdreiziger 9y ago
> Furthermore, we do not have plans to do away with the current site. We want to give you more choices for how you view Reddit (we are looking at you i.reddit.com). source: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/starting_today_more_people_will_have_access_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...
- onli 9y ago
  That's nice, but they actually already broke that i.version of that site. Some posts (those with images hosted on reddit?) open the regular mobile version of the site, making it cumbersome to use. Does not feel like an officially sanctioned choice.
  - _-david-_ 9y ago
    They seem to have fixed it pretty recently (maybe last week?).
    - onli 9y ago
      That's great to know. I was indeed confused when writing that comment and not being able to reproduce when exactly. Nice :)
    - 9y ago

dorkwood 9y ago

What sort of future do companies like Reddit envision for the internet, exactly? One where I have an app on my phone for every website I visit?

Scarblac 9y ago
One where you only visit their website, and only through their app.
sli 9y ago
On the lighter side, a complete monopoly over your internet use. On the darker side, I dunno... technocracy?
tootie 9y ago
This is Apple's vision because Google owns the browser market. PWAs could replace at least half the apps people are using. Reddit absolutely doesn't need native apps but there are a bunch because their mobile experience is so bad.
crysin 9y ago
Personally, I prefer apps over websites almost always unless the app is just a dedicated browser window to the company's website. I feel like the mobile experience on almost all websites is absolutely terrible when compared to a dedicated mobile app offering. Unless companies start investing more money into making their websites feel as good and snappy as their apps do, I know I'll default to the app over the website, always.
- Splines 9y ago
  I usually prefer apps too but it's only because apps have native controls that are first-class citizens in the UI - they don't float around and aren't as prone to being mis-clicked. Apps generally have better performance than the website too. Sites that have more static text with large text controls are fine in the browser, but that's usually the exception.
- phn 9y ago

entropie 9y ago

> and that regularly takes 10-20 seconds on bigger comment threads. I thought that was because my old device and or reddit sync, its not. Actually, i can get around that delay when minimizing the window and maximizing again. Wierd.

dom96 9y ago

Indeed, the mobile site is one of the worst I have ever had the displeasure of using. The banner it shows is absolutely horrible. I often just want to open a couple of links for offline reading like when I'm about to board a plane and I have dismiss all these stupid banners.

JacobAldridge 9y ago

The reddit mobile site actually just stopped loading for me at all a few months ago; I assume it was a redesign at their end paired with an update I ignored at my end - I just get a blank screen. Since I minimise the number of apps I install, it basically removed reddit from my mobile browsing. Now you've gone and taught me i.reddit.com which still works! (Actually, thanks.)

domevent 9y ago

I stopped using Reddit a while ago when it became clear that they had a pretty adversarial relationship with their users. Their moderation is terrible, the community ranges from unpleasant and repetitive to downright toxic, the content is better found elsewhere, and the administration is incompetent and amoral at best. I’ve never once felt like I missed out on something by eschewing Reddit, and every time I check to see if it’s changed for the better it is markedly worse. Reddit, Imgur, Instagram, Facebook, are just bad places to be. There are a couple of good subreddits to read occasionally, like askhistorians, but you don’t need an account to read it. Actually participating gets old, fast.

prolikewhoa 9y ago
I'm trying to get off of it right now. It's my last online "addiction". I've been there since 2009 and watched most things change for the worst. The community got more toxic and it's clear there is corporate control over some subreddits.
andybak 9y ago
I have a feeling there's a story here. Was there something specific that tipped you over the edge. Reddit itself hasn't changed very much. It's always been a strange mixture of toxic sludge and strangely amazing communities. > the content is better found elsewhere I really haven't found this. Every other website is either bloated, editorialized, dumbed down or some mixture of all three. Reddit (and HN) seems to walk a tightrope that reminds me of the best parts of the old days of the internet.

EamonnMR 9y ago

Not to mention that on an unreliable mobile connection it's very poor for getting feedback to know if you need to refresh or not.

makecheck 9y ago

Reddit is the reason I wish I could include the “request desktop site” action as part of a bookmark, instead of manually requesting it every time. On the other hand, I know their annoyances have slowly reduced my interest in even spending time on their site, which seems like a win.

akkat 9y ago
imgur is another reason to want that feature.
- choward 9y ago
  And yelp
JoshMnem 9y ago
I think Firefox for Android will remember the "request desktop site" preference, but it has been a while since I've used that feature.

dapf 9y ago

They have had the good sense of not taking away http://reddit.com/.compact http://reddit.com/.compact

meddlepal 9y ago
That's the only usable mobile Reddit IMO.
eikenberry 9y ago
That appears to be another way to the same interface as on i.reddit.com.
- matuszeg 9y ago
  If you go to i.reddit.com and click one of the subreddit links it goes to reddit.com/r/whatever/.compact or whatever. So they appear to be the exact same site. Just different links

twelvechairs 9y ago

Thankfully there are also non-standard apps that are better (i use one called sync). I think its tough to run a social network today and not be tempted to milk your users for everything a la facebook. Reddit does a reasonable job imo (and is being rewarded with good communities building there) though you can see the app is a bit of a grab in that direction (otherwise theyd just make the mobile web experience better). Hopefully their trajectory will stay positive though as always people will move on if bad decisions are made (a la slashdot, kuro5hin, digg, etc)

pnloyd 9y ago
I think the fact that the Reddit management got to witness the rapid death of Digg and rapid influx of users resulting from it let them learn a valuable lesson at Diggs expense (at just how fast your users can destory you if you piss them off). One thing I wonder though is where Reddit users would go in the event of such a collapse. I'm not aware of an established site in this format that's available like Reddit was available when the Digg collapse happened.
- whywhywhywhy 9y ago
  It's been a while now but wasn't Digg killed off by an overly flashy and slow JS heavy redesign. Maybe it's so long ago that few of the people in charge at Reddit even remember this is what made their site.
  - pnloyd 9y ago
    I think that it was actually them manipulating the voting algorithms and it just happened to coincide with a site redesign.
    - nugi 9y ago
      Which reddit has been doing the last few years.

_asummers 9y ago

> On mobile, if you visit the reddit site, they push a "use the app"-banner in your face. Every goddamn time. It's not at all obvious, but if you go into the settings menu on the top right, you can tell it to not ask you this anymore. It seems to store it in a cookie, so you shouldn't be prompted if you don't use incognito or similar when checking it.

flamtap 9y ago
That's a good tip. One would think the same should happen after clicking "no thanks" on the banner.

virtzzz 9y ago

One thing I noticed was there Hamburger menu in the top left hand corner. It gives me, a web developer, a chuckle to see the hamburger menu as an actual hamburger... But regular users will have no idea what to do with that icon. Just a small example of the redesign I took away from it. I think JS rendering can definitely be a major issue, too. Uber (I know Uber is bad, but m.uber.com is a great piece of engineering) and Netflix have taken big leaps in rendering performance, they'd be wise to take a page or two away from them.

onli 9y ago
I thought the hamburger menu was an april's joke. It would fit into a technical subredddit, but the others really would not get it.
CaptSpify 9y ago
Serious question: Why do you think m.uber.com is a great piece of engineering? I've tried it on 3 phones, with 3 different browsers, and I've never gotten it to work at all. I'm not saying that your experience is invalid or anything, just that my impression is the opposite of yours, and I'm wondering why.
mercer 9y ago
Slightly less chuckling: 1. the menu appears as the page loads, and then pops out of view. 2. just loading the crucial bits takes 7 seconds, and that's on an off day with a fancy fast internet connection in one of the richest countries in the world (Netherlands). I'm generally less negative than others about style changes, but i loathe how heavy the whole thing feels. The fact that it's not taking into account accessibility at all (so far) is also problematic. For 'old' reddit I used RES and often disliked how clunky it made everything. But its features were generally worth it. I do not see what benefits the redesign offers that is worth the 'heaviness' of the whole thing.

nugi 9y ago

Its so bad on mobile, I just treat reddit search results like spam. No, I dont want an account, an app, or to enable any scripting to see a text discussion.