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Mobile phones. Again. It's always mobile phones that ruin good websites these days. They optimise for swipe, scroll and tap. Look, like, emoji. They don't op

Mobile phones. Again. It's always mobile phones that ruin good websites these days. They optimise for swipe, scroll and tap. Look, like, emoji. They don't optimise for text. In fact they are increasingly hostile to it. The Tinderfication of online dating has been a depressing race to the bottom. The internet was never going to be as great as we thought it was. No other technology has been. Folks thought the telegraph would end wars and that TVs would have everyone soaking up a deep education. But that's not where the money was. But I felt it wouldn't be this shitty. At some point we're all going to look back on that moment when Jobs held up the first iPhone that could run an app and regret it.

Aoyagi 9y ago
And yet so few of the designers consider dark/black colour themes, which are not only more easier on the eyes, but also notably save the battery.
- rwnspace 9y ago
  Easier on the eyes surely, but I understood it that dark themes only save battery for OLED/AMOLED screens. For LCD/TN dark themes use slightly more. I am not an Electrical Engineer though.
  - Aoyagi 9y ago
    Well yes, that's what I meant. I keep forgetting there are still mobile devices with LCD screens...
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Which makes AMOLED still not old enough to enter the general consciousness of the designers. They're optimizing for the screens they (and everyone they know) are used to.
      - Aoyagi 9y ago
        Well, there are plenty of Android devices with OLED screens, but this is what truly got me >The iPhone X is the first iPhone to use an OLED display Shocking, actually.
        Sharlin 9y ago
        Up until very recently, OLED were great if you didn't care about color reproduction. My 2011 Nokia N9 had an OLED display. Then LCD made something of a comeback due to superior color fidelity. Currently OLEDs are getting good enough to perhaps finally replace LCDs for good, although there are some promising unorganic LED display technologies already around the corner...
      - skykooler 9y ago
        Looking at older screen technologies, CRTs also use less power for dark screens.
        Zak 9y ago
        I suspect not in a way that people care very much about compared to mobile device battery life.
- teddyfrozevelt 9y ago
  They're working on one. https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/comments/7p3iv9/where_is_dark_modenight_mode/dsf7ie4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/comments/7p3iv9/where_is_d...
- virmundi 9y ago
  Dark themes are worse for the eyes, https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-color-theme-is-better-for-the-eyes https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-c... Don't know about battery life. I guess if it's AMOLED, https://www.greenbot.com/article/2834583/how-much-power-does-a-black-interface-really-save-on-amoled-displays.html https://www.greenbot.com/article/2834583/how-much-power-does...
  - shostack 9y ago
    Maybe, but I wonder if that is true at night with the lights off. When I read in bed at night, I much prefer light on dark text. Combined with Android's night mode to tint things red, it is fantastic. In fact, I wish the Kindle Paperwhite would come out with an inverted mode already (although I think I read there were some challenges with doing so). It can be fairly straining on my eyes to have the sidelit screen bright enough to be legible while being as dim as possible to make reading with the lights off comfortable.
    - orky56 9y ago
      Majority of reading is done in a brighter setting so many factors contribute to using dark text in white background. In the case of reading in the dark or low light settings, using a Kindle Paperwhite gets complicated since you want to make the background darker while still maintaining sufficient contrast to read the text which is always in a dark font color. In the UX StackExchange post, it's stated that astigmatism is also a contributing factor to favor dark text on white background. I do believe that these night time settings should be toggled automatically for white text with dark background as well as accounting for blue wavelength reduction for screens with full colors.
      - Zak 9y ago
        I would like operating systems, browsers and websites to globally support a "night mode" where a dark background is used. Especially with the proliferation of mobile devices, people increasingly use technology in low-light environments. As it stands today, I have to add external stylesheets to websites to get this effect, and if I want to toggle them, I have to toggle each one manually. It's similar, but worse for Android apps because the app itself has to support themes. I find having a significant portion of the screen white when my eyes are relatively dark-adapted uncomfortable, even when the brightness is set fairly low. I find a dark background with light text very preferable under those conditions. I do not care if there is research suggesting I should not have this preference. From talking to others in person and online, I get the impression that my preference is very common. Android was supposed to get something resembling this, but the feature has been dropped or delayed.
fwsgonzo 9y ago
No, their i.reddit.com is the best variant and its extra light-weight probably for weaker devices.
- pantalaimon 9y ago
  Unfortunately creating posts is broken with that one, and for some features like editing posts you have to switch the interface. I still use it instead of the standard interface, it loads much faster especially on bad mobile connections.
MisterTea 9y ago
It's okay. You, like me, are starting to realize that our way of computing is becoming obsolete. How many kids are using keyboard and mouse vs touch screens? They grow up thinking "this is how you use a computer". To them the mouse/keyboard ruins the whole touch(mobile) experience. One day we'll be the old men yelling at internet clouds while sitting behind an old PC or some kind of open source terminal running an open source OS and weeping for the past.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  As long as they don't totally lock computing down with Trusted Platform Modules and walled gardens and touch-only input, as long as we can still write Turing-complete code, we'll be the old men and women still being much faster and better at traversing the Internet clouds than the regular population. We'll be the last guerillas in the long-lost War on General Purpose Computing.
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    TPM isn’t about locking down machines - they’re about enabling the user (who is always in control) to establish a trust chain for software on the machine - and to serve as a secure store for cryptographic secrets so they become inaccessible from the rest of the system. You can have lock-out without the TPM anyway - like the pre-Fingerprint reader iPhones.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      TPM technically isn't about locking users out, but will be (is) used this way - between enterprise customers and MAFIAA's desire for DRM, it's pretty much a given. It's a tool in the War on General Purpose Computing. Alone not enough to win it, and sure, theoretically useful for both sides, but for the enemies of general purpose computing it's an important cog in their war machine.
      - walterbell 9y ago
        QubesOS uses this tool to give users and device owners (not vendors) control, e.g. Anti Evil Maid.
djhworld 9y ago
I'd hazard a guess that quite a significant proportion of their audience probably come through a mobile or tablet device
flukus 9y ago
It's not like reddit is particularly well optimized for phones, in the mobile site or the app. Their mobile versions are unusable and if it weren't for third party apps I'd have given up reddit entirely. Reddit should fit nicely into a mobile first site with good desktop functionality, it's just their useless team of designers.

Aoyagi 9y ago

And yet so few of the designers consider dark/black colour themes, which are not only more easier on the eyes, but also notably save the battery.

rwnspace 9y ago
Easier on the eyes surely, but I understood it that dark themes only save battery for OLED/AMOLED screens. For LCD/TN dark themes use slightly more. I am not an Electrical Engineer though.
- Aoyagi 9y ago
  Well yes, that's what I meant. I keep forgetting there are still mobile devices with LCD screens...
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Which makes AMOLED still not old enough to enter the general consciousness of the designers. They're optimizing for the screens they (and everyone they know) are used to.
    - Aoyagi 9y ago
      Well, there are plenty of Android devices with OLED screens, but this is what truly got me >The iPhone X is the first iPhone to use an OLED display Shocking, actually.
      - Sharlin 9y ago
        Up until very recently, OLED were great if you didn't care about color reproduction. My 2011 Nokia N9 had an OLED display. Then LCD made something of a comeback due to superior color fidelity. Currently OLEDs are getting good enough to perhaps finally replace LCDs for good, although there are some promising unorganic LED display technologies already around the corner...
    - skykooler 9y ago
      Looking at older screen technologies, CRTs also use less power for dark screens.
      - Zak 9y ago
        I suspect not in a way that people care very much about compared to mobile device battery life.
teddyfrozevelt 9y ago
They're working on one. https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/comments/7p3iv9/where_is_dark_modenight_mode/dsf7ie4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redesign/comments/7p3iv9/where_is_d...
virmundi 9y ago
Dark themes are worse for the eyes, https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-color-theme-is-better-for-the-eyes https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53264/dark-or-white-c... Don't know about battery life. I guess if it's AMOLED, https://www.greenbot.com/article/2834583/how-much-power-does-a-black-interface-really-save-on-amoled-displays.html https://www.greenbot.com/article/2834583/how-much-power-does...
- shostack 9y ago
  Maybe, but I wonder if that is true at night with the lights off. When I read in bed at night, I much prefer light on dark text. Combined with Android's night mode to tint things red, it is fantastic. In fact, I wish the Kindle Paperwhite would come out with an inverted mode already (although I think I read there were some challenges with doing so). It can be fairly straining on my eyes to have the sidelit screen bright enough to be legible while being as dim as possible to make reading with the lights off comfortable.
  - orky56 9y ago
    Majority of reading is done in a brighter setting so many factors contribute to using dark text in white background. In the case of reading in the dark or low light settings, using a Kindle Paperwhite gets complicated since you want to make the background darker while still maintaining sufficient contrast to read the text which is always in a dark font color. In the UX StackExchange post, it's stated that astigmatism is also a contributing factor to favor dark text on white background. I do believe that these night time settings should be toggled automatically for white text with dark background as well as accounting for blue wavelength reduction for screens with full colors.
    - Zak 9y ago
      I would like operating systems, browsers and websites to globally support a "night mode" where a dark background is used. Especially with the proliferation of mobile devices, people increasingly use technology in low-light environments. As it stands today, I have to add external stylesheets to websites to get this effect, and if I want to toggle them, I have to toggle each one manually. It's similar, but worse for Android apps because the app itself has to support themes. I find having a significant portion of the screen white when my eyes are relatively dark-adapted uncomfortable, even when the brightness is set fairly low. I find a dark background with light text very preferable under those conditions. I do not care if there is research suggesting I should not have this preference. From talking to others in person and online, I get the impression that my preference is very common. Android was supposed to get something resembling this, but the feature has been dropped or delayed.

fwsgonzo 9y ago

No, their i.reddit.com is the best variant and its extra light-weight probably for weaker devices.

pantalaimon 9y ago
Unfortunately creating posts is broken with that one, and for some features like editing posts you have to switch the interface. I still use it instead of the standard interface, it loads much faster especially on bad mobile connections.

MisterTea 9y ago

It's okay. You, like me, are starting to realize that our way of computing is becoming obsolete. How many kids are using keyboard and mouse vs touch screens? They grow up thinking "this is how you use a computer". To them the mouse/keyboard ruins the whole touch(mobile) experience. One day we'll be the old men yelling at internet clouds while sitting behind an old PC or some kind of open source terminal running an open source OS and weeping for the past.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
As long as they don't totally lock computing down with Trusted Platform Modules and walled gardens and touch-only input, as long as we can still write Turing-complete code, we'll be the old men and women still being much faster and better at traversing the Internet clouds than the regular population. We'll be the last guerillas in the long-lost War on General Purpose Computing.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  TPM isn’t about locking down machines - they’re about enabling the user (who is always in control) to establish a trust chain for software on the machine - and to serve as a secure store for cryptographic secrets so they become inaccessible from the rest of the system. You can have lock-out without the TPM anyway - like the pre-Fingerprint reader iPhones.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    TPM technically isn't about locking users out, but will be (is) used this way - between enterprise customers and MAFIAA's desire for DRM, it's pretty much a given. It's a tool in the War on General Purpose Computing. Alone not enough to win it, and sure, theoretically useful for both sides, but for the enemies of general purpose computing it's an important cog in their war machine.
    - walterbell 9y ago
      QubesOS uses this tool to give users and device owners (not vendors) control, e.g. Anti Evil Maid.

djhworld 9y ago

I'd hazard a guess that quite a significant proportion of their audience probably come through a mobile or tablet device

flukus 9y ago

It's not like reddit is particularly well optimized for phones, in the mobile site or the app. Their mobile versions are unusable and if it weren't for third party apps I'd have given up reddit entirely. Reddit should fit nicely into a mobile first site with good desktop functionality, it's just their useless team of designers.