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Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both

by frfl 8y ago

Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. Why was the change implemented? The previous design wasn't broken! How's the user feedback? A/B testing really indicated to you this was a good choice?! If you have any insight -- I'm sure this was a decision made much higher up than dev -- please do share.

hnaccy 8y ago
make-work
meesterdude 8y ago
> Why was the change implemented? There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view.
- vokep 8y ago
  None of that justifies it. They wasted their time, so now everyone has to pay? I don't think so. If the old design wasn't easy to go back to, I'd only view reddit through API based things (app) at this point.
  - sitkack 8y ago
    If they need the eyeballs focused on forced content, expect the API to die soon.
    - flukus 8y ago
      This will be the day I delete my reddit account. Most of my redditing is done on my phone and the API is the only thing making that usable at all.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    > They wasted their time, They didn't waste their time. They got promotions and padded their resumes with "designed and implemented" sections. In the process they also justified their salaries. Imagine they are well paid designers getting nice 6 figure salaries. During review they say something like "we didn't do anything, all the stuff actually worked pretty well" vs "yeah, we identified these million things wrong then went and redesigned and modernized all the stuff". Which one will they go for. Which one does the management go for? Or future employees. That's why I believe GMail was changing its UI every 6 months. You sneezed and you got a new UI in it, even though the old one was pretty decent. Even if the new UI is crap nobody in the chain has the incentive to raise their hand and say it, because they've all been praising it and approving it for a year. This highlights I think why it is very important to get impartial test users, who perhaps are paid to be brutally honest and just give their opinions whatever they are.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      This highlights I think why it is very important to get impartial test users, who perhaps are paid to be brutally honest and just give their opinions whatever they are. Better yet, link bonuses to actual feedback from real users. However, the best thing to do, is to implement a policy of strict continuity. Even radical architectural changes can be implemented under such a regime. Strict Continuity means being accountable to users. Relaxation of strict continuity generally means management/devs have their own agendas, and those stupid users be damned!
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Sunk cost fallacy.
  - meesterdude 8y ago
    precisely! This is what I was thinking of. I see it a lot in web development and engineering.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  > There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view. Yes there is - you call it what it is, a failed Epic. Pivot and see what you can salvage before moving on. As for the why did this change / previous design wasn't broken - you're abstracting away the interface and systems from the careers which built them. We must endure constant change to allow new generations space to fail and grow. A cynical perspective would say that careers aren't made through maintenance work.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    We must endure constant change to allow new generations space to fail and grow. I call BS. I know for a fact that policies of strict continuity can be maintained, because I've done it -- that you can implement radical architectural change without rocking the boat and without throwing the users/UX under the bus. The fact that we, as a field, aren't aware of this just goes to show how "half a field" programming still is.
    - stephengillie 8y ago
      Users and UX somewhere will be thrown under the bus. The question is - will it be a heavily used multi-million dollar valuation site, or will it be a rarely-used development site? A big part is the blur between toy and product. We disregard end-users as "sheeple" while simultaneously receiving gratification from their auth count.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Users and UX somewhere will be thrown under the bus. I call BS. If you're moving to a new UI framework, these are usually powerful enough to emulate the old UI. Getting the new framework to feel as snappy as the old UI is a very good benchmark for performance as well as for feature parity. (They usually have more features, but there might be some corner-case overlooked.) The question is - will it be a heavily used multi-million dollar valuation site, or will it be a rarely-used development site? Management sometimes will decide that it isn't worth the effort, and sometimes that will be the right call. But for a user-oriented site, high value should be placed on the user.
- bassman9000 8y ago
  Yes, there is. You stop, cut your losses, do a heavy post mortem to get something out of it, and fire the responsibles.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I have definitely noticed that YouTube is one of the few sites that causes my desktop to struggle when loading the page. Gmail is oddly heavy in this regard too. I worry that google might not be paying enough attention to load times or resource utilization.
- keyle 8y ago
  I had to revert to the 'old' gmail. I mean a MBP 2017 shouldn't drop frames when scrolling emails!!
  - killbrad 8y ago
    The"new" Gmail is the slowest website I use. I'm trying to give it a go but honestly I'm gonna have to switch soon. It's nearly unusable.
- degenerate 8y ago
  If you've used the new version of Adwords or Analytics, or had to administer a GApps account in the past 2 years, you've already figured out that Google does not give 2 craps about speed or optimization anymore!
- sitkack 8y ago
  Which is really too bad because much of the world is on a connection far away from Google and a machine that most Googler's would have recycled already. I distinctly remember when Reddit rolled out the new "mobile site" because it took multiple seconds longer to load than the previous one and now crashes my IPad 1 and is janky on my IPad 2-ish quality Galaxy Tab. If these companies want to do something for the environment and their customers, they should make their sites blazingly fast through simplicity not lazily loaded this and that progressive client side whoochathings.
- tgb 8y ago
  So this is veering off-topic: I remember but cannot for the life of me find a blog post from Google about either the number of bytes in their front page or the number of words on the front page. Apparently there was some guy who would email them just a number "23" or whatever it was that gave the number of bytes/words on google.com every time they updated it. After being puzzled by these emails for a while they figured out what he was hinting at when he sent one that was like "58, getting a bit heavy aren't we?". And that was a lesson about keeping front pages simple - something that was and largely still is unique about Google. Ironic. But why can't I find this blog post? I just spent much longer than I ought to have searching for it and can't find a trace of it. You have to wade through a lot of SEO stuff that comes up with the search results, but restricting to older content helps (I think this happened at latest 2010 probably several years before that). The old google blog I think was google.blogspot.com or googleblog.blogspot.com but you need to search it on the wayback machine and I can't see a way to do that except by hand.
deathanatos 8y ago
The new design hasn't worked. In particular, when browsing a subreddit, the first page or so of posts will load, but that's it. The "Next" button that used to take you to the next page is gone, which rather limits what you can view. I think its supposed to be infinite scrolling, but that simply hasn't worked, if that's what is supposed to happen. Make it work. Make it fast (or pretty). That order.
- huac 8y ago
  that's your adblocker preventing the infinite scroll from loading more items
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Are you on the team? Was there a clamoring from the users for infinite scroll? Was there a study of how it would effect the typical user?
    - robbomacrae 8y ago
      People love that feature!
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        How is that quantified?
        robbomacrae 8y ago
        First off I'm not on the redesign team BTW so haven't been as involved in this analysis enough to adequately answer your question and also my statement is one that you can quantify as such. But the reason I stated it is that A: it was a heavily requested feature B: comments regarding infinite scroll have been weirdly positive (contrasting my point in another reply about most comments are from very strongly opinionated users) and C: usage statistics ie I can assure you when compared side by side people make more of the equivalent page turns. Personally I like both methods but infinite scroll was a clear winner for us.
sorenjan 8y ago
I don't understand why modern websites need to be these javascript heavy single page apps. New Youtube is super slow, and if you scroll down to the comments under a video and then go back to your subscriptions you end up scrolled down and see old videos. New Reddit is awful, the only reason I can see for them to make it is busy work for all the new developers they hired after getting a large investment. Again, there's absolutely no need for a single page app, the whole point of browsing Reddit is to load seperate documents, something the web has been able to do since its inception. And that's not even mentioning the actual design, which is like every new design with less contrast and more wasted space on my desktop monitor. Unfortunately there's no going back, the sunk cost is to high and they think they really are making things better the new way. The linked post make some errors in the calculations, but I would be surprised if the overall point is wrong.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- profalseidol 8y ago
  The SinglePage Transfer Protocol
stcredzero 8y ago
The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. It's about par for the course when a new dev group and/or manager comes in and wants to make their mark. I generally find this sort of thing facepalm-inspiring-not-so-smart. For one thing, there are so many examples out there of how this can go wrong. (see sorenjan's cousin comment) For a mature long-running production system, the right thing to do is to bias for continuity and incremental change. This isn't to say that redesign and progress are forbidden. There are usually benefits to be had. I've been a part of teams that have implemented radical changes to underlying frameworks. (Re-hosting from an object database to Oracle, for example.) My experience is that there is almost always a way to do this incrementally, but that ego and limited imaginations get in the way of doing the right thing. When you're out to re-architect or re-host a long standing production system, there are two things you should absolutely do, absolutely: 1) Avoid disrupting the current users 2) Preserve the hard won domain, operational, and optimization knowledge of the previous development team The goodwill of the users and the good reputation of your company/app were won with great effort and expense. They are extremely valuable. Degrade those at your peril! Likewise, the hard won domain, operational, and optimization knowledge of the previous development team were won with great effort and expense and are extremely valuable. Degrade/disregard those at your peril! I think I would like to ask new managers who are going to "make their mark" by re-implementing something if they can absolutely guarantee 1) and if they can quantify 2) and back themselves up empirically. Then, when the project is done, ask how good they were at answering those questions. Just the 2 cents of a hoary old veteran. (A couple of hints, for those wondering how: Automated test suites and syntactic code rewriting are your friend!)
- robbomacrae 8y ago
  Hows Geocities doin? Sometimes you need to evolve to survive. We got stuck with the old codebase and adding features was a nightmare - features a lot of users were demanding! With the new design and codebase we can start adding more features.. optional features! we wont force you to use them. And FYI unlike other companies we don't even force you to use the redesign! We've left the old one up at old.reddit.com
  - 8y ago
dkasper 8y ago
I work at Reddit but not on the redesign. I would hardly call our old design great. Functional to those who know Reddit for sure, but for new redditors the learning curve is very steep. Heck, I’ve been on reddit for 12 years and couldn’t figure out how some features worked until I started working at the company. It was time the site didn’t look like a “dystopian craigslist” and looked like a website that was made in 2018. We’ve been through well over a year of development and feedback (both internal and external) and most of it has been positive or constructive criticism that we are working on. Definitely agree the performance could be better, but we’re working on it and it’s still early days.
- robbomacrae 8y ago
  oh hey Dave!
- sorenjan 8y ago
  I guess it's a good sign that a website with such a steep learning curve was able to become the world's 26th most trafficked site. Maybe the average internet user is smarter than many give them credit for. https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com
- stcredzero 8y ago
  It was time the site didn’t look like a “dystopian craigslist” and looked like a website that was made in 2018. This is true. However, the transaction needs to seem equitable to the users. Will the improvement in looks and better feature discoverability seem to users like a fair trade-off for performance? Performance of a UI is pretty much the most valued quality to a user. Given that the developers/company have almost all of the power in the transaction, this feeling of equity is all the more important. The devs/company need to be careful about appearing to foist a new UI on users. Success should be measured against the consensuality of the transaction. To what extent are people switching because they want to, because it's a better deal to them? (Vs, the company can force it on users, because they have all the power.) The more consensual the transaction is to users, the more value is preserved or created by the company.
robbomacrae 8y ago
I'm reading! First off the linked post wasn't a very fair analysis and redditors pointed that out in the comments. But to answer your questions: The previous design wasn't broken per se but it wasn't particularly user friendly. Whilst there are plenty of redditors who are used to the layout, a lot of potential users (first time visitors) never came back and became redditors - including many people I tried to introduce to reddit. The redesign is doing much better in that regard. Remember starterupers out there - you don't hear from the satisfied customers so much on the internet but you do get usage metrics :) So take the negative comments with a pinch of salt.
- Svenskunganka 8y ago
  I'm curious what the technical reasons for you to choose to re-build it as an SPA rather than just gradually improve the layout and some new features? I don't use Reddit as an application. I have my favorite subreddits in my bookmark bar in my browser, under a folder called "Reddit". Everytime I switch between them I am forced to do a re-render from the ground up now, which takes about 4-5 seconds on my quite beefy hardware and network (overclocked i7, TITAN X, 1Gbit fiber), while the old design only took a second, 600ms of which were TTFB for the main html of the page. I understand if your reason for a redesign is to keep new users, but what I don't understand is why it had to be a single-page application?
- graeme 8y ago
  I think the old reddit is one of the most useable sites on the internet. I spend a lot of time there because it's a lot more functional and text oriented than other sites. Did the design team consider that reddit's core user base likes the old design and may be there because of it? i.e. The redesign may be more pleasing to non-redditors, but displeasing to the site's actual users. Did you test on regular users or just new users?
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  >The redesign is doing much better in that regard. I'm curious what the numbers shows on how much is attributable to making the list of links look more like a social media timeline vs. all the other changes combined. Over the last few years, the writing on the wall is that Reddit sees the path to grow as evolving into Meme City, USA. Did you test that in isolation to other UI changes?
atwebb 8y ago
No direct insight but I do look forward to reading a blog post or two in a few years detailing the internal politics and reasoning behind this push. Hopefully I find it on Reddit, most likely I'll see it on HN.
djangowithme 8y ago
I've recently come to this tough realization myself after seeing what a mess javascript heavy apps can create. I'm sure theres some way to do it "right", but I felt like building a js clientside app inherently put me behind where static sites where starting. The solution? Server side rendering through next.js, same code via redux+react-router+react.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I'm sure theres some way to do it "right", but I felt like building a js clientside app inherently put me behind where static sites where starting. For a long standing production app, my suggestion is to start with a plan for a better layout/architecture in your fancy new framework, but start by emulating the old UI. The new framework is often flexible and powerful enough to do this. If it isn't, then I might question its validity.
ploggingdev 8y ago
Steve Huffman was asked about the reason for the redesign and he said that it was necessary since users who visit reddit for the first time are completely lost and one of the reasons for this was the design. They hope the new design will make reddit more approachable for new users. I think it comes to down to the growth at all costs mindset of being a VC funded company. Besides the point mentioned above, I think the new design allows them to increase their engagement numbers : - they heavily push users to install the mobile apps to the point that it's annoying - the new design lends itself better to native ads - they started autoplaying videos and gifs on mobile for some users - when I browse from a desktop without logging in, I noticed that threads now have a "related content" suggestions after the first few comments (I don't remember seeing this previously. Correct me if I'm wrong on this) - they introduced new profile pages which make the site into more of a social network. Users can now follow other users, post to their own timeline etc. - they started collecting more user data (for ad targeting) and have reset users' tracking preferences at least twice so far. Related links [0] [1] Hopefully they start taking user feedback more seriously. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/73259t/reddit_secretly_reenabled_account_tracking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/73259t/reddit_secr... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/87d1sq/psa_reddit_has_enhanced_their_tracking_they_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/87d1sq/psa...
- skellera 8y ago
  I refuse to use the mobile site because of auto playing videos. I have limited data and I consider it unforgivable for them to cost me money without my consent. It only had to happen once for me to decide this.
- gcb0 8y ago
  are you a redit PR? honest question. my personal experience with the old site: slow, nothing works, even on wifi interaction is awful, broken cache headers make the index reload everytime I pressed back from an image (which you never knows if it will open the dhtml preview or change the page url to a jpg) and every time you click the first link, a modal popular tells me that I'd be hapier with the app. the new site: absolutely the same, but somehow even slower (and it was already the top slower site!) with slightly larger images. plus a broken login flow. i am pretty sure the only users to ever visit that site a second time on a mobile phone did so clicking a link by mistake. either they got the app or bounced.
thiht 8y ago
> The previous design was great Is this a bad joke? I don't want to judge the new design, but the old design was really, REALLY bad. It was complicated, bloated, a lot of stuff was hidden, the colors were ugly... nothing was right Is this some kind of HN-wide practical joke or do you really believe that 90's style design was somehow any better? Also if this is actually your opinion, do you realize it's probably marginal amongst users?
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  Was it slow?
  - thiht 8y ago
    No, but it sucked either way
jhedwards 8y ago
I'm on Reddit's dev team and yes, we're reading this. We read as much of the criticism as we can and incorporate it into our planning as much as we can. We have a team of developers working on performance, and one of the nice things about the redesign is that we can make radical changes to the stack, if needed, to support better performance. There are a lot of core Reddit users that just like it how it is, which I get, but there is so much that can be improved. I could write pages about this, but just to give one example: one thing many people aren't aware of is how much work the moderators do to make Reddit a good place. Right now they rely on some pretty janky tools to do that work. The redesign allows us not only to give them better tools to do that work easier, but also allows us to add things like submit validations that prevents users to posting garbage to their subreddits which they then have to take down by hand. If you think we should just add those features to the old Reddit, all I can say is you've never looked into the sad, tired eyes of someone who has worked on that codebase.

by frfl 8y ago

hnaccy 8y ago

make-work

meesterdude 8y ago

> Why was the change implemented? There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view.

vokep 8y ago
None of that justifies it. They wasted their time, so now everyone has to pay? I don't think so. If the old design wasn't easy to go back to, I'd only view reddit through API based things (app) at this point.
- sitkack 8y ago
  If they need the eyeballs focused on forced content, expect the API to die soon.
  - flukus 8y ago
    This will be the day I delete my reddit account. Most of my redditing is done on my phone and the API is the only thing making that usable at all.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  > They wasted their time, They didn't waste their time. They got promotions and padded their resumes with "designed and implemented" sections. In the process they also justified their salaries. Imagine they are well paid designers getting nice 6 figure salaries. During review they say something like "we didn't do anything, all the stuff actually worked pretty well" vs "yeah, we identified these million things wrong then went and redesigned and modernized all the stuff". Which one will they go for. Which one does the management go for? Or future employees. That's why I believe GMail was changing its UI every 6 months. You sneezed and you got a new UI in it, even though the old one was pretty decent. Even if the new UI is crap nobody in the chain has the incentive to raise their hand and say it, because they've all been praising it and approving it for a year. This highlights I think why it is very important to get impartial test users, who perhaps are paid to be brutally honest and just give their opinions whatever they are.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    This highlights I think why it is very important to get impartial test users, who perhaps are paid to be brutally honest and just give their opinions whatever they are. Better yet, link bonuses to actual feedback from real users. However, the best thing to do, is to implement a policy of strict continuity. Even radical architectural changes can be implemented under such a regime. Strict Continuity means being accountable to users. Relaxation of strict continuity generally means management/devs have their own agendas, and those stupid users be damned!
dredmorbius 8y ago
Sunk cost fallacy.
- meesterdude 8y ago
  precisely! This is what I was thinking of. I see it a lot in web development and engineering.
stephengillie 8y ago
> There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view. Yes there is - you call it what it is, a failed Epic. Pivot and see what you can salvage before moving on. As for the why did this change / previous design wasn't broken - you're abstracting away the interface and systems from the careers which built them. We must endure constant change to allow new generations space to fail and grow. A cynical perspective would say that careers aren't made through maintenance work.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  We must endure constant change to allow new generations space to fail and grow. I call BS. I know for a fact that policies of strict continuity can be maintained, because I've done it -- that you can implement radical architectural change without rocking the boat and without throwing the users/UX under the bus. The fact that we, as a field, aren't aware of this just goes to show how "half a field" programming still is.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    Users and UX somewhere will be thrown under the bus. The question is - will it be a heavily used multi-million dollar valuation site, or will it be a rarely-used development site? A big part is the blur between toy and product. We disregard end-users as "sheeple" while simultaneously receiving gratification from their auth count.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Users and UX somewhere will be thrown under the bus. I call BS. If you're moving to a new UI framework, these are usually powerful enough to emulate the old UI. Getting the new framework to feel as snappy as the old UI is a very good benchmark for performance as well as for feature parity. (They usually have more features, but there might be some corner-case overlooked.) The question is - will it be a heavily used multi-million dollar valuation site, or will it be a rarely-used development site? Management sometimes will decide that it isn't worth the effort, and sometimes that will be the right call. But for a user-oriented site, high value should be placed on the user.
bassman9000 8y ago
Yes, there is. You stop, cut your losses, do a heavy post mortem to get something out of it, and fire the responsibles.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

I have definitely noticed that YouTube is one of the few sites that causes my desktop to struggle when loading the page. Gmail is oddly heavy in this regard too. I worry that google might not be paying enough attention to load times or resource utilization.

keyle 8y ago
I had to revert to the 'old' gmail. I mean a MBP 2017 shouldn't drop frames when scrolling emails!!
- killbrad 8y ago
  The"new" Gmail is the slowest website I use. I'm trying to give it a go but honestly I'm gonna have to switch soon. It's nearly unusable.
degenerate 8y ago
If you've used the new version of Adwords or Analytics, or had to administer a GApps account in the past 2 years, you've already figured out that Google does not give 2 craps about speed or optimization anymore!
sitkack 8y ago
Which is really too bad because much of the world is on a connection far away from Google and a machine that most Googler's would have recycled already. I distinctly remember when Reddit rolled out the new "mobile site" because it took multiple seconds longer to load than the previous one and now crashes my IPad 1 and is janky on my IPad 2-ish quality Galaxy Tab. If these companies want to do something for the environment and their customers, they should make their sites blazingly fast through simplicity not lazily loaded this and that progressive client side whoochathings.
tgb 8y ago
So this is veering off-topic: I remember but cannot for the life of me find a blog post from Google about either the number of bytes in their front page or the number of words on the front page. Apparently there was some guy who would email them just a number "23" or whatever it was that gave the number of bytes/words on google.com every time they updated it. After being puzzled by these emails for a while they figured out what he was hinting at when he sent one that was like "58, getting a bit heavy aren't we?". And that was a lesson about keeping front pages simple - something that was and largely still is unique about Google. Ironic. But why can't I find this blog post? I just spent much longer than I ought to have searching for it and can't find a trace of it. You have to wade through a lot of SEO stuff that comes up with the search results, but restricting to older content helps (I think this happened at latest 2010 probably several years before that). The old google blog I think was google.blogspot.com or googleblog.blogspot.com but you need to search it on the wayback machine and I can't see a way to do that except by hand.

deathanatos 8y ago

The new design hasn't worked. In particular, when browsing a subreddit, the first page or so of posts will load, but that's it. The "Next" button that used to take you to the next page is gone, which rather limits what you can view. I think its supposed to be infinite scrolling, but that simply hasn't worked, if that's what is supposed to happen. Make it work. Make it fast (or pretty). That order.

huac 8y ago
that's your adblocker preventing the infinite scroll from loading more items
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Are you on the team? Was there a clamoring from the users for infinite scroll? Was there a study of how it would effect the typical user?
  - robbomacrae 8y ago
    People love that feature!
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      How is that quantified?
      - robbomacrae 8y ago
        First off I'm not on the redesign team BTW so haven't been as involved in this analysis enough to adequately answer your question and also my statement is one that you can quantify as such. But the reason I stated it is that A: it was a heavily requested feature B: comments regarding infinite scroll have been weirdly positive (contrasting my point in another reply about most comments are from very strongly opinionated users) and C: usage statistics ie I can assure you when compared side by side people make more of the equivalent page turns. Personally I like both methods but infinite scroll was a clear winner for us.

sorenjan 8y ago

I don't understand why modern websites need to be these javascript heavy single page apps. New Youtube is super slow, and if you scroll down to the comments under a video and then go back to your subscriptions you end up scrolled down and see old videos. New Reddit is awful, the only reason I can see for them to make it is busy work for all the new developers they hired after getting a large investment. Again, there's absolutely no need for a single page app, the whole point of browsing Reddit is to load seperate documents, something the web has been able to do since its inception. And that's not even mentioning the actual design, which is like every new design with less contrast and more wasted space on my desktop monitor. Unfortunately there's no going back, the sunk cost is to high and they think they really are making things better the new way. The linked post make some errors in the calculations, but I would be surprised if the overall point is wrong.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
profalseidol 8y ago
The SinglePage Transfer Protocol

stcredzero 8y ago

The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. It's about par for the course when a new dev group and/or manager comes in and wants to make their mark. I generally find this sort of thing facepalm-inspiring-not-so-smart. For one thing, there are so many examples out there of how this can go wrong. (see sorenjan's cousin comment) For a mature long-running production system, the right thing to do is to bias for continuity and incremental change. This isn't to say that redesign and progress are forbidden. There are usually benefits to be had. I've been a part of teams that have implemented radical changes to underlying frameworks. (Re-hosting from an object database to Oracle, for example.) My experience is that there is almost always a way to do this incrementally, but that ego and limited imaginations get in the way of doing the right thing. When you're out to re-architect or re-host a long standing production system, there are two things you should absolutely do, absolutely: 1) Avoid disrupting the current users 2) Preserve the hard won domain, operational, and optimization knowledge of the previous development team The goodwill of the users and the good reputation of your company/app were won with great effort and expense. They are extremely valuable. Degrade those at your peril! Likewise, the hard won domain, operational, and optimization knowledge of the previous development team were won with great effort and expense and are extremely valuable. Degrade/disregard those at your peril! I think I would like to ask new managers who are going to "make their mark" by re-implementing something if they can absolutely guarantee 1) and if they can quantify 2) and back themselves up empirically. Then, when the project is done, ask how good they were at answering those questions. Just the 2 cents of a hoary old veteran. (A couple of hints, for those wondering how: Automated test suites and syntactic code rewriting are your friend!)

robbomacrae 8y ago
Hows Geocities doin? Sometimes you need to evolve to survive. We got stuck with the old codebase and adding features was a nightmare - features a lot of users were demanding! With the new design and codebase we can start adding more features.. optional features! we wont force you to use them. And FYI unlike other companies we don't even force you to use the redesign! We've left the old one up at old.reddit.com
- 8y ago

dkasper 8y ago

I work at Reddit but not on the redesign. I would hardly call our old design great. Functional to those who know Reddit for sure, but for new redditors the learning curve is very steep. Heck, I’ve been on reddit for 12 years and couldn’t figure out how some features worked until I started working at the company. It was time the site didn’t look like a “dystopian craigslist” and looked like a website that was made in 2018. We’ve been through well over a year of development and feedback (both internal and external) and most of it has been positive or constructive criticism that we are working on. Definitely agree the performance could be better, but we’re working on it and it’s still early days.

robbomacrae 8y ago
oh hey Dave!
sorenjan 8y ago
I guess it's a good sign that a website with such a steep learning curve was able to become the world's 26th most trafficked site. Maybe the average internet user is smarter than many give them credit for. https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com
stcredzero 8y ago
It was time the site didn’t look like a “dystopian craigslist” and looked like a website that was made in 2018. This is true. However, the transaction needs to seem equitable to the users. Will the improvement in looks and better feature discoverability seem to users like a fair trade-off for performance? Performance of a UI is pretty much the most valued quality to a user. Given that the developers/company have almost all of the power in the transaction, this feeling of equity is all the more important. The devs/company need to be careful about appearing to foist a new UI on users. Success should be measured against the consensuality of the transaction. To what extent are people switching because they want to, because it's a better deal to them? (Vs, the company can force it on users, because they have all the power.) The more consensual the transaction is to users, the more value is preserved or created by the company.

robbomacrae 8y ago

I'm reading! First off the linked post wasn't a very fair analysis and redditors pointed that out in the comments. But to answer your questions: The previous design wasn't broken per se but it wasn't particularly user friendly. Whilst there are plenty of redditors who are used to the layout, a lot of potential users (first time visitors) never came back and became redditors - including many people I tried to introduce to reddit. The redesign is doing much better in that regard. Remember starterupers out there - you don't hear from the satisfied customers so much on the internet but you do get usage metrics :) So take the negative comments with a pinch of salt.

Svenskunganka 8y ago
I'm curious what the technical reasons for you to choose to re-build it as an SPA rather than just gradually improve the layout and some new features? I don't use Reddit as an application. I have my favorite subreddits in my bookmark bar in my browser, under a folder called "Reddit". Everytime I switch between them I am forced to do a re-render from the ground up now, which takes about 4-5 seconds on my quite beefy hardware and network (overclocked i7, TITAN X, 1Gbit fiber), while the old design only took a second, 600ms of which were TTFB for the main html of the page. I understand if your reason for a redesign is to keep new users, but what I don't understand is why it had to be a single-page application?
graeme 8y ago
I think the old reddit is one of the most useable sites on the internet. I spend a lot of time there because it's a lot more functional and text oriented than other sites. Did the design team consider that reddit's core user base likes the old design and may be there because of it? i.e. The redesign may be more pleasing to non-redditors, but displeasing to the site's actual users. Did you test on regular users or just new users?
forgottenpass 8y ago
>The redesign is doing much better in that regard. I'm curious what the numbers shows on how much is attributable to making the list of links look more like a social media timeline vs. all the other changes combined. Over the last few years, the writing on the wall is that Reddit sees the path to grow as evolving into Meme City, USA. Did you test that in isolation to other UI changes?

atwebb 8y ago

No direct insight but I do look forward to reading a blog post or two in a few years detailing the internal politics and reasoning behind this push. Hopefully I find it on Reddit, most likely I'll see it on HN.

djangowithme 8y ago

I've recently come to this tough realization myself after seeing what a mess javascript heavy apps can create. I'm sure theres some way to do it "right", but I felt like building a js clientside app inherently put me behind where static sites where starting. The solution? Server side rendering through next.js, same code via redux+react-router+react.

stcredzero 8y ago
I'm sure theres some way to do it "right", but I felt like building a js clientside app inherently put me behind where static sites where starting. For a long standing production app, my suggestion is to start with a plan for a better layout/architecture in your fancy new framework, but start by emulating the old UI. The new framework is often flexible and powerful enough to do this. If it isn't, then I might question its validity.

ploggingdev 8y ago

Steve Huffman was asked about the reason for the redesign and he said that it was necessary since users who visit reddit for the first time are completely lost and one of the reasons for this was the design. They hope the new design will make reddit more approachable for new users. I think it comes to down to the growth at all costs mindset of being a VC funded company. Besides the point mentioned above, I think the new design allows them to increase their engagement numbers : - they heavily push users to install the mobile apps to the point that it's annoying - the new design lends itself better to native ads - they started autoplaying videos and gifs on mobile for some users - when I browse from a desktop without logging in, I noticed that threads now have a "related content" suggestions after the first few comments (I don't remember seeing this previously. Correct me if I'm wrong on this) - they introduced new profile pages which make the site into more of a social network. Users can now follow other users, post to their own timeline etc. - they started collecting more user data (for ad targeting) and have reset users' tracking preferences at least twice so far. Related links [0] [1] Hopefully they start taking user feedback more seriously. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/73259t/reddit_secretly_reenabled_account_tracking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/73259t/reddit_secr... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/87d1sq/psa_reddit_has_enhanced_their_tracking_they_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/stopadvertising/comments/87d1sq/psa...

skellera 8y ago
I refuse to use the mobile site because of auto playing videos. I have limited data and I consider it unforgivable for them to cost me money without my consent. It only had to happen once for me to decide this.
gcb0 8y ago
are you a redit PR? honest question. my personal experience with the old site: slow, nothing works, even on wifi interaction is awful, broken cache headers make the index reload everytime I pressed back from an image (which you never knows if it will open the dhtml preview or change the page url to a jpg) and every time you click the first link, a modal popular tells me that I'd be hapier with the app. the new site: absolutely the same, but somehow even slower (and it was already the top slower site!) with slightly larger images. plus a broken login flow. i am pretty sure the only users to ever visit that site a second time on a mobile phone did so clicking a link by mistake. either they got the app or bounced.

thiht 8y ago

> The previous design was great Is this a bad joke? I don't want to judge the new design, but the old design was really, REALLY bad. It was complicated, bloated, a lot of stuff was hidden, the colors were ugly... nothing was right Is this some kind of HN-wide practical joke or do you really believe that 90's style design was somehow any better? Also if this is actually your opinion, do you realize it's probably marginal amongst users?

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Was it slow?
- thiht 8y ago
  No, but it sucked either way

jhedwards 8y ago

I'm on Reddit's dev team and yes, we're reading this. We read as much of the criticism as we can and incorporate it into our planning as much as we can. We have a team of developers working on performance, and one of the nice things about the redesign is that we can make radical changes to the stack, if needed, to support better performance. There are a lot of core Reddit users that just like it how it is, which I get, but there is so much that can be improved. I could write pages about this, but just to give one example: one thing many people aren't aware of is how much work the moderators do to make Reddit a good place. Right now they rely on some pretty janky tools to do that work. The redesign allows us not only to give them better tools to do that work easier, but also allows us to add things like submit validations that prevents users to posting garbage to their subreddits which they then have to take down by hand. If you think we should just add those features to the old Reddit, all I can say is you've never looked into the sad, tired eyes of someone who has worked on that codebase.