5 ms·

I wouldn't just blame ads, the implementation of the new design is awful. Browsing the site as an anon is a complete tire fire (especially mobile), constantly l

I wouldn't just blame ads, the implementation of the new design is awful. Browsing the site as an anon is a complete tire fire (especially mobile), constantly losing scroll position and often not loading content at all... comments are gated by weird expanding areas that load a separate page into history, and again more scroll position issues. Helped me stop using the site impulsively anyway.

echelon 6y ago
The design is driven by engagement, growth, and ad sales. Old Reddit wouldn't have cared if you left the site to read an interesting linked article. The new one does everything it can do get you to stay on the site, or better, install and never leave the app. Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture. See their endgame and how it may not be in line with your expectations.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  This seems to explain, as I'm sure @aahhahahaaa understands, why a company might design their web site this way. It doesn't seem to say anything about their point that the design is a tire fire and drove them away. Why should they "Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture"? If a site that isn't essential to my functioning becomes awful, then I'll leave it; there's no reason I should care why it became awful.
- aahhahahaaa 6y ago
  Isn't this ultimately asking me to imagine "what if the bad things were good things" - their endgame isn't going to convince me that the site isn't incredibly frustrating.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jazzyjackson 6y ago
  Can't I just judge it on the basis of being broken? - being an SPA prevents the browser from remembering the scrollheight of a page so if I click on the margin (why does the entire margin act as a back button closing the comments?) I lose my place in comments. How hard would it be to stick a "scrollheight = localstorage[url].scrollheight || 0" in the 6 megabyte javascript bundle? - clicking "view more comments" does keep my scrollheight since its not a page reload, but since there's like 5 comments instead of 5000, I'm suddenly at the bottom of the page and have to scroll to the top - it loads the top level comments before the subthreads, so while I start reading the 2nd or 3rd comment, everything gets pushed down to make room for more comments -- or even better I just get a "something went wrong" for like a half second and then the replies come in. I actually see this pattern a lot - SPA thinks that everyone has a megabit connection and if content.length = 0 then something must have gone wrong ! Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count?
  - overlordalex 6y ago
    > Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count? This one is actually a reddit quirk. The API reports the number of comments, however doesn't take into account removed comments, or users that have been shadow-banned. However users notice and complain about this constantly, so it still needs to be improved
    - jazzyjackson 6y ago
      Actually I just noticed this on Facebook too, especially comments on ads it will say "16 comments", but even when I select from the dropdown "All Comments" instead of "Most Relevant" I can count 10 comments. So it's querying an API to ask how many comments there are, and getting a different result when it actually fetches the comments. So there's two different SQL queries somewhere I get that, but how can they diverge so much, is there a team assigned to "Queries that count comments before showing them" and a different team assigned to "queries that show comments" ? It's just so frustrating as a developer to see the same broken behavior all over the largest web properties.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Even aside from the fact that it's an SPA full of ads and big graphics, the performance is especially terrible. Plenty of SPAs of similar functionality are able to deliver much snappier experiences.
- jaekash 6y ago
  > The design is driven by engagement, growth, and ad sales. Nope.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Come on, that's the sort of low effort comment you know will "disappear" here - what's your disagreement, what's the basis for it?
    - jaekash 6y ago
      Same as the basis for what I responded to. Nothing.
vkgfx 6y ago
It's like pulling teeth to browse it anon on mobile even on the old design. They're all but putting a gun to your head and saying "USE THE FUCKIN APP"
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
  Apollo for iOS is a delightful experience; highly recommended.

echelon 6y ago

The design is driven by engagement, growth, and ad sales. Old Reddit wouldn't have cared if you left the site to read an interesting linked article. The new one does everything it can do get you to stay on the site, or better, install and never leave the app. Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture. See their endgame and how it may not be in line with your expectations.

JadeNB 6y ago
This seems to explain, as I'm sure @aahhahahaaa understands, why a company might design their web site this way. It doesn't seem to say anything about their point that the design is a tire fire and drove them away. Why should they "Judge this through the lens of the bigger picture"? If a site that isn't essential to my functioning becomes awful, then I'll leave it; there's no reason I should care why it became awful.
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
Isn't this ultimately asking me to imagine "what if the bad things were good things" - their endgame isn't going to convince me that the site isn't incredibly frustrating.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jazzyjackson 6y ago
Can't I just judge it on the basis of being broken? - being an SPA prevents the browser from remembering the scrollheight of a page so if I click on the margin (why does the entire margin act as a back button closing the comments?) I lose my place in comments. How hard would it be to stick a "scrollheight = localstorage[url].scrollheight || 0" in the 6 megabyte javascript bundle? - clicking "view more comments" does keep my scrollheight since its not a page reload, but since there's like 5 comments instead of 5000, I'm suddenly at the bottom of the page and have to scroll to the top - it loads the top level comments before the subthreads, so while I start reading the 2nd or 3rd comment, everything gets pushed down to make room for more comments -- or even better I just get a "something went wrong" for like a half second and then the replies come in. I actually see this pattern a lot - SPA thinks that everyone has a megabit connection and if content.length = 0 then something must have gone wrong ! Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count?
- overlordalex 6y ago
  > Or how about when it says "18 more replies" and I click on it and there's only one reply? Can't javascript count? This one is actually a reddit quirk. The API reports the number of comments, however doesn't take into account removed comments, or users that have been shadow-banned. However users notice and complain about this constantly, so it still needs to be improved
  - jazzyjackson 6y ago
    Actually I just noticed this on Facebook too, especially comments on ads it will say "16 comments", but even when I select from the dropdown "All Comments" instead of "Most Relevant" I can count 10 comments. So it's querying an API to ask how many comments there are, and getting a different result when it actually fetches the comments. So there's two different SQL queries somewhere I get that, but how can they diverge so much, is there a team assigned to "Queries that count comments before showing them" and a different team assigned to "queries that show comments" ? It's just so frustrating as a developer to see the same broken behavior all over the largest web properties.
shawnz 6y ago
Even aside from the fact that it's an SPA full of ads and big graphics, the performance is especially terrible. Plenty of SPAs of similar functionality are able to deliver much snappier experiences.
jaekash 6y ago
> The design is driven by engagement, growth, and ad sales. Nope.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Come on, that's the sort of low effort comment you know will "disappear" here - what's your disagreement, what's the basis for it?
  - jaekash 6y ago
    Same as the basis for what I responded to. Nothing.

vkgfx 6y ago

It's like pulling teeth to browse it anon on mobile even on the old design. They're all but putting a gun to your head and saying "USE THE FUCKIN APP"

ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
Apollo for iOS is a delightful experience; highly recommended.