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It's on purpose. The new UI places each post inside a "card". The intent is having you scroll past cards. This makes even text-only posts be similar to image ad

It's on purpose. The new UI places each post inside a "card". The intent is having you scroll past cards. This makes even text-only posts be similar to image ads posts, and while you scroll you are not aware if the next card is an ad or not. Layouts with heavy information density (as old.reddit.com) are more user friendly, as you they allow you to just scan the list and be done with it. But are bad for ads.

wodenokoto 3y ago
The problem isn’t really the cards. It’s the implementation. If you just reshape shape old.Reddit.com it wouldn’t be a horrible UI/UX. Maybe not great either. Back button is effectively broken with constant reload of front page. 2 links you wanna read? You need to click around carefully especially on mobile if you don’t want the page to reload and show you a different set of stuff.
- ykonstant 3y ago
  If you are looking for a threaded forum where posts contain dense information with code segments, quotes and decorated text, the cards are definitely a core problem. The implementation is very bad, too.
- ljm 3y ago
  On mobile you can hardly even scroll down a thread without the page crashing and dumping you right back at the top. 75% of the time it’ll be an error page and you have to refresh again to get past it. I can’t imagine people will tolerate this when they’re forced to use this UI and not their favourite app.
  - rthomas6 3y ago
    There is a mobile-only client called troddit.com that is really good. It shows what could have been possible with pure browser client on mobile. Not only is it waaaaaay faster, the UI is better too.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > The problem isn’t really the cards. It's also the cards.
  - conductr 3y ago
    The problem is they don't care about the mobile web and want you to use their native app where you're more likely to enable notifications and then increase engagement (everything is for ad views obviously) Old reddit was designed for a larger monitor (laptop/desktop) and mimics the best design practices on that device over the past couple decades of bulletin board/forum software; makes sense why people like it so much Design decisions aside, the site performance is horrible. I don't understand why serving content is so difficult. I get they have large scale, but they've also had that for quite a while and employ enough people to solve it if they actually cared enough
wingerlang 3y ago
There is a compact mode on the new design since day one, even the classic mode doesn't have the "card" design. This is never mentioned by people who complain (you included). In compact mode, they (new/old) have a similar number of posts on the screen (old: 11, new: 9). It has less because the "promoted" has a larger button, one could even argue this makes them stand out more than on old reddit. I would agree that the lack of link colors make it slightly more annoying to read compact mode on the new one though, compared directly.
- feoren 3y ago
  > In compact mode, they (new/old) have a similar number of posts on the screen (old: 11, new: 9) Old reddit has 25 posts per page and my screen can fit 14 vertically at once.
moneywoes 3y ago
Any further reading? Very insightful post Ty
- frozenlettuce 3y ago
  That was mostly just my cynical take. Around 2007-08 I read in a(physical) Brazilian web design magazine that you can have two types of design: - for short, ephemeral experience, your design should be striking - the user will just look at the thing once anyway, so you should capture the attention in spite of how ease of navigation. Eg. a website for a rock band tour. - for experiences that will need to be repeated lots of times (eg. using a corporate system, reading the news), you want the design to be boring and predictable. I think that minimalism has been used to push interfaces that reduce information density - regardless of how the density would be useful in that context! After the original Material Design video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrT6v5sOwJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrT6v5sOwJg the writing was on the wall: if you want to build a google-grade portfolio, create designs that resemble this. After some time users got used to that kind of look and now sites with high density of information look alien.

wodenokoto 3y ago

The problem isn’t really the cards. It’s the implementation. If you just reshape shape old.Reddit.com it wouldn’t be a horrible UI/UX. Maybe not great either. Back button is effectively broken with constant reload of front page. 2 links you wanna read? You need to click around carefully especially on mobile if you don’t want the page to reload and show you a different set of stuff.

ykonstant 3y ago
If you are looking for a threaded forum where posts contain dense information with code segments, quotes and decorated text, the cards are definitely a core problem. The implementation is very bad, too.
ljm 3y ago
On mobile you can hardly even scroll down a thread without the page crashing and dumping you right back at the top. 75% of the time it’ll be an error page and you have to refresh again to get past it. I can’t imagine people will tolerate this when they’re forced to use this UI and not their favourite app.
- rthomas6 3y ago
  There is a mobile-only client called troddit.com that is really good. It shows what could have been possible with pure browser client on mobile. Not only is it waaaaaay faster, the UI is better too.
JohnFen 3y ago
> The problem isn’t really the cards. It's also the cards.
- conductr 3y ago
  The problem is they don't care about the mobile web and want you to use their native app where you're more likely to enable notifications and then increase engagement (everything is for ad views obviously) Old reddit was designed for a larger monitor (laptop/desktop) and mimics the best design practices on that device over the past couple decades of bulletin board/forum software; makes sense why people like it so much Design decisions aside, the site performance is horrible. I don't understand why serving content is so difficult. I get they have large scale, but they've also had that for quite a while and employ enough people to solve it if they actually cared enough

wingerlang 3y ago

There is a compact mode on the new design since day one, even the classic mode doesn't have the "card" design. This is never mentioned by people who complain (you included). In compact mode, they (new/old) have a similar number of posts on the screen (old: 11, new: 9). It has less because the "promoted" has a larger button, one could even argue this makes them stand out more than on old reddit. I would agree that the lack of link colors make it slightly more annoying to read compact mode on the new one though, compared directly.

feoren 3y ago
> In compact mode, they (new/old) have a similar number of posts on the screen (old: 11, new: 9) Old reddit has 25 posts per page and my screen can fit 14 vertically at once.

moneywoes 3y ago

Any further reading? Very insightful post Ty

frozenlettuce 3y ago
That was mostly just my cynical take. Around 2007-08 I read in a(physical) Brazilian web design magazine that you can have two types of design: - for short, ephemeral experience, your design should be striking - the user will just look at the thing once anyway, so you should capture the attention in spite of how ease of navigation. Eg. a website for a rock band tour. - for experiences that will need to be repeated lots of times (eg. using a corporate system, reading the news), you want the design to be boring and predictable. I think that minimalism has been used to push interfaces that reduce information density - regardless of how the density would be useful in that context! After the original Material Design video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrT6v5sOwJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrT6v5sOwJg the writing was on the wall: if you want to build a google-grade portfolio, create designs that resemble this. After some time users got used to that kind of look and now sites with high density of information look alien.