from Hacker News

Reddit’s Redesign

by jklp on 4/3/18, 4:14 AM with 291 comments

• by onli on 4/3/18, 7:33 AM

  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...

• by IIAOPSW on 4/3/18, 6:31 AM

  Why do we care so much about design? Reddits success in spite of completely eschewing designers should prove design is over valued. So to does Craigslist. Japanese websites are proof by example that this is strictly a cultural phenomena. Why does Western society seem to value form over function so much?

  How much is "good design" codeword for dumbing the site down as much as possible and making it shiny enough for people who get distracted by car keys? Reddit doesn't exactly have the learning curve of a command line tool or a rocket plane. Maybe I'm elitist, but if you can't understand reddit as it is maybe you're an idiot?

  Call me an old man waving around my cane, but I say to hell with the redesign. Give me my plain old links in their plain old default blue underline and my mod-hacked-together css+bots. The internet need not anymore "progress for the sake of progress".

• by maxxxxx on 4/3/18, 3:23 PM

  I am getting more and more respect for Craigslist who resisted doing constant redesigns for the sake of looking hip. Craigslist is ugly but I don't have to relearn something every few months because they have moved some function to another place.

  It seems most sites like Reddit have run out of ideas and instead of leaving things alone they just shuffle things around and sell it as innovation. Same thing for Windows 10 and office 365. Lots of visual changes but under the hood it's same old.

• by pygy_ on 4/3/18, 7:35 AM

  I tried the redesign for a couple of hours and bailed out.

  I don't care about the looks, but there are two changes that are egregious for me regarding UX:

  1) They took out the subreddit ribbon at the top where you can quickly switch between the communities you subscribe to. It's been replaced by a hamburger menu that takes ages to show up, and then you have to scroll (and they are sorted alphabetically, not by popularity).

  2) In the main subreddit view, the titles now link to the comments rather than the articles, you have to pixel-hunt the actual link, which is much smaller. I suppose they do this to keep users on site, but I dislike the change.

  Edit: also, infinite scroll! As if Reddit wasn't sufficiently addictive as it is :-(

• by dawnerd on 4/3/18, 7:17 AM

  I think reddit has bigger issues than the look of their site. I stopped using it once all the hate subreddits started growing. Even the smaller more niche subreddits I frequented turned into meme filled echo chambers. What really did it in for me was just how much sponsored content made the homepage that wasn't labeled as such.

  They also banned me from reddit gifts for pointing out their first sponsored exchange (before they said it was sponsored, they tried acting like it was "fan service").

• by SllX on 4/3/18, 8:07 AM

  There's an old and undervalued adage: don't fix what isn't broken.

  Reddit is a community of communities. You can be part of more than one or just one, you can post in all of them, you're not forced to look at any of them, and each of them has different rules, culture and enforcement policies. They're on a pretty even playing field as far as site rules and moderation tools go too. It's crazy, chaotic and lends itself well to surprise.

  The primary interface lends itself well to lurking, but what it is really meant for is talking to people. You can post a new top-level comment on any post, but the real discussion happens in the threads in-between. The top level discussions are also ranked, democratically, but if the discussion looks skewed you can even easily change how you look at a thread to see what you're missing.

  All in all, it's a real gem, the way it is now.

  Looking at this design, all I see is a Facebook. A different kind of Facebook to be sure, but it doesn't look like a real improvement on what I have now, just different. A change for the sake of making a change because otherwise all of those engineers in their office downtown would be bored or working elsewhere if they didn't have a project like this to keep them interested/entertained. Fine I suppose, and for now I can still use the classic interface, but for how long? How long till some bored engineer or annoyed project manager with a vision/dream/overwhelming urge to kick a puppy manages to convince the rest that they should drop the classic interface in favor of putting more wood behind their Facebook-shaped arrow.

• by grandpoobah on 4/3/18, 6:14 AM

  Remember when Digg failed to address long standing issues and instead redesigned the site to be more like Twitter?

  Prediction: The redesign is the straw that will break the Snoo's back.

• by swearwolves on 4/3/18, 4:19 PM

  Idk why everyone in here and on r/redesign can't take off their rose-colored glasses and admit that current (old?) Reddit has some pretty glaring usability issues.

  I know I avoided Reddit for the longest time simply due to the fact that there was a learning curve at all...and I know many, many people that would adore Reddit actively avoid it because it's a little overwhelming and hard to use at first. People seem to really underestimate just how important that first couple of seconds on a new website are.

  Granted, a lot of people pushed passed the quirks and the learning curve and grew to love the site we all know today - that's evident by the massive user base - but I just don't understand why everyone is so vehemently against a redesign effort when the site was clearly a hodgepodge.

  Now, I'm not arguing that the current redesign is great and a smashing success, I think they're missing the mark on what made Reddit great in the first place...but to sit here and yell "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is laughable. The performance might be superb but the UX is atrocious, everyone has just learned to get over it.

• by cal5k on 4/3/18, 4:13 PM

  I'm disappointed to see Hacker News turning into Slashdot - immediate negative reaction to anything new, lack of empathy with the insanely difficult task the reddit management team is undertaking, and a general selfish bias of "as a power user I like obscure feature x, therefore without x they're doomed".

• by Illniyar on 4/3/18, 10:04 AM

  Me and a lot of smart developers before me have learned on our skins that you should never make a rewrite.

  I think web design has the same problems as web development in regards to rewrite but the design community has yet to internalize that you should never remake something from scratch.

  That's not to say that you should keep an old design forever - instead make changes incrementally and gradually. Putting 12 designers to work for a year with zero feedback and trying not to hurt whatever magic made reddit popular in the first place is bound to be a disastrous affair.

• by Bukhmanizer on 4/3/18, 6:34 AM

  Like every redesign, I'm sure that people are going to be angry about it no matter how it looks.

  I'm surprised that no one has mentioned it, but really the make or break of this new reddit will be speed. The one thing that I remember noticing about the site is how much faster it was than the comparable time wasting sites (Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc). More speed, more addictiveness.

• by sgloutnikov on 4/3/18, 8:00 AM

  I recently noticed that reddit started to push AI as well for choosing what to display on my front page. As if everyone else doing it was not enough. The more I read some subreddit, the more posts I see from it on my front page, even though they may be scored lower compared to other posts. Just noticed today that a 30k+ karma post from a subscribed subreddit was all the way on page 3.

• by ssaew333 on 4/3/18, 4:39 PM

  Oh goody, more javascript. Infinite scroll. Less room for content, more room for sidebars and doohickeys.

  The internet is a huge pile of garbage.

• by shiado on 4/3/18, 5:56 AM

  I like "Dystopian Craigslist", it is nice and fast and simple.

• by zawerf on 4/3/18, 8:04 AM

  I hope they kept custom CSS in mind when they did this redesign.

  It caused a ton of drama last year when they said they are deprecating custom CSS just to push through this new look. (see https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_red... and /r/ProCSS for details).

• by grayrest on 4/3/18, 8:23 AM

  I used the redesign for two days and rolled back. The designers went for a river of news app-like design.

  I've always had trouble putting individual items in context in river of news designs and prefer to switch from one topic (subreddit in this case) to another and scan each one. The hamburger menu makes this a lot more awkward.

  I also really dislike mobile-driven UI designs on a desktop. I know why they're done. I've implemented them myself. They annoy me.

• by dingo_bat on 4/3/18, 7:47 AM

  Ironic that a page that looks like this[0] on a 24" monitor is commenting on design.

  [0] https://imgur.com/a/nTdxg

• by dmitriid on 4/3/18, 7:39 AM

  Does that redesign still shoves reddit mobile app down your throat and degrades mobile experience?

  (Judging by the fact that mobile isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, I'd say yes)

• by zeveb on 4/3/18, 1:11 PM

  > But up close, the changes have turned Reddit from an esoteric maze into a website anyone can use—like a junk drawer that's been gutted, cleaned, and reorganized.

  > For people who have been on Reddit for years, the obtuseness is part of the appeal.

  What maze? What obtuseness? Reddit is a plain, usable site (esp. if you turn off the image previews they added a few years back). There's simply nothing wrong with it the way it is.

  I suspect that this is a submarine article, paid for by Reddit itself.

  I also suspect that the new interface will be yet another JS-laden, SPA atrocity — but perhaps I'm wrong, and I'll be pleasantly surprised by nice, static, server-rendered HTML instead.

• by Doctor_Fegg on 4/3/18, 8:54 AM

  > Before, formatting text posts required the use of Markdown; now, there's a WYSIWYG toolbar too.

  Ah, that's reassuring to see. So many sites have gone all-in on Markdown in the last few years, which seems to me to be resurrecting early 80s Wordstar-style formatting codes and rejecting the UI advances of Xerox Parc and the Mac.

  Markdown has its place - essentially, something that's readable in both raw and rendered form - but it's not a consumer-friendly way of editing rich text, and I'm pleased to see Reddit recognise that.

• by taspeotis on 4/3/18, 5:19 AM

  I assume there's some irony in this URL ending with ?mbid=synd_digg

• by asaph on 4/3/18, 10:08 AM

  When is the Hacker News site redesign coming?

  Things I'd like to see here:

  - TLRD; article summary for each post

  - markdown support

  - image support

  - user profile page enhancements: avatars, pretty URLs, more links to user's other sites/profiles, etc.

  - user karma listed next to username in comments

  - social logins (1 less password to manage)

• by throw7 on 4/3/18, 6:47 PM

  What is up with web redesigners? They always seem to make things worse, less performant, seem to have egos that shine brighter than the sun. In the end, just shove their perfect child into your face (looking at you youtube).

• by d6de964 on 4/3/18, 12:14 PM

  Isn't it possible to "morph" the changes, little by little, so the users don't get overwhelmed by the changes? I think Facebook has done such progressive redesigns in the past.

• by keyle on 4/3/18, 7:57 AM

  I must be getting old (pun intended), but this instantly reminded me of Digg™.

• by thejerz on 4/3/18, 7:58 AM

  "Our site is wildly successful. We'd better change it."

• by Rainymood on 4/3/18, 8:04 AM

  personally I hate the new user profile overview. I used to be able to quickly scroll through someone's post history and now it looks like another facebook feed ...

• by dbg31415 on 4/3/18, 3:59 PM

  I feel like their redesign didn't go far enough.

  The official Reddit mobile website is totally unusable on mobile.

  I've been really happy with Shine (now with twice the unofficial goodness), and Apollo.

  * SHINE for reddit (unofficial) - Chrome Web Store || https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit-u...

  * Apollo | A beautiful reddit app built for power and speed || https://apolloapp.io/

• by gpmcadam on 4/3/18, 7:52 AM

  Here's the official announcement from reddit itself

  https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...

  Importantly, for those in here who don't like change, you can still visit https://old.reddit.com and get the old site.

• by bfrog on 4/3/18, 10:31 PM

  Looks like they wanted facebook.com with reddit color scheme.

  I feel like this will be about as successful as slashdots redesign attempts over the years.

• by fjcp on 4/3/18, 12:38 PM

  For those interested in a different experience, there is a terminal client called rtv[0]. I use it for most of my Reddit browsing and I consider it even better than the site for text subs like NoSleep for example.

  [0] https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv

• by Aoyagi on 4/3/18, 10:32 AM

  The redesign is just another example of form over function and "fixing" something that's not broken.

• by ryanmarsh on 4/3/18, 7:24 PM

  At this point Reddit's look is authentic. I'd stick with it. Others here have mentioned craigslist as an example. People aren't leaving Reddit because it doesn't look flat and bland like so many other sites. Reddit is an old zoo. It should look like one.

• by ggm on 4/3/18, 9:55 PM

  The key questions would seem to be how long use of a legacy interface was maintained and supported. Having more than one ui is a cost burden, but that aside doesn't have to be a problem

• by raldi on 4/3/18, 5:32 PM

  Based on the near-universal disdain for the redesign here in the HN comments, I'd like to go on record predicting it's going to be a huge success amongst non-HN types.

• by oftenwrong on 4/3/18, 7:16 PM

  Reddit is not yet profitable, right? Will this redesign help them actually make money? Is it meant to allow for more sponsored content between user submissions?

• by gcb0 on 4/3/18, 5:41 AM

  paid puff piece. tl;dr: they made reddit look like Facebook/instagram feed (which every unofficial app already accomplished)

• by superkuh on 4/3/18, 4:09 PM

  Whew. Looks like a dodged a bullet by finally leaving Reddit due to their increasing censorship last month. This new design looks terrible and it breaks reading the site without javascript enabled. Before reddit worked just fine and you could toggle JS on to vote/comment/submit.

  I imagine they feel they can do this kind of thing since new users now overwhelming outnumber old users and they've pushed most of the original users off the site. Facebook 2: This time it's Reddit is coming along nicely.

• by kodisha on 4/3/18, 8:52 AM

  Any known way to activate via some param or something?