
The new Digg - instakill
http://digg.com/
======
blauwbilgorgel
From a technical point of view this "redesign" scares me a bit:

All the old stories and user accounts 404 now. That is a major loss to their
SEO. 14 million pages just thrown away and not passing any juice.

They don't employ canonical or robots.txt.

They have character encoding issues. ("'Superbird' Discovered")

They use a meta keywords tag, and it contains "celebrity news", which doesn't
appear anywhere on their site.

They hardcode CSS with styles on div's. They don't use text-transform but type
headers in all-caps.

They use the HTML5 doctype, but none of the new tags or practices (like
ditching the obsolete 'type="text/javascript"' on script tags).

The layout breaks without javascript on, and the "upcoming stories" section
doesn't get loaded. They provide no warning as to why the site's functionality
stops working.

They don't combine or compress resources like CSS and Javascript.

They left debugging and TODO's statements in their javascript.

    
    
      $(".story-image-marquee-standard").empty().html("<img src='http://imoscar.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/imoscar11.gif' alt='' />");
    

tries to load content from a discontinued website.

A lot of empty placeholder divs to js-load content into. TPL's are also stored
inside the page contents.

URL's are not properly encoded (space instead of %20).

Links to the same article are both with 'target="_blank"' and without.

They don't use microformats or schema.org.

~~~
freehunter
_The layout breaks without javascript on_

I see this bandied about on reviews of various sites, and I continue to
believe it doesn't matter. If you have Javascript turned off and a page
doesn't load, you should know why that page isn't loading. It's because you
deliberately broke it for yourself.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
You are free to believe that. But let us say I want to cater both to you and
to another user that browses the web with NoScript (assume it is my goal to
cater to as many users as possible). I have two options: A) make the layout
accessible without JavaScript B) break the layout without JavaScript. Only
with option A do I cater to both of you -- Regardless of deliberate breaking
or bandied opinions ("Thou shalt never mix style and script").

~~~
mistercow
>assume it is my goal to cater to as many users as possible

The thing is, it's _not_ your goal to cater to as many users as possible. It's
your goal to optimize your ROI on development time. The reason we have to have
_laws_ about accessibility is that your average fast food place knows that
wheelchair-bound hamburger sales will never make back the cost of constructing
a wheelchair ramp. The economics of the situation wouldn't provide for
disabled people, so we have to have regulation to make sure they get taken
care of.

(And before anyone jumps on that and misinterprets me, I am _not_ comparing
disabilities to turning off JavaScript. I'm simply showing by example that it
is not good business to try to grab every possible customer at any cost.)

~~~
mirkules
I'm tired of having this argument over and over again, so let's approach this
Javascript issue from a different angle:

It is bad practice to couple content (the "what") with functionality (the
"how"). The content itself should not depend on how it is displayed. From an
engineering standpoint, this makes your code unmanageable and unmaintainable
in the long run. These stupid shortcuts of forcing users to have Javascript on
just to display content only cause me minor inconvenience, but it will cause
you much more harm when it's maintenance or upgrade time.

But you or everyone else on the JS bandwagon don't need to listen to me - I'll
"temporarily allow" only the minimal amount of scripts on your page to see
what I want to see and I will move on. You will need to live with this code
during the next update cycle.

~~~
eps
There are certain design elements that translate into a single line of JS, but
require a couple of pages worth of CSS voodoo. Guess what's more maintainable.

~~~
mirkules
So we compensate for a lack of CSS libraries by mixing presentation layer with
content layer. Nice.

~~~
eps
You brought up the maintenance angle, and the response to that is that in some
cases it's far more practical to use js for atyling than to rely purely on
css. I gave an example below - a sticky page footer - do show me how to do it
in the confines of your abstraction model.

Abstarting things for the sake of abstracting is a rather naive approach. It's
a good starting point, but some abstractions complicate things way beyond
what's needed.

~~~
mirkules
While I agree that exceptions in very rare cases are needed, exceptions are
becoming the norm and, like I said, are coupling functionality and content.
This is why CSS was created, to decouple style from content, and now? We are
are throwing all that work away because an entire generation of web devs are
just too lazy to look it up.

By the way, a quick search for sticky page footer on Google turned up this as
the first result -- no JS needed, and it didn't even look that hard
(<http://www.cssstickyfooter.com/using-sticky-footer-code.html>).

~~~
huhtenberg
All CSS solutions, including yours, require vertical margins on all page
elements to be 0px, which is clearly an obscure and senseless restriction.

------
ColinWright
Personally, and I'm probably in a minority, I _hate_ these huge, slabby,
infinitely scrolling displays of photos/images with precious few items on the
screen. It's a lot of work to try to find any sensible number of items of
interest.

I seriously prefer an interface like HN - spare, clean, and information rich.

 _Added in edit: I my POV differs significantly from that of
jgrahamc:<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4321826> _

~~~
welcomebrand
I don't like it either, I personally find it hard to establish any sort of
importance or order.

~~~
markkat
That's what I dislike most. It doesn't have the feeling of flow that you
expect from a community-content site.

------
jgrahamc
This is great. The large scrolling format (similar to pinterest) is a good
idea as the last thing that was needed was something that looked like reddit
or HN. Sites like the Daily Mail have been very successful with this style.

Good luck to the new Digg team!

~~~
snorkel
Looks like a sparse Huffington Post to me.

~~~
untog
...that sounds fantastic to me. I'd read a lot more HuffPo if the pages
weren't so laden with crap.

------
andreasklinger
Read their blog comments <http://blog.digg.com/post/28441399381/welcome-to-
digg-v1>

It is impressive how much hate and negativity the comments include. Sometimes
we forget that while traffic keeps up community quality can easily degenerate.
They will have to put also a lot of effort into community-re-building.

This shows again shows to me how hard and impressive the task is they picked.
It's social software. It's not only the rewriting of the software part but
also rewiring te social part. Truly inspiring!

~~~
nicholassmith
Quite frankly if it upsets all those people going "Facebook login?! I'M NEVER
COMING BACK" and they don't, I'd probably be more interested in using Digg
again

~~~
mtgx
Why would they tie their future to Facebook, though?

~~~
Schlaefer
They say it's a short term solution to fight submission spam. See second to
the last: <http://digg.com/faq#why-facebook>

------
alan_cx
OK, I fire up the site. I see 6 big pictures, 6 links to actual content and
minimal navigation. A whole screen and only 6 bits of actual content? Its like
a children's book. And more and more sites age going for this style. Is this
the web now? The BBC Olympic site has gone this route and its awful to
navigate.

Why is this the new way to go? IMHO, it is terrible.

Look at this site, a simple and clear list of links to stories and associated
comments. Simple, easy and lots of content on one screen, in my case, 27
linked stories. Please don't ever let HN go this way. I don't want big pretty
pictures taking up my screen when Im trying to look for written stories to
read. I am not a child.

------
AlexanderZ
The team had to make drastic changes. They wanted people to forget about the
old Digg and its fiasco. The best way to do it? Become completely different.
They also needed to become different from their rivals.

That's why I don't understand why people here are complaining on the new
format. I personally find it great and novel. The clean design and only six
stories in sight allow you to focus and actually pay more attention to each of
the stories.

When I see 30 stories clumped into one page, I run through their titles like a
mad man, often reading just 50% of the words. Having just 6 stories eliminates
the haste, it allows me to relax and slowly study all the stories before
deciding if I want to read them further.

I like the new Digg. I think the team made a right move with the new format.
Now all they need is really good content on the front page and users will
come. I know I will check it again tomorrow.

~~~
johnbellone
No they absolutely didn't. All the team needed to do is put a fresh coat of
paint on Digg, similar to it was in the beginning, and capitalize on the
traffic before they wanted to make drastic changes.

Digg's whole problem started with when they tried to become the Twitter of
news. That's not original intent of the site. _If_ you purchased all that
data, all that SEO linking, you'd have to be absolutely crazy not to migrate
over at least the stories into your new design.

These guys completely dropped the ball.

~~~
AlexanderZ
So, put a fresh coat of paint on a product that failed miserably? Why is that
a good idea?

They didn't pay for the data and SEO linking, they paid for the name and buzz
in the media. In my opinion they are not using the old data on purpose, they
don't want to have anything in common with the v4 at all. It's not modified
Digg, it's a completely new Digg. This is how I'm reading their message.

------
mootothemax
I'll be honest, I'm surprised by how much I like it. For a quick "give me
something - anything! - to read over lunch" it serves the purpose for me very
well.

Best of luck to the new team!

~~~
jwl
Same here. Looks like a good front page for general news, whereas something
like reddit mostly shows it benefits when you get actively into the
subreddits.

------
Irishsteve
I don't mind the whole facebook sign up process. They have a justification for
it. But then when they ask can they start posting to my feed it makes me feel
like they were fibbing to me the whole time!

They just want free advertising via my social feed. Pft.

~~~
shadesandcolour
What about when you click the "x" next to that permission and you don't have
to worry about it anymore?

------
octotoad
I must admit I haven't even visited digg in over four years, but wasn't it
originally intended to feature user-submitted content? The front page pretty
much screams the exact opposite to me. I instantly pictured a bunch of hired
goons sitting in an office, submitting content in return for their weekly pay.

The headlines, photos and layout reminds me of Ars Technica without the
original content.

------
debacle
There's far too much scrolling for far to little content.

This just wont be able to compete with reddit in its current format. People
who used Digg before wont come back to Digg because this Digg isn't what they
want.

Also, as I have the tab open, I have a notification at the bottom of the
screen:

"We're hard at work on finding new stories for you... Try refreshing in a few
minutes."

Extremely professional.

------
antihero
Things I wanted to do but couldn't/couldn't immediately figure out:

1\. Comment. What is the point of an aggregator without comments? 2\. Go to a
specific category. Are those things above the titles categories? Why aren't
they clickable? WTF?

~~~
howells
Their argument is that commentary on the original Digg was essentially the
first of its kind, whereas commentary happens "everywhere" and they need to
spend time aggregating commentary too. Not sure how they can do this
effectively, but will appear over the next few releases.

~~~
betterth
Honestly, it's like releasing a car without wheels. Comments are the bread and
butter of social news sites. I'm shocked and horrified that they omitted
comments. It's a glorified Pinterest at the moment.

I'm really disappointed - I really hoped they had learned some lessons.

Comments are where community forms.

Without community, you have nothing but a shiny, editor-controlled front page.
Congrats, CNN 2.0 (No wait, even CNN allows comments...)

------
dhyasama
This thread makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a toothpick. The
nitpicking is outrageous. Think about your last project with a tight deadline.
OMG a bad meta tag made in! Should we delay the release? If you are running a
business not a personal site the answer should ALWAYS be no. This is a website
not shrink wrapped software. It can be updated a hundred times a day. Meta
tags can be changed. It's ok to roll out a site that isn't 100% where you want
it to be. I, for one, welcome the new Digg and look forward to them improving
their meta tags.

------
guynamedloren
If anyone from Digg is reading this, please make #site-header-container 2px
wider. The right edge of the header is bothering the crap out of me.

Other than that, great job new Digg team!

 _Edit: after a few refreshes and zoom in/out, the header appears to be
centered correctly. it seems to be offset if i resize my window and/or other
random times. the header css is kinda janky, but who cares, you guys did great
for a 6 week build from scratch. :)_

------
irreverentbits
The new Digg doesn't look terrible, by any stretch. But - the developers'
insistence on an arbitrary six week push deadline when there clearly remain
unsolved problems is fairly amateurish and reeks of self-indulgence.

Users /with existing expectations/ (which Digg invariably presents) do not
care about "release early, release often." They want something that kicks ass
and gets it right on the first try.

~~~
robryan
Kind of disagree, if users are still on the site to voice opinions that means
they are pretty resilient. They aren't going to give up right away because the
first release doesn't have everything.

~~~
irreverentbits
Maybe. On the other hand, it seems like a fair amount of these opinions are
"fuck this noise, I'm going to Reddit/etc."

Don't get me wrong - I would absolutely love to see the new Digg rocket into
popularity again... but I'm just not certain that's going to be the case.

------
iuguy
I find the look interestingly different to what I expected. The loss of colour
is brave (given the Digg green) but is at least a clean break, which is
perhaps what's needed.

It would be nice to have a small bar at the top that when clicked would show
the most popular and upcoming rather than having to scroll to the bottom
(although I'd keep the material at the bottom as well for those that don't
notice).

The Popular section looks too big for my liking.

Of course the big thing is the content. How relevant is the content? Sadly on
face value, it looks like it fails (but then again it would as the content
will be the same as v4).

In conclusion it looks nice and is a welcome break, but the content doesn't
make me want to sign up. I do wish the new Digg team the best of luck though,
and will check back in a while to see if the content's improved.

------
zachinglis
Design wise. It's clean, and lacks personality - which I presume is the point
to impartiality.

The makes me think of the phrase 'go big or go home.' This is not a big enough
departure from the last Digg to really warrant a whole rewrite and losing the
original posts.

To be honest; it seems only a step away from traditional newspaper websites -
which have the benefit of the zero-hour news feed. They need to inject yet
more community back into this.

As someone who's spent a decent amount of time leading the redesign on a
newspaper site - I remember putting far more innovation into a traditional
newspaper site than this has.

------
rjernigan
Digg, Reddit, and Hacker News are easy to browse for a reason.

I like the redesign, but I don't think it fits with social news Digg-style.
When I go to a site like reddit or Digg, I know I'm not going to like every
article posted. Mostly, I want to find what is interesting to me as fast as
possible. Sites with large images and scattered, newspaper-style layouts make
it hard for me to find what I want. This layout would work on a focused blog
where I know that I am interested in most of the articles, but not on a mass
news aggregator.

------
alaskamiller
Pinterest 9gag for links.

~~~
jgroome
...And therefore not like either Pinterest or 9gag.

~~~
alaskamiller
Turns out it's very much like Flipboard. The idiot box is succumbing to the
idiot trough.

------
IanDrake
The new Digg....

504 Gateway Time-out nginx/1.1.19

Well I'm underwhelmed.

------
com2kid
I opened the page, was overwhelmed with images, scrolled down a bit, saw that
the information overload continued, and closed it.

When I open it, I have no idea what I am supposed to do. Information dense
pictures are being shown to me across two dimensions, my eyes have no clue
what flow to follow.

Newspapers have had hundreds of years to learn how to make these sort of
layouts work, it seems like Digg said "screw that, we're just going to shove
it all out there!"

------
crazygringo
I'm surprised to discover I actually _like_ the layout. Mainly because, with
sites like Reddit, much of the time the content is just an image, and you're
just interested in the top couple of comments. If they can put this content
straight onto the main page, it's actually more efficient to consume.

I hope they implemented threaded votable comments soon, though -- the
community discussion is the main thing, for a lot of people!

------
k-mcgrady
Seems good, I like the layout. I can already see myself visiting for a daily
dose of news. Reading through the comments on the blog makes me think they are
going to have problems with the community. Lots of complaints about use of
Facebook login even after Digg explained it was a temporary system so they
could launch quicker (they are working on a system of their own).

------
peto123
The design is quite ok for me, but what about the provided value?

I skimmed through the links, and I saw many of them already, on other social
sites I visit, I mean HN, Techmeme and reddit. What would draw me to digg
could be a community of great commenters, like one on slashdot, which would
add value by providing insightful/funny commentary. Without that, it's a bit
redundant to me.

------
aniket_ray
This has been on the front page <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4320147>
and had received pretty negative reviews from many HN users as well.

Personally, I don't think that looking like a newspaper/magazine and adopting
a techmeme like share mechanism is a significant enough change that the market
would need.

------
veyron
Facebook requirement is a nonstarter. Even if it cuts down spam, requiring FB
already eliminates a good portion of the population.

------
aen
Looks like <http://www.likabl.es> and <http://dropula.com>. I still prefer the
Reddit/HN style layout. Feels like reading a magazine (no sense of rank) now
rather than a list of ranked articles.

------
orangethirty
It looks like a plain version of yahoo. What is their goal here?

If I were digg, I'd just hire a bunch of engineers, and let them put out a new
product under the old name. Something not directly related to their past.
Though I would keep their archives online for SEO.

------
lolz
504 Gateway Time-out nginx/1.1.19

Looks like they're trying to replicate Reddit's feel too closely! I like it!

------
geon
I'm surprised (not really) how people complains about how this will cause the
last remaining Digg users to leave.

As I see it, this is not just a redesign of the old Digg, but a whole new site
with a diffrent concept. Much like "Dig is dead. Long live Digg!"

------
at-fates-hands
I would point to Best Buy as a prime example of this "release now, worry about
the flaws later" philosophy. Their website has been a mess for years mostly
because of this very approach.

It's an old adage, but you should really do it right the first time.

------
borplk
I'm personally not a fan of this layout. Looks like Pinterest. It's good if
you have some time to spare and looking for pretty images, etc... like most
Pinterest users, but for power users it's too much distraction.

------
rocky1138
The layout is nice but the stories are still rubbish.

I'll stick with Hacker News.

------
brongondwana
"502 Bad Gateway". I see the HTTP standard has already captured everything you
need to know about digg's relationship to the internet in one succinct phrase.

------
guruz
I like the fact that they incorporate fb likes and tweets to the score.

This helps battling the social site chicken/egg effect and makes spam stories
hopefully less likely.

------
kitcar
I am getting "504 Gateway Time-out" when I visit the page

~~~
antidaily
Me too.

------
h00k
It looks good, here's what I see:

504 Gateway Time-out nginx/1.1.19

------
ThomPete
As much as I think the new design is great. I do not believe it's going to
solve anything let alone Diggs fundamental problem.

------
3minus1
Are there no comments? To me that's half the reason I go to a site like reddit
of hacker news, maybe more.

------
hiphopopotamus
I like the minimalist look of it, but it's useless for me until they add
categories or tags.

------
instakill
What it looks like to me:

Pinterest on top Weird section in the middle Hacker News type thing on the
bottom.

------
SolarUpNote
Where are the comments?

The comments are much more important than page layout or the number of tweets.

------
coin
Consistently crashes Safari on my iPad 1 when zooming in. Did they QA the new
look?

------
tluyben2
What CMS did they use; the URLs look from something enterprisey like Vignette?

------
brh_jr
I really hate, unless I am missing something that they got rid of categories.

------
obilgic
<http://about.digg.com>

------
dhugiaskmak
The new Digg took longer than 3 seconds to load so I didn't bother.

------
jabber_123
By removing comments, the Digg staff deserve to all get laid off.

------
entelarust
aaaaaandddddddd they are down...
<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/digg.com>

------
l3nz
"504 Gateway Time-out". Seems quite a radical redesign.

------
gunmetal
The new digg == 504 Gateway timeout. Great job guys.

------
seqizz
504 Gateway Time-out , that is a big improvement

------
Raphael
I hope they kept the old passages pages for SEO.

------
aymeric
Good luck Digg team! You have achieved a whole lot in a short time.

Some people love it, some people hate it. Whatever you do, it will happen.
Stay true to your vision!

~~~
alan_cx
Haven't they just changed their vision, what ever a vision is?

------
thewileyone
It's trying to look like Flipboard.

------
obilgic
504 Gateway Time-out -nginx/1.1.19

~~~
gorekee
Block the FB script. Then you can see the page.

------
tomrod
Oh the irony. I get a 503 error.

~~~
tomrod
Make that a 504.

------
rawoke
Feels like the New York times ?

------
rsobers
Looks a lot like Mahalo.com.

------
human_error
> © 2012 Bananastand Inc

That made my day.

------
razdjp
Hmm .. I kinda like it.

------
executive
annnnd it's down.

------
jhony_d
F __king shit

