
Redesigning the Redesign of Reddit - krm01
https://medium.com/@fairpixelsco/redesigning-the-redesign-of-reddit-in-60-minutes-ddddda1d4374
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Someone1234
Their re-re-design is a slight improvement but much of my issue with the
Reddit re-design isn't simply the initial layout (although the excess
whitespace is irksome) it is many things:

\- Slow / high CPU usage

\- Comments don't /really/ open. Instead it is this strange modal-like
experience with these "suicide" dark bars at either side that redirects you to
that subreddit or the reddit homepage losing your position on the comments.

\- Tons of whitespace everywhere.

\- Infinite scroll

\- More visual distractions ("Trending today", larger image ads, more embedded
ads, the footer is now on the right instead of bottom, etc).

\- Too much emphasis on stuff that isn't important. Content should be king but
they list "r/AskReddit •Posted XXXYYYY 12 hours ago" first so you have to
visually skim passed it, annoying Join button (which is a solution to a non-
problem), and a comments button that does the same thing as just clicking the
title (rather than taking you to the actual content).

I could go on.

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lancesells
Totally agree on it being slow. Displaying a list of links should not be slow.
Too many design and dev teams try to make these interactive JS apps in the
browser that are terribly slow and anti-user.

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aarpmcgee
I’ll stop using Reddit when they inevitably remove old.reddit.com

~~~
unixsheikh
I made the same decision the other day. The redesign is such a pain to use
that it's absolutely unbearable.

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pier25
> _Don’t turn redesigns into a revolution that alienates your core users_

I've been a heavy Reddit user for 7 years (still am) and alienated is exactly
how I feel about the desktop redesign. I rarely use Reddit on mobile, I'd say
99% of the time I use it via the desktop interface with RES.

It's like a different company took over a product they didn't understand,
completely lacking skills to accomplish their goals. It's wrong on a design
level, on a UX level, and on a technical level.

I absolutely love using Reddit and I've even considered making my own UI and
feed it via their public API.

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ehaughee
I currently use a plugin to redirect to old.reddit.com[1] and I _think_ I read
somewhere that reddit does not plan to shut that down any time soon.

[1][https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-
re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/)

~~~
pier25
If you are logged in there is a setting to use old Reddit. When the redesign
was launched it wasn't very consistent, but it has been working fine for the
past couple of months.

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ScottFree
The redesign of the redesign isn't bad, but it needs more contrast. The light
grey on the white background is too hard to read and the light grey borders
around key elements do nothing to separate them out visually.

Is this a new design trend? I'm seeing the lack of contrast on a site being
seen more and more as "subtle" as if that were a good thing.

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jjwhitaker
Compact != cluttered

I like things dense for better use of monitor space, be it Gmail or Reddit.
All that dead space is wasted space, minimalism or not.

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contravariant
Removing the preview button will probably hurt functionality. Also if you're
going to make things bigger anyway I'd make the thumbnails bigger as well (not
that it will matter much for the text-based subreddit).

Also changing the upvote / downvote arrows won't help adoption, even the
redesign didn't dare do that.

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minimaxir
This approach is from a designer perspective and not an engagement/user
retention perspective.

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V-eHGsd_
you say that like it's a bad thing.

trying to game user engagement/user retention numbers are what get you things
like notification requests when you visit random websites (I'm looking at you,
website for arbitrary midwest nbc affiliate).

I posit that the "stickiness" factor of website is a bad measure of how "good"
its design is.

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mikewhy
Looks a lot like the classic view, with more minimalism and whitespace. And
lacking the sidebar.

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newsreview1
Can't you overcome this "problem" by simply changing the view?

