

I'm curious, Hackers, what do you think of the reddit redesign? - kn0thing
http://reddit.com
Bracing for flamewar...
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pg
I think you should change the name; "reddit" is ok, but there are still a lot
of good names available.

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kn0thing
So you're saying it's _not_ poison to potential investors? ;)

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asimjalis
I liked the old design much better. The new design seems too much like Digg.
It lacks the simple minimalism that made Reddit better than Digg. The
minimalist niche seems really hard to hold on to. There is always this urge to
add something because one can.

~~~
kn0thing
Fair enough. I'm curious, what specific changes removed the simple minimalism
of ol' reddit?

We were very careful to not add elements superfluously. For instance, the
[browse] button had long been a scourge of mine. It was almost never clicked
on and hid a great sort option (controversy) that was woefully underused as a
result. Adding [controversial] to the horiz nav made a great feature (unique
to reddit) more accessible and removed a crappy one (the browse button).

That's just one example, but it's my favorite, because I really hated the
browse button :)

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asimjalis
The nav improvements are great.

I was talking more about how each article link is rendered. The links (in the
new reddit) take up too much vertical space. The way HN does it (and the way
reddit used to do) was much better. Here is the reason: It makes it easy for
me to quickly scan the article. Basically have one-line per link. Instead of
multiple lines.

Also I don't need to see the score in a larger font. Usually I don't pay
attention to the score. The way I decide whether I want to read the article
is: (a) the title, (b) where it is linked from (e.g. nytimes.com, etc). Almost
everything else gets in the way.

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mk
I like it for the most part. Not crazy about the uncompressed link display,
but thats not a big deal. The biggest thing that bothered me is that my
subreddits that I am subscribed to have changed.

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Oompa
I'm the opposite, I quite like the uncompressed link display. I thought I
disliked it at first, and ticked on the compressed view, but quickly went back
to uncompressed.

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mannylee1
I love it. Uncompressing the stories makes it much easier to read the
homepage. The only thing I don't like is the voting system. Why do you have to
make the points in the middle of the arrows? This sort of takes away from the
simplicity of reddit.

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greendestiny
I like the whitespace, font sizes and colours. The header is much clearer. The
positioning/typography of the rank number, arrows and vote count sucks. The
rank, vote 'spinner' and title/comments seem to occupy three different
vertical alignments and the result is very confusing. At the very least
aligning the rank number with the title would be an improvement. Potentially
you could align the uparrow with the title, vote count with the submitted text
and the downarrow with the comments link.

~~~
rrwhite
I have some of the same alignment issues especially when a entry has a long
title.

I mocked up what it would look like if everything for an entry was vertically
centered: <http://skitch.com/rrwhite/cm3m/reddit-centered-mod>

I'm not sure yet whether I think that's an improvement :)

~~~
greendestiny
I think its an improvement. Not generally a fan of things being centred, but
its better to be properly centred than sort of randomly near centre.

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STHayden
love the new spacing... I was feeling claustrophobic before.

I still think it could use more space between the header and the first links..
and you could do more with the arrows with out over doing it too...

over all though it's a solid upgrade!

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apgwoz
The spacing between comments on the comments page is my biggest concern.
They're way too close together.

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metachor
The new design feels cumbersome on mobile devices, to the point of being
unreadable. This is entirely due to the right-hand sidebar (with the Customize
your reddit, Submit a link and Create your own reddit call-out boxes), which
appears above the actual page content in mobile layouts. These three boxes are
a lot longer than they used to be (especially Customize your reddit), so it
takes a lot of scrolling to actually get to the links.

It's great that you can compress the link display, however, without the
ability to dispose of the Customize your reddit and other sidebar call-out
boxes, reddit is now a pain to read on a mobile device.

For what its worth, that used to be my main means of browsing reddit.

Edit: This is not a threat or anything, but I stopped reading Digg back when
their site redesign made it impossible to read on a mobile device. Please
don't ignore the mobile device users, though we are a minority to consider
when deciding on a layout.

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rrwhite
Have you checked out m.reddit.com

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metachor
Thanks! m.reddit.com is indeed much better for mobiles. Wish I had seen that
earlier.

No complains about the new layout after all then -- it looks great on desktop
browsers.

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bayleo
Hey Alexis, I had to kill the "Customize your reddit" frame and the
submit/create windows on the right as they are serious real-estate hogs on my
5:4 monitor at work. If you guys could add this to the preferences it would
probably help out some users like me who are not willing to play with
greasemonkey.

~~~
kn0thing
Yes, I'm playing with an collapse/expand button for that widget right now...

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Caligula
I find it too distracting and too spaced out compared to before. I guess its a
good thing as I waste too much time there anyways. I read on some post that it
was possible to revert the changes so I might finally make an account. I cant
comment about the NSFW section yet as I am still at work....

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PI
too be honest, i liked it before, not to keen on the new design too much white
space for my liking.

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Cpudk
The new reddit is completely broken in Opera mini. Spacing is messed up. For
some reason there is a huge gap between the headline and the first. Even
worse, the comments are truncated. So basically, since OM's my main browser, I
hate it.

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maxklein
I really dislike it. It does not feel the same, and I wish I could quit it
easily. If there were an alternative with the old design I'd go back.

I see no reason why you changed the design. The old one was fine.

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lbrandy
Let me add to the chorus: the density option in preferences saved it for me. I
was absolutely dreading the beta.reddit.com because of all the whitespace and
when it went live I was sad. Then I found about the compress option and now
I'm much much happier. With that option turned on, it's much nicer then before
(both before the update, and before enabling the option :P).

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asnyder
So I just used "customize your reddit", unchecked most of the categories, then
clicked on a story, and then when I went back to the story list none of my
category changes were saved. It changed back to the defaults bombarding be
with these stories I just took the time to filter. Granted I wasn't logged in,
but this is annoying, and bad design.

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jedberg
I guess the "save these changes" button needs to be made more obvious. A lot
of people seem to be missing it.

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nirmal
I think the arrows for voting should change color when you hover over them and
the number should not.

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TrevorJ
I like it visually, but it is not as efficient for my eye so parse as the old
design.

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gaika
double numbers on the left are confusing

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quoderat
Too much white space. Won't be visiting any longer.

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thorax
By the way, there's a config option to revert the whitespace back. Go to
preferences (upper right) and check "compress the link display".

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ojbyrne
You have to login (or register) to see that.

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bjclark
Yawn.

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LPTS
I don't read reddit. But I checked out the design, and I think your website
has a couple design mistakes.

The arrows should not be above and below each number. That is horrible.
Really.

Also, the domain of the link should be right of "submitted by" because there
is space and that way, it would be in a consistent space instead of tacked on
wherever the headline ends, and would be yield lines of consistent fonts what
seem easier to read to me.

That's what stands out. Your website seems well thought out (besides those
things that seem too clashing to me).

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rrwhite
Can you expound on what's you find horrible about the points and the arrows.
My understanding, and I've been helping the Reddit guys with the redesign, is
that people we're getting the idea that the arrows were for moderation and so
it made sense to add more of a connection between them and the points.

I felt pretty strongly about keeping the domain on the same line as the link
(it was originally to be put just where you recommend). From a logical
perspective, since it's information about the link and not meta information
about the submission (who submitted it and to what 'category') it made sense
to keep it on the link line. More importantly I felt that there was a natural
tendency to read the link title and then immediately scan the domain as a
final check before one clicks on the link. It felt much more natural to have
that as one statement [link] [domain] than to involve scanning to another line
[link] -scan-> [domain] even if it was consistently placed on that next line.

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LPTS
"Can you expound on what's you find horrible about the points and the arrows."

The way they look. Your assessment of the problem is good. You gotta connect
the points with the arrows. BUT, the way you does it looks horrible. I don't
know how else to say it. FSJ says "It harshes my zen" and that's about the
best I can do. Like, in just this one little corner, I'm flashing back to AOL
in 1995 or any of a million badly designed games from windows 95. You have a
good grasp of your problem, you just need a cleaner looking solution.

I actually think having up and down arrows is too much, but I doubt that's the
kind of feedback you are looking for.

If you keep the domain where it is you should make the fonts clash less. Make
that look the same as the other stuff on the line. Then it flows nice. It
doesn't flow nice when the font is the same as the metadata but you aren't
treating it like metadata (I think).

It's obvious you've thought through the redesign. Is nice to see signs of
intelligence!

