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Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

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Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#91

Post by huac »

deathanatos wrote: post #80
frfl wrote: post #22

Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. Why was the change implemented? The previous design wasn't broken! How's the user feedback? A/B testing really indicated to you this was a good choice?! If you have any insight -- I'm sure this was a deci…

The new design hasn't worked . In particular, when browsing a subreddit, the first page or so of posts will load, but that's it. The "Next" button that used to take you to the next page is gone, which rather limits what you can view. I think its supposed to be infinite scrolling, but that simply hasn't worked, if that's what is supposed to happen. Make it work. Make it fast (or pretty). That order.

that's your adblocker preventing the infinite scroll from loading more items

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#92

Post by rdtsc »

vokep wrote: post #64
meesterdude wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why was the change implemented? There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view.

None of that justifies it. They wasted their time, so now everyone has to pay? I don't think so. If the old design wasn't easy to go back to, I'd only view reddit through API based things (app) at this point.

> They wasted their time,

They didn't waste their time. They got promotions and padded their resumes with "designed and implemented" sections. In the process they also justified their salaries. Imagine they are well paid designers getting nice 6 figure salaries. During review they say something like "we didn't do anything, all the stuff actually worked pretty well" vs "yeah, we identified these million things wrong then went and redesigned and modernized all the stuff". Which one will they go for. Which one does the management go for? Or future employees.

That's why I believe GMail was changing its UI every 6 months. You sneezed and you got a new UI in it, even though the old one was pretty decent.

Even if the new UI is crap nobody in the chain has the incentive to raise their hand and say it, because they've all been praising it and approving it for a year.

This highlights I think why it is very important to get impartial test users, who perhaps are paid to be brutally honest and just give their opinions whatever they are.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#93

Post by kethinov »

This is just a symptom of the webdev world's over-reliance on JavaScript to draw interfaces nowadays. The web stack has HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for reason. Quit doing everything in the third layer. Make your stuff with progressive enhancement. Knock off the do-it-all-in-JS stuff and your web apps will perform better.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#94

Post by stephengillie »

tomc1985 wrote: post #16
Skunkleton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News isn't a bad alternative ;)

This place has a really strong pro-cloud pro-JS bent tho

No other language executes in browsers for historic reasons.[0] And there is reduced friction to developing all parts of the stack in a single language. Not all Javascript developers support the current state of the Node ecosystem.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17051521

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#95

Post by ItsMe000001 »

graeme wrote: post #59
cool_shit wrote: post #43

I deleted my Reddit account which kept the old design on it. Now when I occasionally browse Reddit as a non-user, it looks like an awful implementation of material design with tons of wasted space. For example, I see about 1.5 cards per page on my 13" laptop. Who designed this? It is horrid and nearly unusable. Not that I'll be using Reddit that much anymore, but it's like they deprecated the desktop version for mobi…

Interesting. New users can't access the old design at all?

Last time I checked reddit you could open the dropdown menu from your account name, upper right corner, and OPT OUT of the new design.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

pxlt wrote: post #81
dredmorbius wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://old.reddit.com I believe it's possible to set that as a default regardless of account age. But it's a PITA.

This Chrome extension does it for you: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...

Not on Android ...

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#98

Post by bassman9000 »

meesterdude wrote: post #58
frfl wrote: post #22

Anyone from reddit's dev team reading this? Or youtube's dev team, because my question applies to both. The previous design was great. The new version of both sites is slow, sluggish and provides me with no benefit. Why was the change implemented? The previous design wasn't broken! How's the user feedback? A/B testing really indicated to you this was a good choice?! If you have any insight -- I'm sure this was a deci…

> Why was the change implemented? There's no easy back peddling from a year of development. It may be crap, but they put so much time & effort into it they can't turn back now - even if a lot of users hate it. They're also working more on becoming an Advertising platform, and this redesign allows for more flexibility there, like linkedin's auto-play videos when scrolling into view.

Yes, there is. You stop, cut your losses, do a heavy post mortem to get something out of it, and fire the responsibles.

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#99

Post by ItsMe000001 »

majos wrote: post #55
nostrademons wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old site also did mostly server-side rendering while the new site is largely client-side rendering of structured data. One of those isn't necessarily heavier-weight than the other, but it does shift the energy usage from the company's data-center to the user's computer or mobile device. Server-side rendering also opens up more opportunities for cross-user caching, which AIUI Reddit used extensively.

Is shifting costs from servers to clients such a massive savings that it could outweigh annoyed users? I genuinely have no feel for the relevant amounts here.

The argument is not right though, because the data reddit needs to display can be rendered much faster. Come on, browsers on Giga(!)-Hertz computers (I added the ! because I come from the single-digit MHz era). It requires a lot of attention to detail to make them so slow... /s

Re: Reddit's redesign increases power usage of user's devices

#100

Post by nostrademons »

majos wrote: post #55
nostrademons wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old site also did mostly server-side rendering while the new site is largely client-side rendering of structured data. One of those isn't necessarily heavier-weight than the other, but it does shift the energy usage from the company's data-center to the user's computer or mobile device. Server-side rendering also opens up more opportunities for cross-user caching, which AIUI Reddit used extensively.

Is shifting costs from servers to clients such a massive savings that it could outweigh annoyed users? I genuinely have no feel for the relevant amounts here.

I would bet that both directions were a minor consideration in their plans. A bigger concern is probably development time (much easier to find React developers than Pylons or whatever Reddit used to use now) and the ability to integrate new features like r/thebutton or r/place.
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