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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

#181

Post by JoshMnem »

AstralStorm wrote: post #179
JoshMnem wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Plus was so heavy that it barely ran on my old netbook with 4 Gb of RAM. I think that if it had looked a bit more like Craig's List it would have had a much better chance of success. (seriously) The Web needs an anti-bloat movement where animation is minimized and documents are mostly server-rendered.

No to the latter. Instead please extend HTML with useful entries and stop using Javascript for layout and handling connections and refreshes. What you said suggest the use of migrated like Google AMP. Server side had no idea how things are supposed to be rendered. Trying to force it via JS is an extra crock.

Google AMP is terrible for many reasons.

Server side has an idea on how things are supposed to be rendered for content-based documents.

Games and complex apps need JS, but readable documents don't. Not everything should be "an app".

Animation is often not accessible and it's a problem that needs to be fixed.

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

#182

Post by md224 »

dingaling wrote: post #157
md224 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is subscribing to subreddits that match your interests. /r/all is like the sun: it can brighten your day, but if you stare at it you might just go blind. Also, if you find The Next Reddit, let me know so I can build a new AskOuija there. :P

For me, just casually dropping in to subreddits from a web search, I recoil at the suggestion of signing-up and slogging through curating and filtering until I achieve Reddit Nirvana. Life is too short. Particularly when other topic-focused communities already exist i.e. what problem are subreddits solving? And to invert that to the whole set, what problem is Reddit solving? I think they've asked themselves that and…

> Particularly when other topic-focused communities already exist i.e. what problem are subreddits solving?

Subreddits don’t necessarily solve a problem... they’re just a well-made framework for content sharing and conversation, combining ideas from previous message board systems to provide a good user experience. But it’s the way Reddit combines them that makes them useful, which means I can’t answer this question without answering the following one:

> And to invert that to the whole set, what problem is Reddit solving?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but the answer seems blatantly obvious to me: it allows you to have all of your communities on a single platform. It creates a kind of meta-community... a user you interact with in one subreddit may show up later in another. Why would you create multiple independent accounts at multiple message boards across the web when you can have one account and one simple feed of relevant posts from all of your communities?

> I recoil at the suggestion of signing-up and slogging through curating and filtering until I achieve Reddit Nirvana. Life is too short.

I’m honestly perplexed as to why you think setting up a Reddit account is this gargantuan task. You find a few communities based on your interests and you subscribe to them. That’s it. And you don’t have to do it all at once. You can join as many or as few subreddits as you like, whenever you feel like it.

I must be missing something here. What topic-focused communities do you prefer? Are you talking about Facebook Groups?

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

#183

Post by stcredzero »

mercer wrote: post #177
robbomacrae wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the late reply - was out. And for putting words in your mouth. I understand now your more about incremental steps rather than drastic changes. Thanks for the feedback. As I'm not on the web or redesign team I don't know how feasible that would have been.. I know there was a ton of stuff being done in strange ways with the legacy system.. but I can promise that with the new framework we will be able to make…

I gotta say your comments are not inspiring much confidence. Generally speaking, I love 'new' stuff, and even welcome non-backwards-compatible breaks with the old to get rid of cruft/legacy issues. But with the Reddit redesign I definitely feel that it goes way beyond that and instead does a whole lot of things that seem more 'state of the art front-end bandwagon-ey' than is prudent. Basically, I get the impression t…

it's primarily not made with that target audience in mind. Who the actual target audience is I'm not sure, but I imagine their interests don't align with most users.

That's the fundamental problem in such a situation with completely asymmetrical power. The 'bosses' think they are being super conscientious -- and often they are genuinely trying -- but their point of view lets them get away with thinking, "Oh well, they won't mind. Oh well, it's worth it, they can take it."

I wouldn't be surprised if the actual target audience is 'front-end reddit devs who like to use the coolest newest stuff'

That's something to think about. You want to be able to hire the best devs. This is why policies like "Absolute Continuity" are useful for keeping the devs self-honest. Otherwise, because there is no direct accountability, the dev's priorities are going to creep into superseding the user's.

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

#184

Post by stcredzero »

stephengillie wrote: post #141
stcredzero wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users and UX somewhere will be thrown under the bus. I call BS. If you're moving to a new UI framework, these are usually powerful enough to emulate the old UI. Getting the new framework to feel as snappy as the old UI is a very good benchmark for performance as well as for feature parity. (They usually have more features, but there might be some corner-case overlooked.) The question is - will it be a heavily used mu…

Do the developers, administrators, management, and owners of any given website consider the needs of users like yourself? In their place, would you? How much money would it make for you to think about your users, and how much would it cost you?

How much money would it make for you to think about your users, and how much would it cost you?

That depends on the rate and cost of user acquisition, as well as the ROI of user retention.

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

#185

Post by stcredzero »

robbomacrae wrote: post #152
stcredzero wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other comparable network/website goes to that extent to not force a redesign on their users? Ok, let's be fair. Given the dismal record of websites with regard to user continuity, you're doing relatively great! However, I'd also say that this is the wrong pool to measure against if you're looking for the limits of excellence. You're doing better than the peer group -- that can be fairly said to be a positive. Bu…

Sorry for the late reply - was out. Sorry if the opt-outs a lengthy process. I guess the redesign team want to extract as much info from you as possible. I would just go to old.reddit.com if I were you ;)

I would just go to old.reddit.com if I were you ;)

That comes across as condescending and smarmy.

Again, I'm not against evolution. This whole things is yet another example of what happens in asymmetrical power situations.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17092795

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

#186

Post by forgottenpass »

robbomacrae wrote: post #113
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…

I'm reading! First off the linked post wasn't a very fair analysis and redditors pointed that out in the comments. But to answer your questions: The previous design wasn't broken per se but it wasn't particularly user friendly. Whilst there are plenty of redditors who are used to the layout, a lot of potential users (first time visitors) never came back and became redditors - including many people I tried to introduc…

>The redesign is doing much better in that regard.

I'm curious what the numbers shows on how much is attributable to making the list of links look more like a social media timeline vs. all the other changes combined. Over the last few years, the writing on the wall is that Reddit sees the path to grow as evolving into Meme City, USA. Did you test that in isolation to other UI changes?

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

#187

Post by kup0 »

The new design fundamentally feels worse to use. It feels slower for sure. I don't mind the cleaner aesthetics, but the animations, layout, and general feel of using the site makes me feel like I'm one one of those blogs that has the "dickbars" and other UI elements that feel more annoying than useful. The mobile site is frustrating as well (but using apps gets around this easily).

I've gone back to using the old.reddit.com for now, but who knows how long that will remain

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

#188

Post by mercer »

stcredzero wrote: post #183
mercer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta say your comments are not inspiring much confidence. Generally speaking, I love 'new' stuff, and even welcome non-backwards-compatible breaks with the old to get rid of cruft/legacy issues. But with the Reddit redesign I definitely feel that it goes way beyond that and instead does a whole lot of things that seem more 'state of the art front-end bandwagon-ey' than is prudent. Basically, I get the impression t…

it's primarily not made with that target audience in mind. Who the actual target audience is I'm not sure, but I imagine their interests don't align with most users. That's the fundamental problem in such a situation with completely asymmetrical power. The 'bosses' think they are being super conscientious -- and often they are genuinely trying -- but their point of view lets them get away with thinking, "Oh well, the…

> The 'bosses' think they are being super conscientious -- and often they are genuinely trying -- but their point of view lets them get away with thinking, "Oh well, they won't mind. Oh well, it's worth it, they can take it."

It's possible, but I doubt it. It seems more likely to me that the 'bosses' don't really care all that much beyond whatever they consider the 'bottom line'.

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