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Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

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121–130 of 189 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#121
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the designers’ fault, it’s developers seeing everything as a technology problem rather than a user needs problem (and I’m speaking as a developer). The best solution for any given problem is usually the simplest, at least until you find that you specifically need extra complexity to solve a user need. Unfortunately modern client-side development is fixed in a mindset of developer efficiency above all, which…

> It’s not the designers’ fault, it’s developers seeing everything as a technology problem rather than a user needs problem Yes, but in a big company developers don't define the product, (product) designers do.

Having "Product Manager" or "Product Designer" from Reddit on your resume would probably a hindrance more than a benefit right now.

Insane how they had managed to mess it up so badly. I can't comprehend how anyone from any part of Reddit, outside of the marketing department, would spend some time on the redesign and say "nice!"

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#122
I absolutely hate the new design, not because it is slow (it's not on my end), but because it is such a pain to use.

User friendliness has gone out the window and I cannot fathom how such a poor redesign could ever be implemented on such a high traffic site.

If the old design gets removed, I will stop using Reddit permanently.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#123

It is the worst redesign I've ever seen on a major website like this for a number of reasons. It's needlessly heavy on resources, it's slow, it's difficult to navigate, it's filled to the brim with ads, it's uninspired and takes away all of the charm of the old design in favor of making Reddit look like a more generic social media, it doesn't work with the wayback machine, and that's just scratching the surface. It's…

It's also needlessly redundant. It has two completely different viewers for comments.

When you click the comments link on a story from the story list, it opens the comments in some kind of overlay on top of the story list. There is a "close" link near the top that dismisses the overlay to get back to the stories. The story list is still loaded in the browser, just not visible because the comments are in front of it.

Well, not visible to you. The story list is still visible to the browser's "search on page" feature, often making such searches useless. Also, scrolling in the overlay is way off on some browsers.

If you hit refresh, you get the more useful comment view. It's just the comments, without the story list lurking behind, and with unmolested scrolling.

They should just scrap this redesign, except for the fancier post editor. Port that to the old reddit and call it done.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#124
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A peek outside the echo chamber: my roommates and girlfriend use Reddit. They don't have anything bad to say about the UI nor are aware HNers hate it. They didn't even know it changed, they just don't seem to care. I use old.reddit.com out of habit, but don't really care when I land on the new UI. I just use it. People blow it way out of proportion. I like some of its features, like how it's now a modal over the infi…

Found the reddit designer

Not here please.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#125
post #80
post #46

It's unbearable. Reddit's dev and design staff is not very competent. They probably have lots of virtues, being good at their job is not one of them.

What surprises me is that their ads manager is also amateurish (it got a redesign too!) and i mean real amateur stuff like broken images. And that is their money maker!

Would be very curious to hear more specific examples of this one, haven't seen it firsthand.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#126
post #38

>It boggles my mind that a redesign could be implemented so poorly on such a popular site. The irony of this statement is that Reddit _really_ became popular when Digg, who was the top link sharing site at the time, rolled out a new clunky ad-friendly redesign that caused a mass exodus of users to Reddit.

...which makes me wonder if this could ever happen again today, given that all of our data is being pushed into tighter and tighter silos with less integration than ever before (I'll admit Reddit has been better in this regard with its API and abundance of 3rd party clients). It seems like a lot of social networks rely on the network effect more than their actual features, and in the worst case they can just e.g. implement features from other platforms gaining traction (Facebook is infamous for this, stealing circles from G+ and stories from Snapchat).

Reddit usurped Digg because it was technically superior. Could another technically superior website overtake Reddit?

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#127
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know if they have public metrics on www vs old visitor traffic?

I'm not sure about public data, but here is what I'm seeing from one of my larger subreddits: https://i.imgur.com/YPUvYiu.png Looks like new is gaining on old.

And that's a bunch of app hits. It makes me sad how many people caved.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#128

It is the worst redesign I've ever seen on a major website like this for a number of reasons. It's needlessly heavy on resources, it's slow, it's difficult to navigate, it's filled to the brim with ads, it's uninspired and takes away all of the charm of the old design in favor of making Reddit look like a more generic social media, it doesn't work with the wayback machine, and that's just scratching the surface. It's…

It's just awful, I agree. The sad thing is that original Reddit was highly usable, even if it looked a bit dated.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#129
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked, opened https://old.reddit.com/r/france : less than 2 seconds, the page is fully loaded. Tried https://www.reddit.com/r/france/ : more than 4 seconds before the page is loaded. Loading : https://old.reddit.com/r/france/comments/ccs5tx/emmanuel_mac... is about 2 seconds. Loading: https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/ccs5tx/emmanuel_mac... about 6 seconds. The new reddit looks therefore 2 to 3 times…

Not to mention, with RES on old reddit you can turn the Javascript for specific subs off. Not sure if that's even possible on New, which I hate. The JS is often just overcrowded and too much, so I'd prefer it off.

Subs only have control over CSS, no JS. But yes it can get overcrowded.

Re: Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else?

#130

The thing I hate the most about the redesign is that now everything takes an extra click. On old reddit the subreddits were right there on the left. Now they are in a drop down menu. If I wanted to switch between new and top stories it used to be right there at the top. Now it is hidden behind a drop down menu.

I'm feeling gaslit into a world where PCs which can show everything on a single screen abuse whitespace, hide info and require lots of extra taps.
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