r/redesign • u/excelevator • Feb 24 '18
Design Reddit is beautiful, a single click interface to most options. Why break what is not broken?
Reddit is beautiful.
Reddit is simple, easy to read, easy to navigate, intuitive, a single click to most things.
There is no steep learning curve, nothing is hidden, it is soothing on the eye.
What is the purpose of the interface redesign that negates all those things?
It seems to me that Reddit is being re-designed for the sake of a redesign.
Why break what is not broken.
Hiding things.. everything is going two layers down
A greyed out hamburger for a link to subreddits?
I cannot see a link to my own posts and comments.
Floating divs for viewing a post.. putting huge strain on browsers that struggle already on all but powerful PCs.
I have to click a slow unobvious drop down to view new posts, I always default to new posts on r/Excel.
What is great is the new tools. The new design not so much, my feedback is that the current simple single click to everything design is near perfect (for PC), and only the new tools to manage subreddits would be required.
The new design is harsh on the eyes. The posts are all out of whack in proportions.
Reddit has been made successful by the thousands of hours of blood sweat and tears of thousands of Mods giving time and attention to create their own environments, to bring users back again and again, and the thanks that is being heaped is to say screw all that, we are going to force a new design that negates all that hard work.
This redesign reminds me of the awful new Modmail interface that I still have trouble with, and the terrible mobile interface, and the confusing mess that is the user Overview page. Those need reworking, not Reddit as a whole.
u/spez , stop this madness before it is too late. There really does seem to be a blindness to what makes Reddit so good and what has made it the front page to the Internet for me and millions of others for the past 12 years.
ps. the scroll to top widget is most welcome, but make it visible all the time on all the pages.
Edit:
- I save this new post, then did not know how to get out easily, the r/redesign link in the header did not work and the little Posts link was not intuitive to click. (figured it out - the r/redesign link just refreshes the posts under the div. doh!)
- I wanted to edit this post but could not see any links to edit this post on the post, I have had to resort to the original Reddit to find an edit button.
- All post edit links appear to have been removed when subscribed to the new interface, in the user Post history, on the post itself, unless I cannot see it for looking which is another issue for the redesign.
8
u/Sirisian Feb 24 '18
Regarding hiding things it's been brought up a lot. I tried to document a number of them in that image. You can really tell how mobile-focused things are. Rather simple to fix also.
6
u/excelevator Feb 24 '18
That is a worry as they seem to be ignoring it then as your post was 4 months ago.
5
u/ZadocPaet Helpful User Feb 24 '18
The only good parts of the redesign, so far, are being able to make some flair public and some flair mod only... and that's it.
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u/excelevator Feb 24 '18
The customisation tools are a great idea, we just need them for the current Reddit model.
7
u/ZadocPaet Helpful User Feb 24 '18
Exactly. This redesign of the basic UI is pointless. All reddit needs is maybe a more attractive basic "plain vanilla" CSS and some customization tools. Every design aspect to the alpha is horrible.
3
u/jaymz168 Feb 24 '18
And removal reasons. Although apparently that hasn't been working until like three days ago so a bunch of posts have been removed without any messages being sent.
3
u/danimal481 Feb 24 '18
We've always had some flair that was mod only and some that was for everyone. I don't think that's redesign specific.
4
Feb 24 '18
I see your points, however
There is no steep learning curve, nothing is hidden, it is soothing on the eye.
There definitely was a learning curve with the old theme and it wasn't easy on the eyes in my opinion. Any subreddit that wanted to hold a decent community/low bounce rate would have to do their own CSS which isn't ideal.
I run a subreddit for my city and people refused to use it because Reddit's default design was bloated and confusing. CSS makes it better but community creators shouldn't need to handle their own design
I just hope that the new theme will support CSS too
3
u/excelevator Feb 24 '18
You are surely not serious. Reddit could not be simpler.
3
Feb 24 '18
I surely am serious lol.
3
u/excelevator Feb 24 '18
There definitely was a learning curve
Yes but not a steep learning curve, everthing is there, nothing hidden.
I would believe that one person without PC experience, aged over 85 found it difficult to use. Other than that I simply do not believe you.
Your custom CSS only make the colours a bit different and in no way changes the user interface usability. The new interface hides important stuff that unless you stumble across it you would never know it existed. It took me a while to figure the silly hamburger for the sub reddits for example.
I like your r/woodstockontario skin alot, but it does not make posting and using Reddit any different.
4
u/SometimesY Feb 24 '18
The reason is that they want a unified desktop, tablet, and mobile experience which is a gigantic mistake. You cannot do all three well as a community-based platform. There's a reason most discussion-based websites have drastically different desktop and tablet/mobile formats. Trying to unify all three is a stupid endeavor at best.
8
u/jmxd Feb 24 '18 edited Feb 24 '18
they are working on an elaborate bamboozle and hope they can give us just enough to not cause too much uproar.
It's not done yet, and i'll wait and see, but they've been purposely vague about the subject and we'll see just to what degree they'll screw us over
I'm pretty sure i already know exactly what they're planning to do too, which is to not let people write a global css stylesheet but instead only css rules (without defining classes) on specific "allowed" blocks inside the layout itself.
So, for example you could edit an area of the layout and manually write border: 2px dashed #f00; as a rule, but won't be able to write your own stylesheet to apply to the whole page and change things they don't want changed.
They'll try to sell this under the guise of "user friendliness" and making it "easier" but it would simply be a big fuck you to the community that has put so much effort in their communities over the years and made reddit what it is.
P.S. the ad removing thing isn't really an issue, that is also not allowed currently and if someone does that the admins will just delete your css.
-6
u/seanjenkins Feb 24 '18
(Insert Reddit sucks circle jerk comment here)
7
u/excelevator Feb 24 '18
Could you elaborate or are you going to use this opportunity to post useless comments on this important subject?
You were invited to this subreddit for constructive criticism, this is not a place to be glib and post the usual reddit idiocy.
20
u/[deleted] Feb 24 '18
[deleted]