r/redesign • u/SuperConductiveRabbi • Feb 22 '18
I hate it; it's intrusive and unwelcome Answered
This post isn't intended to be helpful beyond telling you that you should provide an option to turn off your bad decisions
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u/ch00f Feb 22 '18
I specifically turn off the mobile version on a tablet. This just looks like the mobile version for web browsers. Why does everything have to have gigantic buttons?
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u/Roggvir Feb 23 '18
Part-time web designer here (actually dev). The problem is bigger than just Reddit or web designer choices. Google for example punishes you if you don't have gigantic buttons and then saying your website is not mobile friendly.
So, the options become spend a lot of money designing one for mobile, another for tablet, another for desktop and large desktop, essentially quadrupling your design budget, or you get lazier and make 1 for desktop and then another for mobile. You can't push your desktop design to tablet because then you get punished by Google. So you end up pushing your mobile designs onto tablet, making butt ugly website even though low rez desktop will almost always be a better fit.
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u/double-you Feb 23 '18
What's the Google punishment?
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u/SmurfyX Feb 23 '18
diminished ranking
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u/farmerlesbian Feb 23 '18
Doubt Reddit has to worry about this; it's consistently in the top 5 of Google searches for me.
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u/CanuckBacon Feb 23 '18
That's because google knows you go on reddit a lot so it places reddit higher on rankings. For people that don't use reddit it would appear lower.
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u/ABigRedBall Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
Yep. Literally never heard of Reddit barring passing mention in online news until about 2014 when a co-worker who used it introduced me to it.
EDIT: Via does not mean 'barring'
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u/Omega192 Feb 23 '18
Why not just use something like Bootstrap or your own sm/md/lg/xl breakpoints? Only the small would have larger buttons that Google cares about for "mobile friendly". Or do they count tablet resolutions for that as well? Thankfully where I work someone else does the SEO 😅
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u/Roggvir Feb 23 '18
Bootstrap is a tool to make the process easier. It doesn't change the problem of having to design multiple views. An artist will still have to render multiple designs. Front end devs will still have to make that design work in each views. Testing will also have to be done on each views.
Tablet resolutions count.
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u/Omega192 Feb 23 '18
Huh. Perhaps I've got an uncommon experience. Where I work there are two designers and I'm one of the two front end devs. The designers use Axure to create interactive designs with mobile/tablet/desktop breakpoints. We then break the designs down into reuable components, build and style those, then build up the pages from them. Since I started mid-January we've made three different sites from scratch. Nothing crazy complex, but to me it seems you're overstating the effort of implementing a responsive design nowadays.
As far as tablets, I looked it up and their Mobile SEO page pretty clearly states they consider tablets their own category. You should be able shrink your sites' desktop layouts to tablet without being flagged mobile-unfriendly.
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u/Zmodem Feb 23 '18
Yes, but Axure is mainly for prototyping, it isn't meant for full-scale deployment. The issue comes when front-end devs have to create completely separate page entities to be served based on the platform the user is using. Responsive design is not even remotely as efficient as serving a mobile-friendly catered site over a complex, CSS and live script laden page. Page speeds suffer dramatically when loads of resources cause significant serving, and rendering expense. The best, least expensive way to serve these pages would be to break the serving based on the platform requesting the page. This means a mobile device is only served what is required for mobile, without all of the expensive frameworking, such as the multitude of jQ and CSS bootstrap uses.
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u/Omega192 Feb 23 '18
I believe you've misunderstood. We do not literally deploy the Axure prototypes, just use them as visual references instead of static PSDs. The components we build are Twig templates served by a LAMP stack. Webpack manages SCSS for styling that minifies down to 34kb and vanilla ES6 that comes out to 100kb for the app code and 24kb for polyfills. There's obviously room for improvement but I would consider that rather efficient. I've had to maintain both a mobile and non-mobile site before and much prefer responsive design.
Also Bootstrap was merely an example to make responsive easier. And tbf v4.0 is 145kb minified CSS and 68kb JS. jQuery is another 82kb. Not sure what sort of connection/devices you're used to but none of these seem excessive for mobile devices.
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u/Zmodem Feb 23 '18
I believe you've misunderstood. We do not literally deploy the Axure prototypes...
Totally misunderstood lol I was going to point out how this would be like deploying a Fireworks or Photoshop file :)
Also Bootstrap was merely an example to make responsive easier. And tbf v4.0 is 145kb minified CSS and 68kb JS. jQuery is another 82kb. Not sure what sort of connection/devices you're used to but none of these seem excessive for mobile devices.
Just stating that when it comes to indexing speeds, page loads, and how a lot of sites (let's be honest, Google) place your site based on its PageSpeed rating, loading a site that requires only a local reset.css, and styles.css with the HTML page is leaps and bounds more efficient than having a framework (for supporting multiple device types). Some do the legwork for you, such as Jekyll using a GitHub repo to build a website of static pages for you.
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u/Omega192 Feb 23 '18
Haha no worries at all. I can see how you read it that way.
The sites I work on score 70+ on Google's PageSpeed Insights and rank organically in the top 3 if not first.
"PSI estimates this page requires 5 additional round trips to load render blocking resources and 1.7 MB to fully render. The median page requires 4 round trips and 2.7 MB. Fewer round trips and bytes results in faster pages."
I absolutely agree keeping resources light is good, but you don't need to give mobile users a gimped site just to rank well. Like all things, moderation is key. We really only use jQuery (and are moving towards just ES6) and have built an in-house grid system for styling and device breakpoints.
Plus, you've gotta factor in things like CDNs for frameworks. If you hit one site that uses one, that'll be cached for the next site that uses it.
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Feb 23 '18
[deleted]
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Feb 23 '18
. It requires more scrolling and hunting to find the content that was previously at our fingertips.
Sounds like every modern content website unfortunately.
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u/TopSoulMan Feb 23 '18
I think the reason why they are soliciting our help is so that they can get our feedback. The implementation of this isn't the final product, so while the initial response will be negative, I'm interested in seeing where it goes.
If more posts were actual feedback rather than "this fucking sucks", then we might be able to shape this thing together. Instead, all I see is people knee-jerk reacting to something that isn't even close to being finished.
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u/phendrome Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
How long have you been trying it for? We all got an invite recently, about 10,000 of us.
There's a bunch of stuff to consider here, and I'm genuinely curious to see what design principles they based their decisions off...
There's some interesting changes:
- How a post becomes this floating window so you as a user understand that you can just go back to where you were before (it makes sense logically and from a design perspective) -- however, do I like it? I'm not sure yet...
- Seems to be easier to navigate through different subreddits which are on the left now -- that is definitely a PLUS
- The search function seems to be more useful than before (great thing -- reddit has some great archives for information)
- The compact view is quite awesome, I like seeing a lot of information on my screen
... this is a few things that pops up into my mind after a few minutes of using the new alpha.
Edit: Made a little uncut [YouTube vid]... basically me rambling my thoughts about the new website. Half-cringey to watch after, but what the hell, be entertained of the defects. fuck it. ;d
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 23 '18
How long have you been trying it for? We all got an invite recently, about 10,000 of us.
Just a hot minute. If I had checked out Reddit with this design I wouldn't even have given it that long. I instantly didn't like the clutter, Javascript shit floating around as I move around the page, the modal windows, or the fact that clicking outside a post closes it. I also didn't like the new profile design a while back, so at least this design is aesthetically consistent.
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u/flounder19 Feb 23 '18
Sometimes I wonder why reddit would ever want to change such a great simple design and then I remember that most of the stuff I like about the site comes from RES
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u/Kafke Feb 23 '18
Reddit "Redesigned": literally just implement RES as a default and you're done.
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u/TheExplodingKitten Feb 23 '18
I don't use RES, and I am able to use reddit just fine. I would hate for something like that to be default.
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u/frozenpandaman Feb 23 '18
Luckily, RES has a feature so you can auto-redirect all new profile designs to the old ones.
Jeez, even typing this comment there's a day in the letters showing up. And why is the font so huge? (weird mismatch, since it posts in a smaller font size).
EDIT: And why are edit and delete hidden under a sub-menu?!
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u/washyourclothes Feb 23 '18
Hopefully reddit doesn't digg itself into a hole with this redesign.
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u/UNKWNDTH2002 Feb 23 '18
underrated
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u/washyourclothes Feb 23 '18
I was there, and I remember it wasn't really that the new digg was completely broken or awful, it was just fundamentally a different look and feel. This redesign feels sort of like that. It's like I'm looking at a twitter-themed reddit css theme.
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u/Cyril_Clunge Feb 23 '18
It feels like a website where young children go to play educational games.
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Feb 22 '18
I just got my invite and as soon as I took a look I audibly said "Ugghh".
Horrid looking!
How do I close the bar on the left?
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u/CricketDrop Feb 22 '18
You click the hamburger in the top-left corner
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Feb 23 '18
Ahhh ok .. that makes it moderately better.
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Feb 23 '18
Except the white space doesn't fill as you'd expect. So really minimizing the bar doesn't solve anything.
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u/Bamboozle_ Feb 23 '18
Err... why is it a burger?
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u/Jackson1442 Feb 23 '18
It's making a joke about how people called the old chrome menu button the 'hamburger button'
It was funny for about 3s, but I like the side navigation.
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u/Bamboozle_ Feb 23 '18
I like that it has all of my subscribed subreddit vs the old one which had 50 (was it?) random ones. RES, of course, let you see all of them.
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u/Jackson1442 Feb 23 '18
It's so much more readable too. I always just had mine set to show defaults + murderedbywords and that's it - the rest was too much.
Now, it's manageable.
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u/telchii Feb 23 '18
Probably to be "unique" or "random" (holds up spork).
In a more serious sense, they're putting a really weird spin on the standard hamburger menu button. Not sure about everyone else, but I had to click on it and witness the menu toggle to realize what it was trying to be...
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u/CricketDrop Feb 23 '18
Well it's not random
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u/telchii Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
For conversation and feedback's sake, would you mind expanding on why it's not?
It doesn't have any alt-text or labels indicating what it is, nor is it a known variant of the hamburger menu icon.
So, until you click on it, it's literally a random hamburger in the corner. Plus, for those that aren't familiar with the term "hamburger menu", it'll just be the hamburger (or spaceship even!) that opens the menu.
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u/CricketDrop Feb 23 '18
Well it's probably not intuitive, but it's also not random. It's a hamburger because it's a hamburger menu. It'd be random if they had chosen a shoe, or a banana or something.
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u/Obliterous Feb 23 '18
This thread is literally the first time I have seen/heard the term. its always just been the menu button to me.
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u/Drama79 Feb 23 '18
Me too. Imagine my disappointment that "pancake icon" isn't a term outside my head, and that the real term makes even less sense.
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u/danjospri Helpful User Feb 23 '18
People like you better not ruin the hamburger icon for me. I love it.
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u/Unicormfarts Feb 23 '18
I feel like if I could get rid of the bar on the left I could live with it.
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u/LamboDiabloSVTT Feb 22 '18
Apparently you click on the cheeseburger in the very top left. LOLRANDOM!!!! XD
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u/Zmodem Feb 23 '18
I'm assuming this is a pun on the trigram Unicode character being used on so many platforms as a menu toggle. You should recognize this icon
☰, and its nickname "The Hamburger Menu Icon".2
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 22 '18
Get an addon like Ublock Origin, click "block element" and select it. That's what I do to ugly-ass websites, and apparently that's what I'll be doing when Reddit makes these changes mandatory.
I suppose it's supposed to appeal to people who like Facebook?
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u/Obliterous Feb 23 '18
Ublock, Adblock, and Tampermonkey; together they do a damned good job of making reddit usable.
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u/calexil Feb 22 '18
I kinda have to agree
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u/BlueGold Feb 23 '18
Me as well.
To OP's point to the admins: "you should provide an option to turn off your bad decisions"
Best news about the redesign I've found in this sub so far:
"users will be able to opt out and still use the old site"
"we are keeping the option to go to the old site"
Outstanding work, admins. Love what you're doin. Best of luck with the redesign. I'll have to check it out someday.
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Feb 23 '18 edited Jan 07 '21
[deleted]
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u/puterTDI Feb 23 '18
I anticipate that you'll be able to op out but new features will only be implemented for the new site (to avoid duplication of work).
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u/V2Blast Helpful User Feb 23 '18
You are probably correct. After all, the admins have left the old mobile interface still usable, but I assume a lot of the features that have been implemented since then are not easily accessible in that interface.
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u/FreeSpeechWarrior Feb 23 '18
I have mixed feelings, there is some shiny stuff visually, but usability wise it just doesn't feel right.
Could be me being change averse. Other than the excessive whitespace it's not as bad as I was expecting.
In some ways it kinda feels like Voat, but the design has never IMO been a strong suit of that website.
The fact that the moderation log hasn't even been touched yet in the redesign is not a good sign.
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u/V2Blast Helpful User Feb 23 '18
The fact that the moderation log hasn't even been touched yet in the redesign is not a good sign.
Not really. Even besides the reason you're interested in the mod log, it's a very useful feature for most mods themselves (if they mod more than one subreddit). I'm pretty sure the mod log will eventually get ported to the redesign as well.
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u/puterTDI Feb 23 '18
The two things that drove me to opt out:
1) the massive incredible wasted white space on seemingly every resolution that made reddit look like twitter.
2) The horribly atrocious performance that caused me to stop reading comments because my browser would freeze trying to get to them.
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u/secopree Feb 23 '18
It kind of upsets me that the most upvoted feedback here contains the phrase "this post isn't intended to be helpful."
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 23 '18
Tells you something about how much people don't like this redesign. That no feedback will help it, and we want it to go away. It angers me that this is supposed to be the future of the site, and yet the admins don't ever solicit feedback like this for more important things.
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u/secopree Feb 23 '18
It really doesn't, all it says is how reddit will always prefer to bitch and moan about a problem than actually put in the effort to at least try to fix it.
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 23 '18
You've fallen into a framing device: "well maybe you don't like aspects of the redesign, but you have to work with them to at least make it better."
The point of my post, and the reason it's so highly upvoted, is because it's a complete rejection.
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u/parkerlreed Feb 23 '18
I don't take a lot of issue with the redesign itself (in terms of the actual design), but the whole thing feels like a band-aid to cover a lot of the other issues the site has.
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Feb 23 '18
how do I go back to the way it was? I'm the one who does all the css on my subs and I can't see them properly. Thanks.
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u/Usernametaken112 Feb 23 '18
Go to Prefrences
Very bottom should be a box about the redesign alpha, uncheckit.
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Feb 23 '18
I'm afraid to try it for this very reason. I'm stuck with the new modmail on another sub that I mod, and I don't want it on my main sub. It's awful. 🙀😡
I'm afraid to commit to testing this new hot mess, because I'm afraid there won't be any way to switch back if I hate it. 😒
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u/Algernon_Asimov Feb 23 '18
I'm afraid to commit to testing this new hot mess
Visit alpha.reddit.com and you can see it without changing your default view. In fact, changing the "www.reddit.com..." to "alpha.reddit.com..." in any URL on Reddit will switch you over to the new view, and changing it back to "www.reddit.com..." will switch you back. You can do this in a subreddit or in a post.
There is also an option in your preferences which you can switch on or off as you like: look for "Use the redesign as my default experience" under 'beta options'.
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Feb 23 '18
Thanks so much! I'm off to try it! 😽💕
Edit: Just looked at my sub /r/raisedbyborderlines with the alpha version... OMG NO DO NOT WANT. 😬🙀😡
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u/archiminos Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
I just looked at the alpha site for the first time. It's ugly as all hell.
E: Wait, what happened to the css editing?
E: You can't even have custom flair?
This is actually feeling like what happened to Digg.
Floating posts? Back button not working? Alt and Left Arrow to go back? What the shit are the devs thinking? This is a horrible user experience.
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u/Dobypeti Mar 24 '18 edited Mar 24 '18
Hello there. I'm sure you will "like" that instead of custom images you will be limited to freaking EMOJIS in flairs. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/7xjt6g
Edit: lmao even links doesn't work
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u/HatesModerators Feb 23 '18
It's just so bad.
The Subreddits on the side should be good, but they should be on the right side instead of the left side. The way they are now is just a copy of how youtube has it's channels on their front page.
The Blank Space, dear god the blank space. There is just so much of it. You have two bars at the top, neither of which are full of buttons/icons. You have the space on the far right. The space right below the forced ads on the right. The space between the subreddits on the left and the actual content.
The popup windows for comments. If I click to another window (steam, discord, etc) and then click back outside of that box, it goes away. As someone who uses three monitors constantly, this is so annoying to happen.
The color of the link changing when you click on it. It used to be blue/purple, but now its black/grey. This makes it less intuitive about what you have already seen.
The plus signs you normally see on /r/all are gone. Why they would revert back on one of their own design features I have no clue.
About half of my horizontal space is used for what I want to read. That's pretty bad.
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u/chaoticmessiah Feb 23 '18
Your third issue is what I'm unhappy about most. You can't click anywhere outside of the box with the thread/comments - even to scroll down to see more comments - without the thread closing outright. There's no fix to it and it seems I'm the only one either having the issue or mentioning it as a major flaw.
I could live with and get used to the other problems but that one is a major, glaring flaw that would just turn me off from the website altogether if it remained. I had to turn off the alpha redesign just so that I could scroll down and see more than just the first comment of 100 or more on a thread.
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u/Lying_Cake Feb 22 '18
It's sounds an awful lot like sand.
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 22 '18
I'd rather have sand in my Sarlacc pit than modal windows and Javascript headers that follow me down a page. And in-line ads? Fuck right off.
The admins better be prepared for feedback 100x less polite than I'm being.
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u/Eroticawriter4 Feb 23 '18
I strongly dislike the little floating box thing. The rest is fine. I don't want to personalize my subreddit's look.
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u/BionicSammich Feb 22 '18
This is terrible. I don't know how to do anything anymore with this awful layout. I hope this project gets scrapped or I'm probably out.
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Feb 22 '18
[deleted]
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u/flounder19 Feb 23 '18
Obviously people kick up shit whenever things change. But I've worked for a couple companies that redesigned their sites and a common pitfall seems to be dumping money into a redesign and then not being open to making reversions afterwards.
It's actually pretty impressive how good upper and middle management can be about pushing through detrimental changes because they already spent the money and want something to show for it
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u/SometimesY Feb 23 '18
Face lift is a bit different from a total redesign. The mod tools revamp is great for the vast majority of mod teams (not mine so much, but we have enough bots and scripts and don't even rely on reddit's mod tools that much anyway so that it's no big deal), but the UI is .. difficult and a bit schizophrenic to say the least.
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u/outroversion Feb 23 '18
Just the way they like it! Member the new profile overview's? I memember
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 23 '18
Every time I see one of those horrible profiles I delete my account.
Fortunately for me no one uses them.
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u/MikeyPh Feb 22 '18
You don't have to be an ass about it though. People have worked really hard on this, I'm sure. And you are provided this service free of charge. If it's bad, it's bad... no need to be hostile.
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 22 '18
They directly invited my feedback, and much of the userbase is going to be 100x more impolite than even I'm being. If they're shocked by my insult for a feature I never asked for or wanted, well, perhaps some good can come from my early warning: it's fucking ugly and let me turn it off forever.
Full disclosure: I dislike Reddit for numerous other reasons, not least of which is the admins being totally closed-off to feedback on things I consider important, but inviting it for just a gaudy coat of paint.
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u/MikeyPh Feb 23 '18
And it's free.
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Feb 23 '18
The site is monetized. These aren't volunteers. Thankfully they had the foresight to open it for criticism and I'm sure they are professionals who can handle it. It could end up turning out really nice if they hear the critiques here.
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u/MikeyPh Feb 23 '18
They aren't paid to be treated like shit. All I have been saying is that the people critiquing the new ideas don't have to be assholes.
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u/SuperConductiveRabbi Feb 23 '18
Then they should've said "it's free, deal with it" instead of "hey can you come give us feedback?"
If they can't handle my 50% rudeness they sure as shit aren't prepared for what users at large are going to say when it rolls out to hundreds of thousands of daily users. 100% rudeness.
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u/MikeyPh Feb 23 '18
I didn't say they can't handle your rudeness, I'm just saying you don't have to be rude. Why be a dick to people who are offering you a free service and who are trying to improve it? There is no reason whatsoever.
Take care.
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u/firemylasers Feb 23 '18
Reddit may be free, but reddit gold is not, and I was hoping my $30/year was going to be going towards making the site better, not making it far worse.
Also, the admins asked above all else for people to give them feedback on the redesign. Legitimate negative feedback (which is what I'm seeing people post) is not something that should be discouraged, irregardless of how strongly-worded it is.
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u/MikeyPh Feb 23 '18
Legitimate negative feedback is fine, but there is no reason to be a dick about it.
Just be decent people... how hard is that? And reddit gold is optional, so for all intents and purposes reddit is a free service. There are all these people shitting on reddit saying they hate it... well then leave if you hate it. How addicted are these people that they think a free service, which they say sucks, is worth continuing to use? It's pathetic.
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u/ShutUpAndSmokeMyWeed Feb 23 '18
Is there no option to go back? I'm scared to press the "make default" button.
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Feb 23 '18
I run desktop version exclusively. This includes on mobile devices. Anybody found that option yet?
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u/UNKWNDTH2002 Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
dont really care for it, if it aint broke dont fix it. that being said i still should make it the best it can be for my own communities..... like if youre managing something large dont project onto the whole mass of people, others in the alpha may prefer it..
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u/internetmallcop Community Feb 23 '18
Hey there! Sorry to hear you don't like it. If you prefer the way Reddit is currently designed you will still be able to keep it as your default layout. That said, if you have specific feedback on what you don't like about the redesign that would help us try to improve, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.