Well, Reddit was smart enough to keep the old interface online (and the one before that [0]), so when someone "oldschool" links to Reddit, they'll simply use the old link; slightly salty maybe, but they're still on Reddit. New, less technical users, on the other hand, will get the shiny, streamlined new interface.
You can say what you want about them, but they managed to push out a conversion optimized interface for new users while still keeping their core group/addicts at bay, which is not easy.
You have something wrong with your set up. I've had it set for years and it works fine. Maybe you have some strict cookie settings or tracking blocker interfering with it. Try with an unadorned browser (read no-plugins) and you'll find it works great.
Old Reddit was awful and I always used alternative UIs for it.
New Reddit’s design was a great improvement if it weren't for the fact that its developers were and still are absolutely clueless. That paired with a user-hostile management made Reddit even worse.
But the redesign itself was not the issue, it was the implementation.
I must emphatically disagree. On a single page, newreddit shows a fraction of the comments as oldreddit does. They expect you to manually click to expand dozens of "Read More" links and repeatedly suffer the associated loading times of their newly-bloated webpage. For reading comments, newreddit isn't just a disaster of implementation, it's a disaster of usability. It's obvious that their goal is to discourage commenting in order to get people back to scrolling the infinite feed, since that's where the ads are. But oldreddit, while it looks ugly, is (perhaps entirely by accident) an absolute dream for navigating large and highly branching conversations.
> On a single page, newreddit shows a fraction of the comments as oldreddit does. They expect you to manually click to expand dozens of "Read More" links and repeatedly suffer the associated loading times of their newly-bloated webpage.
This sounds like the exceedingly stupid javascript override popup view a primary click on links gives. It's meant to make it easy to return to the list and keep scrolling forever.
Try opening the links in new tabs, or hitting "refresh" after clicking. That'll give you the full page view.
I don’t really use Reddit anymore, I’m just talking about their initial migration that everyone hated. Back then it wasn’t so user hostile, it was just a modernization effort with ajaxed loading and some initial bugs. Then things got worse instead of getting better.
I disagree, new Reddit is fundamentally flawed, and worse than old Reddit in almost every way. I will stop using Reddit the day old.reddit.com stops working.
Yeah it wasn't pretty but it was efficient and fast. I think those trump pretty any day of the week. With Reddit Enhancement Suite it's fantastic. However looks like RES has entered the "parked" status and they will only fix bugs now. I think the devs lost interest but in their defense it has been around for years. Unfortunately "new reddit" is still awful, but at least they tried to keep it alive long enough for reddit to get their shit together.
The main issue was that looking at the actual content meant visiting a different website, there was no way to see photos and videos in gallery view like you would on Facebook for example.
The difference with HN is that HN is not mainly for media. However HN isn’t great either. The button to collapse threads in on top of the thread in a 16x16-pixel touch target. Good luck finding it when you’re 12 comments down.
For being a text comment-only website, the HN experience is pretty poor. The only good thing HN has got going on technically is that it’s super fast. Heck it still doesn’t offer dark mode when it would literally be 7 additional lines of CSS.
Oh I see, your main issue wasn't with the UI design, it was with the UX design. The original intention was that it acted as a gateway to content on the internet - like with Google.
Unfortunately that UX isn't the best because most sites linked to are slow, annoying or broken in some way. Imgur fixed that though.
Reddit Enhancement Suite fixed all that. Sure it's a plugin but that's not that big of an inconvenience. Reddit devs really should have took inspiration from that instead of building the monstrosity they have now.
"But where are we going to put all these new features to mimic competitor X that nobody cares about that we promised to our investors we would add before next investment round to pump the valuation?" /s
I don't entirely hate "new reddit" but I prefer the old version and greatly appreciate them keep the old style around. The new version is so badly coded and slow. I think if they would stop "updating" and optimize efficiency of their interface it would be useable again.
I use the old reddit. I'm glad they give that option because the new one it sucks. Just the fuck it doesn't profit the entire width of the screen bogged me.
Exactly! I'm still salty about "new reddit."
We care about your redesign because we don't want to have to get used to a whole new less functional UX.