Comment by Neywiny

5 days ago

As a proud member of the LGTV community (yes I'm making 2 of those kinds of jokes back to back, fight me), and an occasional reddit user, I'm both horrified by the notion of getting this update and thrilled people are still using old.reddit.com. The new layout, which isn't even new anymore, still falls very short for it I'm looking something up and it's buried in a comment thread where ctrl-f can't find it.

54 comments

Neywiny

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jwr  5 days ago

The management of reddit doesn't seem to use reddit at all and they seem to be unaware of the fact that a) the "new" layout just isn't that great, and b) their mobile app is terrible.

They killed third-party apps, which were way better than their garbage app and they don't seem to realize how much it annoys their users.

  • kstrauser  5 days ago

    I thank them for that, because forcing me back to their horrid app broke me of my habit of hanging out there.

    I’ve got six digits of karma, and I’d rather walk away than suffer through its awful UI.

  • biglyburrito  2 days ago

    I believe they're full aware of all of these things, & they simply don't care because they know that millions of people will continue to use Reddit in spite of all this.

  • rvba  5 days ago

    They are doing everything they can to increase number of users before IPO.

    Redit from a text based place, became a place driven by pictures (Can we call that "instagrami-zation"?).

    The thing, is that discussion is what made reddit good. Now it's mostly low quality pictures, bots and comments written by marketers.

    Then AI models and google search are trained on this garbage.

    I wonder if someone will finally disrupt reddit

  • afavour  5 days ago

    I disagree, I think the new layout and the app are bad for Reddit power users. But for someone brand new to Reddit today they work fine.

    And that’s the point. They care about boosting their user base, not satisfying power users.

    • jwr  4 days ago

      Let's take an example: if there are several images, you click on the "next" button (keys do not work!) several times, and if you are not careful, the last click gets you a full-screen image, because the button has disappeared and clicking in the same place now magnifies the image.

      How is that "fine".

      In the mobile app, even swiping from the left edge to go back doesn't work reliably.

    • lofaszvanitt  5 days ago

      Sigh, power user doesn't mean the individual is an alien with some quirky taste. Oh, the contrary. It means someone who has a wider spectrum and those who are not power users are still on the spectrum, but theirs is shorter, but overlap with the PU's. So if it is good for the power users it is almost always good for the rest of the world. Let that sink in.

caxco93  5 days ago

actually, when you share a reddit link, HN automatically converts it to old.reddit

  • rcarmo  5 days ago

    And yet we cannot have dark mode, which would be a simple CSS tweak.

    But I’m thankful for the other little things.

    • esperent  4 days ago

      The various "dark mode" browser extensions work well here. Brave on Android also has a dark mode toggle built in, which I assume repackages one of the extensions.

      5 replies →

stevesimmons  5 days ago

Am I going mad or do some of those old.reddit comments slope downhill?

  • traverseda  5 days ago

    No, the subreddit has applied custom css to do that. It's the mildly infuriating subreddit. There's also an image of a hair visible on widescreen monitors, to make you think there's a hair on your display.

    • sseagull  5 days ago

      I went there and saw two hairs, and yeah thought it was a nice funny touch.

      I then went back to HN and turns out one of the hairs was real and I needed to clean my laptop screen :)

    • molticrystal  5 days ago

      They have a bag of dirty tricks [0], here are a few highlights including a couple already mentioned:

          /* Dead subpixel (Thanks M) */
    .content[role=main]:before {
        content: "";
        position: fixed;
        top: 126px;
        left: 242px;
        width: 1px;
        height: 1px;
        background: #f0f;
        z-index: 9999;
    }

    /* Hair */
    .content[role=main]:after {
        content: "";
        position: fixed;
        top: 150px;
        right: 150px;
        width: 140px;
        height: 200px;
        border-radius: 50%;
        box-shadow: 2px 0 rgb(60, 24, 24, 0.3);
        transform: skewX(-30deg) scale(0.6);
        pointer-events: none;
        z-index: 9999;
    }

    .thing.comment[id*=c] {
        transform: rotate(1deg);
        margin-top: 30px !important;
    }

    .comment p a{
        font-family:Comic Sans MS, Impact,serif;
    }

      [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/wiki/config/style...

  • GaryBluto  5 days ago

    r/mildlyinfuriating seems to have a custom stylesheet that is deliberately mildly infuriating.

3RTB297  5 days ago

I only use old.reddit.com when I am forced to sulk back over there and actually log in. To just look around I just use some redlib frontend.

The numerous layers of attempted monetization schemes since 2016ish hilariously touted as "features" are sort of band-aided on top of each other on new reddit in a way that makes it the worst possible way to display the information. It's like a terrible UI challenge.

joecool1029  5 days ago

> thrilled people are still using old.reddit.com

I noticed a day or two ago they quietly turned on the 'show new reddit as default' preference option, it was still possible to change default back but they won't stop pushing it.

  • Klonoar  5 days ago

    This happens every few months.

    You should just use a browser extension to do it since those don’t rely on an auth state anyway.

rsynnott  5 days ago

I don’t understand how anyone in Reddit thinks that new layout is better.

If old.reddit ever goes away I’ll probably stop using it entirely.

bromuro  5 days ago

I have poor eyesight and I don’t support this practice of linking old reddit on HN. Old website is unusable for me. I have to load the link in the native app to read it.

ctrl+F doesn’t work anyway as the comments are also buried in a “load more comments” on old reddit too. New website and app have a search comments field.

  • Neywiny  5 days ago

    While true some are hidden, old shows a *lot* more and most of my searches for obscure issues don't yield more viral posts

  • gcr  5 days ago

    I have shitty eyesight and old is the only version that’s usable to me because text zooming works far better in the old layout. Are you using a screen reader by any chance?

    • bromuro  5 days ago

      Screen reader is not available on Safari for old reddit. Also zooming the font is not working: I have to scroll a lot and the layout grt all broken.

      1 reply →

  • shayway  5 days ago

    Assuming the issue with old reddit is font & element size, does zooming in with Ctrl+ not solve the problem?

  • Gualdrapo  5 days ago

    I agree. I joined reddit when the "new" design was launched - I could never made sense of the old design. Way too cluttered and unreadable.