Reddit for iOS and Android
reddit.com
reddit.com
1. No moderator support. With AlienBlue, we could read all of the Mod Mail, and remove posts, With Reddit.app, I can read some of my mod mail (some message chains are missing), and I can't remove anything.
2. No Comment flairs
3. Can't see which posts I've read already
4. The in-app browser isn't as good as the older AlienBlue one, and doesn't have an optimized view for imgur/direct links
5. No casual/favorite subreddit groups
6. Most of the settings in AlienBlue are not in Reddit.app
7. No swiping gestures except for swiping from the left edge to go back.
Commenters in /r/AlienBlue found more issues with it than what I've found so far. While I have hope for the future of Reddit.app, I'll be sticking with AlienBlue for now.
It is, however, an app with legitimate substitutes, so an incumbent must be equal or significantly greater.
???
This is one of "Things You Should Never Do" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
A major re-design gives them the excuse to remove and never re-add many features and tune the app for a different type of user and a different type of interaction.
However, I like the organization of the app more. Pictures are automatically displayed in the feed and require no clicks (gif/gyf support is badly needed, though), it has infinite scrolling, and there are essentially two browse sections: one for the front page and the other for browsing individual subreddits. It's nice to be able to switch to a specific subreddit and then go back to the front page exactly where you were.
It also seems faster than Alien Blue. With AB I would encounter "dead" links that wouldn't load many times a day, and I haven't seen one with the new app. Pages and images load much quicker than AB.
I'm switching to the new app and hope they add new features soon.
Same, though I found the "skip to next parent" button on the lower right was a good substitute.
Ultimately, when I see an image or video thumbnail on Reddit, I don't want anything else with it. I want a direct image/video link. Ideally they'd be part of the native experience and not need to punt me elsewhere. There's really no reason Reddit shouldn't fully own those experiences beyond perhaps wanting to save on hosting/processing.
I'm also troubled by the increase of ads appearing in the feed vs. elsewhere. They are clearly watching Facebook and Twitter closely with their push towards a more curated algorithmic feed that allows for more/better ad insertion, vs. focusing on giving users more control of the feed.
It's a problem with Alien Blue, not imgur. It just needs to enable cookies across webviews.
'just' enable something that has an impact on user privacy?
They probably made the call that many of us think about doing - though we rarely do it - of throwing everything out and starting from scratch, building from the ground up with all the past lessons learned.
If so, I think the ultimate measure of their success will be speed of iteration.
Even if it doesn't include everything alien blue has today in, say, 6 months, it will likely introduce plenty of other nice features, and for many users will be either a wash or nicer and more stable.
I'm curious to see what happens!
* Developer makes a great app so they acqui-hire him
* For the next app they want to do it "their way" so they have managers and marketing people telling him and other devs what to do
* The resulting app is the same that if they had done it from scratch without the acqui-hire (but with one less competitor)
It's an app for Reddit. Go figure. I'll be sticking with Sync (Android), which doesn't have this bewildering region restriction, has tons of features and faithfully follows Material.
I'm sorry it's not available in your country -- we're planning on getting it out everywhere.
No colors or upvote buttons, or toolbars. maybe a single button (not a hamburger, probably an arrow) that presents all the menu options.
swipe to collapse comments is also a pretty crucial feature.
The flow for me was "hey neat", click link to reddit page, "ok, this looks good", click link to google play store, click green Install button, 'none of your devices are compatible', "what in the ever-loving ...?", go to hn comments, "oh goddamn, not again".
That could've been MUCH shorter and MUCH less confusing if the title up here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447273 ) said: "Announcing Reddit for iOS and Android in NA/UK/AUS" and at the very least having a text below the appstore/playstore buttons stating this.
Have some empathy please.
Edit: Going "Hello World!" in the "What's New" section also doesn't help matters.
"Reddit anywhere with our app for iPhone & Android"
Replies are filled with people from countries where they can't get it.
It's like companies are actively trying to annoy the region's they geo-block.
This should have been sorted out before the launch.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4dqxgt/reddi...
Anyway, you don't need an API key at all currently. And they said they intend to support the current API.
And suddenly Falcon Pro was limited to 100'000 users.
I'm afraid I did the opposite, however. I don't need a new app, and again contrarily, I don't need a new feed reader. My worthless trivia supeepowers are indeed in decline. Meh.
Frankly, I have a hard time believing that your team couldn't have done this due diligence upfront, considering how rare it is that I encounter apps in my daily use that do not work seamlessly. I moved from North America to Europe 1 year ago, so this is something I have a lot of experience with. You could help me and others understand this better.
could you expand on this?
Heck, I'll do it. Ping me.
Secret is a different case, the purpose of the app is to anonymous communication, I can see why Brazil has a problem with it (mass protests recently, protestors probably using secret, amongst other things)
If you worry that countries like Germany or Switzerland might censor you out of the market because of reddit controversities you'd probably overestimated reddits emotional potential.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChillingEffects/comments/3gw9g1/201...
Reddit (as a page) is still up and running for everyone. I can't see how an app would be more controversial.
The BPJM does not have authority to block foreign websites. They do maintain a (non-public) list of websites deemed harmful to the youth which e.g Google uses to not show certain sites to German users. They planned to add that subreddit to this list.
That's quite far from censoring but rather Reddit censoring itself.
While you're completely correct, and this case is exactly that, the end result is the same isn't it?
That's why I'm very careful what I install on my phone: unlike Reddit posts, I have virtually no control over what the software does.
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4dqxgt/reddi...
Another major failing - there isn't an option to always open links in your browser of choice. At least use a Safari View Controller, for pete's sake.
EDIT: It looks like I can choose to share a link with the ... menu option. I can then share to my Pinner "Quick Save" option to save to Pinboard. Not sure how I missed it.
My guess though is that this new version will have more of a focus on ads and monetization for sure.
It's nice that they've finally released an official app, but to use this instead of Bacon Reader / Relay / Slide / Reddit is Fun / etc would be a large step back in functionality.
The big feature omission is no iPad support, which I am legitimately curious why they would leave that out.
If you are looking for a iOS Reddit client, I strongly recommend Antenna, which is amazing on an iPad as well due to Split View.
We're all tech savvy on this site and may not mind monkeying with the previous third-party apps, but there's a much wider audience that will be willing to use a well-supported first-party app.
This might be a bit of a generalization. People tend to use apps for websites they visit very frequently (eg more than 2-3x a day). Even more so when the mobile version of the website is rife with bugs and/or limitations.
Reddit's mobile site is passable but the third party apps blow it out of the water on both iOS and Android.
[1] http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-app...
[2] http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mobile/most-people-download-zero...
[3] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time-...
Counter anecdote: I refuse to use the Facebook app on iOS because it takes like 500mb and the website works about 90% the same.
This is an absurd comment. Even some of the various unofficial reddit apps have 5-10 million of downloads each.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onelouder....
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mobile/most-people-download-zero...
26% of apps are only opened once [2]
[1] http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/16-percent-of-mobile-use...
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/03/21/app.engagement.gah...
>As TechCrunch recently reported, technology analysts at Compuware found that mobile apps are still the preferred means of connecting for most users over mobile websites, with 85 percent choosing the former over the latter.
> Responsive websites may help shift that opinion, though that won’t likely happen anytime soon.
Since most of these articles are 3+ years old, I personally believe that responsive webpages are the way to go, especially for Reddit which is 99% text &images, or hyperlinks to external sites.
Its free version[2] is as good. I just bought paid one[2] to support the fantastic app. They also have the source code of an old version[4] available online, though the app's current source is not open sourced I think.
I like this app for its:
- Simplicity
- Speed
- No nonsense approach to serving content
[1] https://www.talklittle.com/reddit-is-fun/
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
Is the end goal to take control of mobile and close down the API so they can shove ads down peoples throats?
It didn't work out well for twitter...
I don't think it is a bad thing for Reddit to offer a free, bare minimum client. But after the Twitter experience I hope we don't see a gradual exclusion of the competition.
This is probably not good news for imgur.
https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/4drl3j/moderators_...
Is there any tutorial/documentation on how to design beautiful websites like that.Asides from looking at the source: https://www.reddit.com/mobile/site/style.css
Maybe in a few months we'll end up with one damn fine app.
On a sidenote, one obviously bad thing is the overuse of referral URLs and tracking redirects for every link.
I've no confidence that this won't be some sort of half-assed browser-based app which doesn't follow Android's conventions.
This sort of thing happens time and again when someone fails to click the right options when publishing an app (typically in the US) :)
I welcome Reddit's new native clients. Who knows, maybe we see soon some more and significant innovations than just being another Reddit client which employs the standard API.
Meet some of the folks behind it and hear how we're thinking about it: https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M
Most major media websites are in one of these categories. Moderators take the penalties off when we see a solid submission, and there are other ways that the software interprets community input to mean that an article might be better than usual and lifts the penalty.
We were nervous about making heavier use of this technique, but there were so many complaints about fluff articles making the front page that we had to do something, and banning major sites that sometimes produce excellent-for-HN articles wasn't an option. By now the current approach has been in place for a couple of years and it has worked out pretty well. Those complaints will never go away but they're at a more manageable level.