Show HN: Reddit Grid – A better way to browse subreddits that are very visual | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Reddit Grid – A better way to browse subreddits that are very visual

redditgrid.com

217 pointsepenance99 comments

I hate to be a downer, and I really like what you've made...

You're currently breaking the Reddit API access rules. In order to follow the rules, you would need to name your app "Grid for Reddit" or something along those lines. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/api

Edit: I'm not sure how the API rules play out if you're not using the API directly (like tacking on the json parameter), so maybe you're ok?

Aside from a general PSA, who cares? Here are the TOS https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezNdDNK1-P8mspSbmt... the consequences are basically limited to them disabling API access until compliance is restored.

Rules don't exist if there aren't consequences.

It's polite to follow the rules when you build on top of someone else's work.

I don't know why the API terms of service were even brought up: this is obviously trademark violation. Those API terms of service are just there to give them some more immediate consequences without having to serve ISPs with legal notices and potentially go to court, as well as to leave more of a paper trail to show that the existence of their API is not them condoning people violating their trademarks.

It just really isn't that difficult for people to respect trademarks: we should not have sympathy for violations that are this blatant. HN should really not even be leaving it up, and they could themselves be served with notice (and yes: I realize that YCombinator invested in reddit; the result would just be some request in the backend); their strong and intrusive content moderation policy means they don't have any argument that "this was just user information".

(And if anyone from reddit is digging for examples of consumer confusion: when I saw "Reddit Grid" as I scrolled by, I absolutely had a first reaction of "oh, reddit is releasing a new feature to improve browsing? cool!" before remembering "oh yeah, people tend to be shitty about respecting trademarks, so watch this just be someone who wanted that official-sounding connotation".)

I honestly don't mind changing the name or whatever if Reddit has anything against the name, just wanted to pick up a name someone would remember, and my initial ideas had the domain taken.

And even if they do just steal an API key from a mobile app or two.

The bigger risk is that they'll come after you for using their trademark, but there's some PR risk to that too...

> And even if they do just steal an API key from a mobile app or two.

How does this work?

Mobile apps have the advantage of not being restricted to access on a single IP. So using their keys is often as simple as digging it out of the appropriate binary.

Android and iOS make it quite simple to grab the relevant APK or IPA packages as needed, then you just load that package into the appropriate decompiler or disassembler, look for strings first as often API keys are just left in as hardcoded strings.

It's not a recommended strategy if you want to be legitimate, but if you're going rogue anyways, may as well go all the way.

> who cares?

Their lawyers care about trademark violations that dilute their brand.

sure in OPs case maybe, but I was referring to how you can just as easily use the API without mentioning reddit at all, which would also be in violation of their TOS

wouldn't be a trademark issue in that case, can you try your rebuttal again

If it becomes an issue, i'd gladly rename it, literally just picked up this name cause the other domains i was looking at was taken.

Cool idea, but it'd be nice to be able to click on an image to take you back to the comments page for it.

Definitely. This is a very pretty redesign, but I think the real secret sauce of Reddit is post titles, and comments, and you definitely lose something not being able to see either of those.

Let's be honest though, this grid-like interface is going to be used mostly for the NSFW subreddits, where the title and the comments aren't really that important.

how about for some sauce? yes, nsfw is the real use of this website, but I think having a way to get to the comments that usually have the source is missing a key part.

If it's made for NSFW, you'll want to be able to see other posts by the same user. Some essential interactions are missing. Nice work, though.

Both the title and the comments link is the next feature im working on atm.

ETA?

Should be available in the morning at the latest

Done! Click the image once its opened to toggle some extra details about it!

Came here to say the same thing. It would also be nice to see stats when you click on an image. (# of upvotes and # of comments, etc.)

Its now possible to click the image once its opened to toggle some extra information about the image, as well as a link to the reddit comment section.

Cool, really nice execution!

In my bachelor thesis I did some internal search-engine frontend some gamification and the like. I recently came around to build a quick and dirty reddit backend for the content, it also can be considered a visual browser for subreddits. For anyone interested:

Github: https://github.com/TN1ck/bachelor-thesis Runs at: https://bachelor-tom-nick.herokuapp.com/#/

It's in german though, but just click on 'Anmelden' and it should work, there is no auth layer currently.

This basically turns reddit into Tumblr.

One request, a small border between images. Multi-image posts get so confusing when you don't know where they stop until clicking. ("Is that cat part of the joke above, because if so I don't get it?")

Name idea:

    greddit
    griddit

Actually wanted those names, but both domains were taken :(

griddet? grettid?

At that point, it's better to move off the "grid" idea; if I'm looking for grid + reddit, I will not remember "griddet" or "grettid" (or was it grottid? regreddit? griblets?)

tetris + reddit = tetredd.is || tetredd.it ??

grid + reddit = gridddit.com || griddd.it

[all available at time of writing, checked on https://who.is]

Nice .. but alas, it doesn't support chaining subreddits, e.g. reddit.com/r/CabinPorn+LavaPorn .. that's kind of a neat feature in reddit itself, so I'd request this also be possible in redditgrid too ..

I may completely misunderstand what you mean because I'm not a frequent Redditor but I was able to select multiple options for display in the grid, it just seems some subreddits are not supported. E.g. https://redditgrid.com/r/geologyporn%2BCabinPorn

All reddit that has images should be supported even though it might not show up in the search bar you can just add it to the url manually. Could get the reddit endpoint for autocompleting subreddits to function so ended up making a small database of my own with the the top 6k subreddits

Can I second the request for gaps between the images - would really help identify images that are split into frames. I'd also like a link to the comments, and/or the title of the post - sometimes those are really relevant (or required for part of the joke / explanation).

Otherwise really slick! Well done!

Maybe ill add that as a feature you can enable, it was actually there in my prototype but i ended up removing it.

Very nice!

Imgur allows browsing Reddit subreddits too. For example:

* https://imgur.com/r/dataisbeautiful/top/all

* https://imgur.com/r/EngineeringPorn/top/all

* https://imgur.com/r/TechnologyPorn/top/all

It shows only images hosted by Imgur. Supports Reddit-like path requests, like:

* https://imgur.com/r/dataisbeautiful/top/all

* https://imgur.com/r/dataisbeautiful/hot/all

* https://imgur.com/r/dataisbeautiful/new

* https://imgur.com/r/dataisbeautiful/top/month

Cool, i actually didnt know that.

Guess ill be adding a "sort" option too, as soon as I'm done with the other features that has been requested.

The imgur albums won't show what's posted directly to Reddit's image hosting though, will they?

I'm at work and know Reddit's temperament for images, so I don't feel comfortable comparing the output between the two services.

This is really great, and surprisingly fast (images seem to load much faster than on Reddit, at least for me).

Can you share more info about how/where it's hosted and the stack used (besides angular)?

Angular in the frontend with state stored in a ngrx store, backend is a simple api made with Laravel with some heavy caching in front to make it swift.

That was my first thought too, it's scary fast compared to Reddit for me too. Well done!

This is beautiful. If you could also add the post caption on hovering the image, it would be great.

Agreed. This is excellent, but being able to link back to the original post on certain images would make it perfect.

That is indeed the next feature I'm working on :l

How can you get to the related reddit discussion from a picture in your grid? If I'm like 50+ images deep and I want to see what people said about it... odds are browsing the actual subreddit is going to take ages.

There is a feature in the pipeline to add a link to the comments

Its now possible to click the image once its opened to toggle some extra information about the image, as well as a link to the reddit comment section.

This is pretty cool. The NSFW side reminds me of PaintBottle[1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569546

Hooked!

Btw, I notice a bunch of subreddits have the word "porn" at the end of their name. Trimming that from the name may help you expand your audience. To give you an example, I shared a link to https://redditgrid.com/r/AbandonedPorn with a friend on fb only to have them reply: "I’m guessing this is not safe for work".

The one that cracks me up is r/HumanPorn. It's totally SFW, but sounds like a subreddit that space-robots might use to view NSFW posts from human Earthlings.

All -porn subreddits are mirrored as -fans: https://redditgrid.com/r/AbandonedFans although sorting may vary.

This is brilliant :) Simple idea with great execution.

One feature request would be to add an autoplay functionality so I could display it on a large projector for example.

Wow, this is really a simple concept but so visually impressive! Hope you add some of the functionality people have listed here (easy chaining, ability to click through, auto-scroll, I'd suggest adding even more transition types over time). Seems like it chokes on certain subreddits, except if included as a chain for some reason, but I imagine there are some bugs here and there to work out.

Very good job!

Weird, I was just looking for something like this. Have you seen scrollldit?

Both that and this are missing the ability to go back to the comments though

Simply pressing the back button on your device should take you back, and also just removing the subreddits in the top also takes you back.

As for the comments that is the feature im currently working on adding.

I made something similar though not as good.

http://redditile.com/r/food

https://github.com/ubershmekel/redditile

Wow this is way more useful: https://redditgrid.com/r/comics

Feels like reading the fumnys.

no kidding. WOW!!! IMO this ( https://redditgrid.com/r/comics ) needs to be the frontpage of redditgrid. It immediately sells it 100%. then some text saying what else you can look at.

so nice.

I'll make sure to add it tonight to the dashboard

Hmmmm, I actually didn't mean "put it ON the front page" I was thinking "make it the front page". As in, that should be the view that opens when visiting the root - https://redditgrid.com should actually open https://redditgrid.com/r/comics and require a click to get to the current dashboard.

Of course, you know best. I was thinking about how insanely well this view sells your interface. At the moment if someone visits the root page, there is at least 1 click/tap before an example is visible.

It's really obvious there is a lot more (since the current tags are very prominent) so I recommend it.

But great job :)

Maybe i am out of touch, but the only one i found anything funny was the Chicken Wings one.

Nice work! I once made a similar page (although for a specific subreddit) to show an endless page of perfectly looping gifs. It's certainly not perfect and just a quick afternoon hack when I was first getting into JavaScript.. you may have to resize the page to get the images to fill the screen at first. https://cgati.com/loops/

Your SSL cert breaks on www.redditgrid.com. Obviously it's not what you linked, but people will end up there eventually.

Thanks for pointing it out! Updated the certificate and now redirecting to non-www always :)

Out of curiosity, how are you generating the subreddit suggestions?

I added two game-centered ones, and all of my suggestions for more subreddits are NSFW: https://i.imgur.com/PWoBSg3.png

This was essentially my comment. All of the suggestions that appeared in the drop down were porn.

The search is based on the filters set in the top, its not actually suggestions its just subreddits sorted by subscribers.

Nice execution! I made something like this a long time ago: http://www.ruddl.com/ Although I haven't maintained it in a while. Curious what kind of tech stack you are using?

Angular Frontend, Laravel backend with Memcache to control my caching

I would add some sort of nsfw filter. I click on SFW and Album Art (/r/AlbumArtPorn) and the top post right now has the NSFW tag. Grid showed that nice and big right at the top. Would be better to default to blurring/hiding NSFW tagged posts.

Good point, I'll look into checking the NSFW tag on each post too

Slick interface, needs subreddit chaining. Though I question the use of "reddit" in the name. Not sure how hardcore they are with protecting trademarks, but I wouldn't chance it. Probably also violating API rules.

It's already possible to chain subreddit just add a + between the names in the url or use the search.

About the trademark ill definitely have to look into it, wanted griddit but it was taken..

great idea! just one UI suggestion, can you blur the background when popping up the image? that will make my eyes feel better.

other than that, great job!

It's done :)

wow, that is quick, looks good, Thanks!

Wow, I didn't realize how much I would like this, but for browsing art, webcomics, and photography, it's perfect.

I'm really glad you liked it!

I went to the site, clicked "Earth", got a grid of cool images. Clicked "Select Subreddits" to see what other options there are under this category. All I get is a long list of porn subreddits. From a user experience POV that's both not what I would expect the behaviour to be, nor would I ever want that to be.

Porn is fine, but it shouldn't be so prevalent unless I specifically choose to go into the NSFW area of your website.

I completely agree with this. There is also a very prominent NSFW selector at the top; I think it should default to OFF.

It really does a disservice to the web site to have it default to on.

I want an option for rows or just one collumn. I always get confused scanning without a clear view-order.

Ill make sure to add that option as a feature in the future!

Ooh, it's like Panoptikos but supports HTTPS. It would be cool if gif autoplay was an option.

I'll be adding that as a toggle feature :)

Seems to not pick up the images hosted directly by Reddit under their i.reddit.com url.

That is not unlikely, atm I'm writing models for each image host to make sure i get all the edge cases, they are not very polite in how they return their data :P

Is the source code open source? It would be a great learning method for me. Thank you.

At the moment the source is not open for the public, I might release it in the future though

I like it.. you could probably apply a similar thing to Tumblr...

Awesome experience, but I do wish you could do some level of sorting.

Its in the pipeline :) What kind of sorts would you like?

Personally, I only browse reddit using the top sorts (day, week, month, all), and it's a cool way to know you're seeing the absolute best at different scales.

Wondering if/how you plan on monetizing this?

Currently the idea is to add enough features for people to think it's worth something, other than that I've been thinking of adding coin-hive with a option to opt out in case you are on a mobile or such

It’s just great to see those NSFW there.

This is nice!

Yet another hack to make porn on reddit easier.

awful to use on mobile...

What makes you say that?

hahah I love Reddit.. SFW: 1 row. NSFW: 3 rows

So essentially discard the community and hoard its content

Reply on news.ycombinator.com