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> Huh, I hadn't used new reddit in a long time, I actually took a look now and it seems like it has improved significantly.

The UI itself isn't horrible, it's the UX. It's incredibly bulky and slow, and some user links have been hidden while others completely removed.

I can't wait until reddit removes old.reddit altogether. I will have so much more free time.

I pretty much only use Apollo to read reddit so unfortunately I will not be freed from the shackles quite so easily :-/

Not even the "feature" which hides most comments in a post and makes you click on a button to load a bit more of them? And to make it even better, even when you open a post, it still renders other posts directly beneath the comments of the current one so it's easier to miss where the comments end!

New reddit must be the slowest website out there, on mobile where I'm not logged in it takes ages to load. Then ages to kill all sort of pop ups that force me to use their app. I believe they don't care about UX and speed of the site, it's all about the app. They measure app downloads, not the experience on the site.

I still am in awe regularly at how damn sluggish the site is. Even with an ad blocker it is at least an order of magnitude slower than every other website I've seen.

Not to mention the worst video player

> Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-restricted, but not the header [0]?

For extremely wide screens it obviously looks awkward, but the idea seems sound in principle.

IIRC, the reason you'd want to restrict width of content is that it's hard for your eyes to track back all the way left, to the start of the content, when you need to go down a line. But the header is just a single line, so it doesn't have this problem.

In the case of very wide screens they should probably restrict the header width too, just not quite as much.

But often these sites start doing the right thing and then restrict it, tkaing a step backward.

Before: https://i.imgur.com/sgODcLW.png

After: https://i.imgur.com/8j7P1YE.png

The latter is objectively worse. I understand that > 1080p monitors are a small fraction of your user base, but that's still not reason to not test your UI on larger resolutions, for a site as big (and prominently used by devs with large screens) as GitHub.

My eye still has to jump back and forth long distances if I want to fork the repo for example.

Agreed, the UI in the after picture is awful. I really doubt it's intentional there, unfortunate that there's an oversight like that.

Do that many people use maximised windows on 16:9 or greater screens? Maybe it’s just because all my early experience was on 4:3, but I’d never maximise a browser window on a modern screen.

I’d agree this is bad design, but I’d be somewhat surprised if it’s a big practical problem for most people.

There are many many people who keep a single window maximized at all times and alt-tab between windows.

It's the most basic form of window management, and it works pretty well.

It's especially helpful if you want to be able to focus on one thing at a time only, and not have multiple different windows with disparate screen noise visible at once.

I often operate in that mode, using a tiling window manager to have a single maximized window on my primary monitor, and optionally a tile of auxiliary windows on my secondary monitor.

I agree. I will do side by side quite often when I'm programming or doing a specific multi-tasking work, but my "regular" browsing is fullscreen. I don't see why I would browse the web (single focused task) on the left or right half of my monitor, that just seems... silly?

I maximize the window height, but limit it in width precisely because so many websites aren't designed for wide screens. Windows makes this easy: just double click on the top or bottom edge of the window. It's also sticky, so I can easily drag it to the centre of the screen.

The idea that anyone wouldn’t maximize all applications, especially their browser, is utterly bewildering to me.

That's my feeling as well. I bought a large monitor with nice resolution and I want to run my applications at full size. Window tiling is nice but its also a distraction for me and I always seem to forget which app has focus.

I do not maximize some of my applications because i want to have several of them visible at any time when i'm working on more than one. I do maximize some other applications, depending on what i'm doing. I do not maximize the browser because i want to have the content i'm working with/looking at/reading in front of me (especially on the reading aspect since reading long lines is tiresome) and maximizing on a 16:9 monitor means that a lot of content will be at the sides.

Now combine the above with the fact that i'm using a ~23" 1366x768 monitor, the tendency of pretty much every site out there to use the window width as a means to differentiate between mobile and desktop sites and the stupid trend to use ginormous font sizes everywhere and you get an idea of how much i like browsing many sites out there (at least HN and old Reddit is perfectly fine). Well, i'm thankful that browsers have a zoom option at least, many of the sites out there are only usable at a 70-80% zoom for me.

But yeah, last time i had my browser maximized all the time was when i had a 4:3 monitor.

There are better monitors at my local thrift store for 5 dollars. It's like 68ppi the last monitor I had like that had a huge floppy drive and kings quest III.

It's time to upgrade.

No there are certainly not better monitors at your thrift store for $5 dollars.

This is a brand new monitor i bought some months ago (late 2019) and the cost was much bigger than 5 dollars. In fact it was the most expensive VA monitor at this resolution (i avoid IPS because i actually want to be able to see dark colors and contrast and every single IPS monitor i've used, regardless of resolution, is garbage when it comes to that with the awful backlight glow), it has a ton of inputs at the back, relatively fast response time (for VA), etc. It is one of the best monitors i ever had.

The resolution was something i explicitly opted for, partly because at the time i had an APU-based system that i wanted to game on and i didn't want the blurry mess that a higher resolution would have and partly because 1366x768 on a monitor (as opposed to laptop) makes for very sharp icons, fonts (after you disable antialiasing) for everything (as opposed to using a hidpi monitor where some apps look crisp and others look either too tiny or blurred from scaling). Also as a (very high) bonus, it looks great when playing older games that often use 1024x768 as a resolution since i have 1:1 mapping there.

Finally 1366x768 is currently by far the most common resolution on PCs (mainly thanks to laptops, but desktops use it too - see mine) according to statcounter and the second most common on gaming PCs according to Steam, so it isn't something you'd only find in obscure old PCs, it is as mainstream as it gets.

>1366x768 is currently by far the most common resolution on PCs

According to steam 10.9% of users are running at that resolution. Only 4% are running at worse and 85% are running at higher resolution mostly at 1080p at a whopping 65%. Calling it the second most common is true but deceptive is it just means that its so old that there are so many different better choices that people are spread out over the many and varied better choices.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

>i didn't want the blurry mess that a higher resolution would have

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/285860-720p-looks-bad-o...

If you mean that your apu is so weak that it can't do more than 720p and this would look bad at 1080p you are correct but that seems like a uniquely bad choice given that one would logically want to either get an actual gpu or give up on gaming and get a screen worth using instead of picking a compromise that is the worst of both worlds.

Regarding scalling 800x600 scales evenly to a 1920x1200 with black bars on the sides. 1152×900 scales to 1600x900 in the same fashion. You can also run the game in a window and avoid having to match it up evenly.

>1366x768 on a monitor (as opposed to laptop) makes for very sharp icons, fonts (after you disable antialiasing) for everything (as opposed to using a hidpi monitor where some apps look crisp and others look either too tiny or blurred from scaling).

I think your eyesight is bad.

Your PPI: 68 Common Resolution for your screen size: 95 Best in class: 191

> According to steam 10.9% of users are running at that resolution.

Which is why right after the part you quoted and apparently ignored, i wrote "and the second most common on gaming PCs according to Steam". Gaming PCs are more likely to have higher resolution, but not every PC is a gaming PC. Statcounter.com has 1366x768 above 1920x1080.

Also 10.9% of Steam's user is still around 10 million active users, which is a lot of people.

> but that seems like a uniquely bad choice

That is your opinion, i find it a great choice and i like my monitor.

> given that one would logically want to either get an actual gpu

I have an actual GPU nowadays.

> or give up on gaming

I do not think you are in position to tell anyone give up anything.

> and get a screen worth using

I find my monitor worth using.

> instead of picking a compromise that is the worst of both worlds.

That is your opinion that i disagree with.

> Regarding scalling 800x600 scales evenly to a 1920x1200 with black bars on the sides.

1920x1200 is not 16:9 which will cause either black bars or stretched UIs on actually new titles and videos, i wouldn't personally buy a non-16:9 monitor these days. Also 800x600 looks fine on my 1366x768 monitor centered (even if a bit smaller image) with 1:1 pixels.

> 1152×900 scales to 1600x900 in the same fashion.

Pretty much no game where you have to use fixed resolutions (mostly 2D games) uses 1152x900. Earlier 3D games work at 1366x768 by centering 1024x768 but almost all of them have workarounds to work at higher 4:3 resolutions (when i used a 1920x1080 monitor i often ran older 3D games at 1440x1080).

> You can also run the game in a window and avoid having to match it up evenly.

If i had Windows 7 or using Linux, perhaps, but with Windows 8+ and the forced compositor that adds input lag i avoid running games in a window.

> I think your eyesight is bad.

Yes it is, which is why i sit close to the monitor so i can see stuff (and the reason i prefer smaller monitors). But i can clearly see the pixels, which is what i mean with "sharp" here.

> Best in class: 191

Subjective and it has all the issues with scaling and blurring i mentioned in my last message.

> the tendency of pretty much every site out there to use the window width as a means to differentiate between mobile and desktop sites

How would you differentiate them? At least with the width you can use css media queries so no Javascript is needed.

By using some mobile specific pseudo-selector? There are pseudo-selectors for printing, there could be selectors for mobile too.

Not sure, i'm not into web development, i just see using the window width as the wrong way. I keep my window down to that size even when i'm using monitors with larger resolutions (1080p or 1440p), it is a bad idea to assume window width == monitor resolution == device type.

And thus the overwhelming challenge of UX becomes clear. People like different things. I don't maximise any of my windows.

Yeah, it feels weird. I haven't maximized a window in a long long time. Well unless watching a video counts.

I use a tiling window manager, meaning all windows combined take up 100% of the screen, and all of them are always visible. The only UIs that never handle this correctly are modern, responsive websites which sometimes become unusable and show baffling design decisions at certain window sizes.

Although in the case of Reddit the old design isn't perfect either, because if the browser window is narrow enough it'll have a bug where you can shift the whole website out of the visible area by writing a long line in a comment.

To be clear, I know this is not a trivial thing, but when UI designers don't know how to handle certain viewport sizes they should rather just let the browser's scrollbars do the job they've been doing fine for decades.

It's bewildering to you that people want to look at multiple windows at the same time? Really?

When I have two apps side by side, they’re both maximized in split screen mode. This is a rare occurrence.

I guess I don't have a split screen mode on my window manager, so I just keep a bunch of small windows floating around.

I'm in quite a small niche: tiling window managers. When there's only one window open it takes 100% width and height. Every app I use other than some websites handles this extra space well.

You can reduce it by making real or fake windows on the left and right. Haven't gotten around to making a macro for that yet. If it's an article reader mode also exists.

I use xmonad as a window manager and do have one workspace where my browser lives. I find the new layout to be a pretty steep downgrade.

Wow, you're right. It did improve quite a bit. Not in an "OMG I'm switching right now" kind of way, but definitely in a "maybe I'll play around with this and see if I can configure it to my liking."

Never would have happened if someone hadn't made a post like this, so thanks!

edit: Aaaand instant regret, wow. Are you guys seeing this "Top Broadcast Right Now" shit? The best part for me is not just the ~1000px high random garbage video that takes up my whole screen, but before the video itself loads I actually get a ~1000px "white noise" animation, except it isn't just white but brightly colored, too.

I had a brief urge to heat up my soldering iron and stick it in my eye.

Hah, yeah I played with it more myself too and instantly found still many issues. The biggest one for me was the comment section is still using the short width format, which is a no go for me.

I just did the same thing. I lasted one minute on the new interface.

https://www.coldheat.com/

One of the few infomercial products that are actually good.

Looks cool, thanks!

Agreed. At least old Reddit didn’t require JS to load anything a didn’t show spinners every time you clicked on something.

"New" reddit (not that new anymore) still _frequently_ just gets stuck on the spinners. Also with some frequency, when navigating to a page I've been to before, it will load everything from cache nicely, and then REPLACE THE CACHE WITH SPINNERS THAT NEVER LOAD THE CONTENT. Sometimes it will do this with a page I've never visited before, ie it will load the page and then replace it with the spinners and never load. Worst of both worlds. Grinds my gears.

The _old_ reddit always just worked. I never had to reload the page multiple times, sometimes giving up entirely.

Obviously I'm still using the site or I wouldn't be complaining, but like, what exactly was wrong with old reddit again?

I just tried it for 30s, and on my first try opening a comment section, it just failed and gave me an error, then I had to press retry to get it to load. I get reddit failures maybe once a month normally, so I'm either super unlucky or new is very broken.

I'd be interested to know what the rationale for the new design was. Some kind of dark patterns? Make people so disgusted with the web version they just download the native app, which provides better monitoring and "stickiness"? I mean, is anyone at Reddit actually proud of the redesign?

I assume a little of column A, little column B. Web devs who wanted a greenfield project and a PM willing to be convinced, because 1) old reddit still exists to fall back on and 2) in retrospect outcomes pushing users to mobile seemed to be good for monitoring and stickiness.

I blame typical tech dysfunctions and the interests of users not align with short term stakeholder interests.

> What kind of UX designer ever approved such a mess and why do so many sites do this?

UX design used to be about good usability. Now it's all about shoving the latest hipster trends from Dribbble and Behance that look all "Shiny" and gives the CxOs orgasms.

One more odd thing that I found - maybe this is anecdotal - Developers who design interfaces based on OTS frameworks (Eg. Bootstrap) have a much better sense of UX than dedicated UX designers.

On mobile, Baconreader app solves all my problems. On desktop, adding old. as a sub domain takes you back to legacy reddit.

takes you back to web and them gets annoyed with open Reddit app feature. Yet baconreader is awesome, yet I find 8t difficult with Search like the native one.

old.* works well for me on mobile too, with the one exception that links opened from modmail open in the bad ui

Well, I'm glad to report that I'm working on a federated link aggregator project that tries to keep the good parts of old reddit. A test instance can be found at https://littr.me

Regarding content width, shorter lines are far easier to read, so there is some justification for the ridiculous amounts of padding on your widescreen. 2500 pixels wide lines are very hard to follow.

I think OP doesn't take issue with the content being narrow, but with the headers being wide while the content is narrow. The whole looks quite unbalanced and jarring (at least on the new Github).

I had to go into my user settings and change the feed display to compact instead of (what I presume is the default of) card, which is the nasty timeline-like display.

"what kind of UX designer approved...." If you want to say that about GitHub, fair, but what an incredibly out-of-place sentiment for a FOSS project