Reddit is slowly killing the old interface? native image galleries are invisible

[+] worldmerge|5 years ago|reply

They have also made many of the subreddits not viewable via a mobile browser pushing you to the app, it seems though the blocks go in and out of effect. At some point metrics of a sites app downloads don't mean anything when they make their primary site unusable.

[+] ozmbie|5 years ago|reply

I deleted an unofficial Reddit app from my phone, since I found I was wasting too much time on it. I figured for the occasions I wanted access to reddit (mostly from searching for topics on Google), I’d just use the web version.

But the web UI, combined with Google AMP, made it unusable.

I’ve gone back to the app but with iOS screen time restrictions.

[+] ixwt|5 years ago|reply

I've found you can google the subreddits, and they will show you these subreddits. As long as your referrer is still Google, it seems to be fine.

[+] koolba|5 years ago|reply

What’s an example of this?

[+] SheinhardtWigCo|5 years ago|reply

When old.reddit.com dies, it’s over.

[+] alasdair_|5 years ago|reply

I agree. The new UI is utterly obnoxious on mobile - they keep trying to force me to use the app, including making it impossible to read the rest of a forum without using the app instead. It's horrible.

[+] baby|5 years ago|reply

I don't understand why they're doing this:

1. Why are they forcing me to use their app so much? it's just not practical: for example if I quit the app and come back it doesn't return me to the page I was looking at; worse it often doesn't display comments for me (infinite loading).

2. Why is the web redesign so bad? Who are they trying to cater for? There's just so much friction in reading comments from multiple posts now, when I click on a post to read the comments an then outside it scroll back up to the beginning. Why can't I read comments if I'm not signed in?

[+] jmclnx|5 years ago|reply

Same for me, and for people using mobile, not for me. Screen to small, and I will not get into spywhere on smart phones.

So, if I cannot get to old.reddit, I stop going there, very simple.

I am glad hackernews/ycombinator still has what I consider the best WEB/Comment setup I have ever seen.

[+] tootie|5 years ago|reply

https://i.reddit.com has been around for a very long time and hasn't changed at all. It can't play video but you can browse threads and it's lightning fast. Especially without thumbnails.

[+] netsharc|5 years ago|reply

As someone who spends too much time on reddit, I do hope they do that soon, so that the UX disaster of the new interface discourages me from spending more than 2 minutes per day there..

[+] nxmnxm99|5 years ago|reply

If you have to force your users into a new UI, it's a shit UI

[+] sercand|5 years ago|reply

I have started using old interface since yesterday because the new interface is extremely slow on Desktop. I just don’t understand how showing bunch of images can be this slow.

[+] mariusor|5 years ago|reply

I keep hoping some of the cool communities would be willing to move to ActivityPub based aggregators.

[+] unknown|5 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] __jem|5 years ago|reply

Mobile is just the name of the game. I don't get it -- I can't stand browsing the web on mobile versus a laptop -- but when you look at the metrics, it's hard to argue against optimizing for that channel.

[+] zests|5 years ago|reply

I like using web on mobile, I just want to use the desktop website though. No apps, no mobile version. Just give me the website.

[+] leshenka|5 years ago|reply

There is a grocery chain store in my country and since ordering food is kind of hot this year, they started accepting orders and deliver groceries. Via an app. They have an app for this. You can't order anything through their website, you have to use your tiny surveillance rectangle for that.

That's an awful trend.

[+] someperson|5 years ago|reply

Very good opportunity for a Reddit alternative to come in and dominate. Getting rid of old Reddit would be Digg v4 all over again.

[+] marcinzm|5 years ago|reply

Reddit does this because they have failed to find a monetization strategy good enough to cover the investment in the business. Any competitor without some new approach will have the same issue.

[+] tmpz22|5 years ago|reply

Not really. Reddit infrastructure and product development has been subsidized by hundreds of millions in VC funding for almost a decade. At this point they don't even need a good product to stay at the table. Meanwhile to compete you need moderation tools, highly performant and reliable caching infrastructure for media rich content, enough of an ad network the investors believe you can eventually build an ad network, and to sell you soul to investors to buy marketing to keep people around long enough to gain critical mass.

Social Media isn't about innovation anymore. It's about buying a stake and rent seeking. And guess what nobody is going to sell you an acre to get started just because you feel like giving it the college try.

[+] kernel_pancake|5 years ago|reply

A federated Reddit alternative called Lemmy is looking promising https://github.com/LemmyNet

[+] wdr1|5 years ago|reply

One of my biggest gripe is forcing Reddit to their mobile app, which is filled with bugs. I've had a bot posting a daily Calvin & Hobbes strip for seven years. The comic is posted as a gif, and so many people using the Reddit mobile app have complained, I basically had to write a FAQ for it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CalvinBot/comments/bdxb6h/why_are_p...

It's been over a year & the bug is still there.

[+] herogreen|5 years ago|reply

Even if the app was perfect, I would not use it (less suported platforms, waste space, gathers more data, etc).

[+] Lammy|5 years ago|reply

It would be called "classic" instead of "old" if it wasn't something they actively wanted to kill.

[+] arp242|5 years ago|reply

It was mentioned somewhere it's not going to be killed anytime soon, similar to how i.reddit.com is still working. But it also won't get updates so you may get a "degraded" experience.

A good example of this is GitHub-style ``` ... ``` codeblocks, which don't work on old.reddit.com, but do in the new UI.

[+] CincinnatiMan|5 years ago|reply

Are we sure this is intentional and not a recent bug? I feel like I've seen gallery sets before on the old UI.

[+] Average_|5 years ago|reply

I assume it's a bug. This 1 hour old image gallery is doing fine. https://old.reddit.com/r/dogelore/comments/jylu1t/le_asdf_mo...

[+] bilegeek|5 years ago|reply

It's worked on and off for me in the past. Most likely, it's a bug; however, they also have a history of A/B testing, so that can't be ruled out.

[+] plorkyeran|5 years ago|reply

It was working until a few hours ago. Probably just a bug.

[+] shawnz|5 years ago|reply

I am guessing it is just an issue with the custom CSS on this subreddit.

EDIT: Nevermind, after investigating the issue does not seem to be the CSS.

[+] postingawayonhn|5 years ago|reply

Yeah, looks like a bug to me.

[+] ReactiveJelly|5 years ago|reply

Bug meaning, they quit caring about the old UI and the bugs are just gonna accumulate

[+] xvilka|5 years ago|reply

New Reddit interface is slow as hell for something as simple as text/images discussion board. Compare it with the speed of Hacker News, for example. They are completely incompetent.

[+] tumblerz|5 years ago|reply

I hate to be seen this nakedly aggro, but reddit is broken ruins.

Obligatory cred: first used reddit in...2006? Used it to chat with friends around the world on subjects of mutual interest. It was fun, of course. I've mainly lurked since then.

Now? If one sifts through the records there is great info in there, but most subs I want to enjoy are overrun with, how to say, self-congratulatory amateurs. It's neither useful nor entertaining.

Even joke subs feel tired and decadent.

Meanwhile, mob rule downvoting pervades.

It is broken.

Good riddance.

[+] mkskm|5 years ago|reply

> Good riddance.

Is this a good thing? Of all social media, Reddit seems to me like it has the most potential to actually do something positive for society. They’ve seriously been dropping the ball with execution in the past several years but I don’t know that we’d be better off with them disappearing without a better alternative.

[+] js2|5 years ago|reply

Facebook also appears to be killing mbasic.facebook.com. It increasingly redirects me to m.facebook.com.

[+] forgotmypw17|5 years ago|reply

Yeah, I noticed that as well.

For now, you can still edit the target URL manually.

[+] LeoPanthera|5 years ago|reply

Their mistake was keeping the old interface around at all. If they had just killed it off we would have complained about it for a while and then just moved on.

[+] wishinghand|5 years ago|reply

The icon to expand the image flashes for a second, then disappears. This is on desktop too.

[+] pts_|5 years ago|reply

Reddit has a 100 trackers now. Takes so long to open so I come on HN meanwhile.

[+] gingericha|5 years ago|reply

Their video player is probably one of the worst I've experienced. It [1] requires me to hit play twice to get a video to actually play almost 100% of the time. [2] the audio frequently defaults to max, then adjusts to the level I've previously selected. [3] It frequently auto plays if I've scrolled down the feed a ways, and [4] frequently only plays 50% of the video and restarts or locks up.

[+] Scaevolus|5 years ago|reply

Plus it's DASH, so you can't just link to an mp4 file with combined video/audio streams to avoid the interface.

[+] userbinator|5 years ago|reply

I thought playing videos in a browser was a solved problem ever since <video> was introduced, many years ago.

[+] geuis|5 years ago|reply

Mmm I don’t think so. Gallery shows up fine. https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/jy14p1/i_combin...

Note that I have my mobile settings to use the desktop version and I only use the old interface.

[+] zests|5 years ago|reply

I dislike all things "new web". The websites feel like layers upon layers of Javascript, fancy designs that feel like they are responsible for the decreased responsiveness. Styles delegated to the same CSS frameworks that everyone else uses. The rounded corners.

Give me plain HTML, minimal CSS, and a template engine any day of the week.

[+] buzzerbetrayed|5 years ago|reply

I want to agree, but don't. Javascript is nice. Leave a comment on HN, then push back to go out to the home page. Wait, you're back at your comment.

This flow is obviously not ideal, and would be prevented with a little Javascript.

[+] nitrohorse|5 years ago|reply

Looks like the old mobile design (https://i.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/jyg1jq/finished_the_b...) redirects to the new Reddit interface for image galleries.

137 comments