As requested by some users: ‘old’ style now accessible via https://old.lemmy.world
Code can be found here: https://github.com/rystaf/mlmym , created by Ryan (Is he here?) (Yes he appears to be! @nnrx@sh.itjust.works ! Thanks for this awesome front-end!)
Idk why people like the old reddit UI and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.
Actually, I’ll ask it anyway. Can somebody please give me a comprehensive explanation?
Is it just nostalgia? I would understand, I play retro games with CRT filter on.
Information density and minimal whitespace. Can’t stand this trend of only using the middle third of the screen.
Ah, so it’s, like, a brutalist, function over form preference?
I can focus on content much better when the UI is breathing. And I prefer clients that have images already expanded, to save me the clicks.
From your perspective - yes, exactly that and I think that’s probably the best way you can understand it.
From my perspective, the old.reddit.com UI (with RES) is possibly the most beautifully designed web page I’ve ever encountered. I certainly couldn’t have used it almost daily for the past 12 years if that wasn’t the case.
I can understand and respect that while thinking you’re insane. If I had to guess, your formative experience with technology was via touch screens and I think that would go a long way to explaining your preferences.
For me, post uniformity is important. It feels like I’m in control of the experience and I’m browsing rather than having things shoved in my face. I have Imagus installed so I only need to hover over a link to see the picture and so I can just look at the pictures I’m interested in - one at a time.
Full disclosure - my earliest experiences in the Internet were bulletin boards and that probably had a formative part in my preferences. I’m also probably undiagnosed something.
Not at all, actually, I’m in my 30s and I’ve been geeking out over technology ever since Win95. Even some DOS, but barely, all I knew was
prince.exe. I did, however, skip bulletin boards as internet became widely available in my country after their time.So do I! But it doesn’t work reliably with all the links, unfortunately. But to be fair, you still gotta move your cursor all the way over the link, so is the click really saved at that point?
And btw.
If I open the old UI on my 1080p screen, the content still only uses about 2/3rd of the screen, it’s just that the gap is in the middle, so it’s not very efficient either. I will agree that vertically, it fits more information.
I have worked as a UI/UX designer for a couple years and I have always been fighting my boss over making the company software way too cramped. He was always pushing information density. But I would point out to him that every single design guideline shows that UI is better consumed when there’s some breathing room, and we would compromise as the result.
Nowadays we have massive screens, we don’t need to cramp lots of info into a 640x480 CRT display. But I can see how an old-reddit-UI-inspired new UI can be as info dense and at least look modern. Maybe we should strive for that. Unless of course nostalgia, that thing is unbeatable. Off to replay Prince of Persia (1989).
It’s not a matter of touch screens, but high resolution screens. The text of the “old” layout looks way too small for my taste on screens >1080p to the point that I struggle to see why people would actively go after instead of a layout that makes good use of white space.
Also, it’s not even like you’re making a better use of space when the right side of the screen is entirely empty.
they’re allergic to scrolling
That’s a rather hostile approach to this conversation. I suggest we try to understand each other’s point of view, instead.
Anything looks good compared to new Reddit, and I think people just conflated that with “objectively good.”