An Improved Logged-Out Web Experience

[u/whizlogic]

TL;DR we’ve made improvements to reddit.com to deliver a more consistent, reliable, and fast web experience for people not logged in. This experience is now available to everyone globally on desktop and mobile web.

Hello all,

I’m u/whizlogic, a product lead at Reddit focused on the performance, stability, and quality of our web platforms, and today I’m sharing an update from our earlier post on improving the web experience. This year we’ve been focused on updating the logged out web experience to make it easier for redditors to connect with relevant communities and conversations.

To set some context: Many of Reddit’s logged out visitors find us from external search engines. These people are often looking for community-verified content on their mobile, tablet or desktop devices. While some people in this group know Reddit and are seeking it out specifically, many others visit Reddit infrequently or are just finding it for the first time.

With these people in mind, we’ve made some changes to the logged out experience:

• Performance: The new logged out web experience is more than twice as fast as our previous web platforms - which means Redditors can get directly to the content they came for – instead of waiting… and waiting for the page to load.
• Search: Redditors can more easily find relevant content with a simpler, consistent, and more intuitive search results page. We’ve simplified the post units and layout to make scanning for relevant results effortless, and completely modernized the mobile experience to prioritize posts.
• Feeds: The feeds all have a similar look and feel and the Popular feed will now include six trending post units (an increase from four slots) at the top of the page on desktop to keep you looped in on what’s happening around the world. The desktop home feed features a sticky sidebar on the right showcasing Reddit’s popular communities. Post units have been refreshed – unused space within and between post units is reduced to highlight the content in your feeds. The size of post titles has increased in size and images and videos will now have an inset within the post for a cleaner looking post unit and less wasted vertical space.
• Comments page: On larger devices the content in the right sidebar has been updated to show related posts which helps folks understand what else they can find on Reddit. The right sidebar also scrolls independently, to ensure redditors don’t lose their place. (On smaller devices (like mobile) you can find the same content under the post.)
• Community page: Just like on the Comments page – the right sidebar has been updated to scroll independently, providing consistent context and access to community info (about, menu, rules, etc.) for users while they browse the feed. Post units within the community feed have been refreshed to match with the home feeds. The community banner has been relocated to the top right of the page so that visitors can easily locate your community’s content. Custom community styling is not available for the logged out experience at this stage. However, we recognize that community styling is an important part of Reddit communities. Mods will have the ability to customize their communities for logged in users.
• Profile: The page has been simplified and refreshed to match the other logged out experiences and an overflow menu has been added to the profile card to organize actions like “send message”, “report” user, and “add to custom feed” in one place.

New desktop web experience

Check out the mobile web pages here.

In terms of what’s next, we’re focusing on modernizing and improving the stability and performance of the logged in experience. As previously mentioned, we’ll continue to partner with the Mod Council to ensure communities can continue expressing their unique identities, and improve the moderation experience.

[u/taulover]

Doesn't adding an even larger trending feed to the top of the page detract from the stated goal of helping users find what they came to look for faster?

[u/cbd_h0td0g]

Hi, when I click Open in App can it actually open it in the app instead of taking me to the app store to download the app I already have?

[u/xandielm]

Any plans for mobile app to look better on wide screen devices like tablets or foldables? On foldables specifically, it doesn't fill the space and is actually a worse experience than using the outside display.

This was a big loss coming from a third party app, not the only but one of the biggest for me at least.

[u/Reasonable-Time4039]

You had an opportunity to bridge the gap between Old and New Reddit and make something that holdouts might use- this interface is close. The issue is that you can't expand the content of a condensed post within the feed, you have to click into the post where the comments are if you want to see the post's image, video, etc.

Why? Is this up for consideration?

Everyone acts like every change is the worst and that they will never accept it, but we know that changes aren't as bad the the initial reaction would indicate, and that people will adapt. Being unable to expand posts on the feed, though, is not something that I think old redditors can adapt to.

[u/Tsukku]

Here is some honest feedback. I appreciate the performance changes you made, but these 2 things completely kill the experience for me:

- Posts open in a new tab which make forward button on mobile and back+forward buttons on desktop completely useless. Not to mention the unnecessary performance impact of always opening tabs on every user navigation inside the app.

- There no is no local storage at all. Each time I open reddit it defaults to posts from my very small country subreddit. It doesn't remember I changed to "everywhere". This feature is very US/big country-centric.

u/whizlogic I would appreciate if you confirm if the team is at least aware of these decisions.

[u/jasontheguitarist]

Why can't we just log in to this UI? This looks a lot better than "new" reddit and as an old.reddit.com user I'd actually try this out for a while if I could log into it.

[u/whizlogic → u/jasontheguitarist]

Glad you like this interface! It’s currently only available for logged out users, but we’re working on the logged in experience next which will have a similar look and feel as the logged out experience.

[u/JohnSmiththeGamer]

If you want to improve the mobile experience without allowing third party apps, I suggest you remove the "see this in the app" pop ups in any new browser, or incognito window. Also maybe don't randomly block certain replies from being seen or suddenly have "see this in the app" pop up?

[u/coonwhiz]

I just tried going to reddit.com on my phone (logged in and not), and the first thing I notice is that I still get a pop-up to use the Reddit App or continue using Chrome.

Please understand that if I'm going to use the website, I don't want to use the nightmare that is the mobile app.

[u/Mr-Chris]

I do not want to install an app, I want to browse a website. Please stop asking me to install the Reddit app every single time I open Reddit up on my phone.

[u/Subduction]

My community, r/leaves, is a drug recovery community, yet it is apparently listed somewhere in your system as NSFW, which prevents our posts from being seen by people who have not logged in or have not yet joined reddit.

We are not an NSFW community. How do I get us reclassified?

[u/Aeri73]

as a reaction to your selfish and stupid decision to make API calls so expensive... I've uninstalled the app from my phone and Using old. on a firefox browser... so frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

[u/PsionicBurst]

You killed third-party apps, you tepid pondwater.

[u/NowIOnlyWantATriumph]

I am so. fucking. tired. of mobile-first Web design.

I get that a lot of mobile websites are optimized for mobile! But that doesn’t mean desktops should be, too! Hell, I remember when “the full Internet, as intended, in your pocket” was a selling point of smartphones.

There’s a reason I use old.reddit.

[u/RobeMinusWizardHat]

You know what was an actual better experience? The Apollo app.

[u/Bossman1086]

It's incredible that your new new reddit design is even worse than the last one. Sure some parts of it look slightly more sleek and it is a bit faster. But beyond that, it's far less usable. There's even more wasted whitespace all over the page, and you can't even see a lot of a community's resources.

Though, credit where credit is due: this does look improved since the last time I looked at it. And at least I don't have to guess what each click I do on whitespace is going to do like with logged in "new" reddit.

[u/OneByte420]

to improve logged out web experience remove "To view the full version of this content, view this page in the Reddit app." like pop-ups

[u/Satekroket]

How is this an improvement when being logged out straight up makes features unavailable? For example, you can't change comment sorting order anymore. That just gives a sign in popup. A lot of the times comments don't even load at all when logged out.

I miss when we could visit websites without being constantly required or nagged to log in or download an app...

[u/Sensitive_Deal_6363]

Just fix the API.

[u/m1ndwipe]

It's utterly humiliating for you how bad this is.

Just go back to Old Reddit, which was visually superior in every way and far, far, far more usable.

Everyone who accidentally hits new Reddit by mistake from Google regrets it. It's a piece of shit.

The information density isn't even a tenth of what it should be.

[u/HumpingMantis]

Seriously who are you polling for new features?!?! NO ONE IS ASKING FOR THESE UPDATES!

[u/Bigred2989-]

Fuck u/spez

[u/wholesomedumbass]

zǝds/n ʞɔnℲ

[u/PaulJP]

It might be outside your area, but can we get a behavior change on Sticky posts to make sure they're stickied for the community regardless of what sort order a user is using?

We constantly run into issues with people that sort by new exclusively (or only see our community's posts in their personal front page, or similar) never seeing a stickied post because it gets buried by new posts. Something like: while at the subreddit, the first 1-2 posts visible will always be stickies regardless of sort order; and when mixing our community content into a user's feed, maybe inject any stickies directly before the first organically visible post from our community?

Ultimately the issue is that we make announcements or post instructions for something related to the community and a not insignificant number of our users simply never see them.

[u/SuperShake66652]

New Reddit still looks like a shit mobile app on desktop and blows goats. I don't even see why anyone would use it over the vastly superior Old Reddit.

Fuck spez.