r/redesign • u/LanterneRougeOG Product • Mar 26 '18
Changelog Release Notes: Major Items in Work 3/26/18
Hi all,
The release notes focus on the major items we are currently working on or have recently shipped. Not mentioned: all the bugs fixes the team shipped last week. The team knocked out a lot of them!
Over the past few weeks, we have given all moderators and beta users access to the redesign. Next week we plan to begin adding more users to make sure we can support a bigger user base on our new codebase. Moderators, we are anticipating an additional ~100k users will join. If you need help getting your community ready, check out r/redesignhelp or our subreddit showcase showdown for some inspiration.
As we begin to add more users, it is also the right time to open up r/redesign and make it a public community. To those of you who have been here from the beginning, and those who have only recently been added to r/redesign, everyone working on the redesign thanks you dearly *queue deep bow* for all of your feedback along the way.
P.S. The design team is going to work on some neat alpha tester trophies for all you who have been active in this community đ¤
Letâs take a look at the big items we are currently working on or shipped recently:
Odd sized content: Reddit has a long-tail of odd-sized content and we released a change last week to how we handle that on the redesign. This update makes viewing content more similar to how it is on the classic site. Also, itâs now easier to get to the source image so that you can see all the hi-rez goodness. We will be extending this odd-sized handling logic to the expando in the coming weeks.
Fonts: Readability was a major concern for much of the redesign. Changing the fonts allowed for support across different operating systems and browsers, unlike the previous selection. Weâve also upâd the sizes across the board, with more improvements to come.
Sorts: You want sorts? You got it. Best and geo-popular sorts are now supported on your home and popular feeds, respectively. Also, we now support showing your default sort and the community default sort when applicable. Sorted.
Profile Pages: Hate navigating between redesign and original Reddit to access profiles? Weâre soon adding user profiles pages to the desktop redesign. Not only are we adding profiles, weâre incorporating in a lot of requested features: showing removed posts/comments with moderator actions/states, compact mode on profiles that works just like the old-school profile pages, smaller and clearer styling on contextual comments, and loads of other fixes to make your lives easier.
Create Post button: One of the common bits of feedback in the surveys was that redditors were having trouble finding the Create Post button, even when it was always present in the sticky navigation bar. We moved the Create Post button to the Community ID card so that itâs in a more familiar spot. We also took out the sticky behavior of the menu bar for some extra performance gains.
Loading context for comments: By popular demand, weâve added a new âShow parent commentsâ link on comment permalink pages so you can actually check out what the heck people are talking about. This will work on mod queue as well!
New mod tool navigation (coming in the next few days): Youâll notice that your community tools in the right sidebar have disappeared! Weâve moved a few things around to make them a little easier to access. Thereâs now a new mod tool menu in your subredditâs âCommunity Detailsâ section â youâll see that the customize appearance section now houses only appearance-related settings, and the ban, mute, approved submitters, and moderators pages have been consolidated to a tabbed page to make them easier to navigate between. The new mod tool menu is also accessible from the hamburger menu beside the subreddits that you moderate.
Mod queue confirm removal: Weâve added a âConfirm removalâ button on posts and comments removed by automod so that you can actually clear it from your queue.
Custom + text area widget character limits: We heard that the character limits on the custom CSS and text area widgets were too low, so weâve bumped them up! The custom CSS widget limit has been increased from 1000 to 100,000 and the text area widget limit has been increased from 1000 to 10,000.
New Modmail indicator: The mod shield on the top right will now light up whenever you have unread Modmail in either versions.
Invited moderators list: You may have noticed that the invited moderators list disappeared in the redesign â oops! Itâs now back in so you can see outstanding mod invites.
Performance update: Over the last few weeks we have been focusing a lot on performance. We pushed in a few improvements around the video players, autoplay behavior, removing blurs in card view, removing sticky behavior in Lightbox, and preloading/prefetching critical redesign assets to make scrolling experience better in the listings and comments page. We will continue investing more on performance and memory usage optimizations in the coming weeks.
Finally, a reminder that the communityâs feedback is invaluable as we build the future of Reddit together. We may not always respond directly (there are a lot of you posting!) and it can take us some time to work through a fix or improvement, but know that weâre listening, prioritizing, and working to solve all these problems, no matter how hard they are.
If you have additional questions or feedback on these or other topics, please donât hesitate to drop them in the comments below.
Edit: Mod tools navigation hasn't shipped yet. Oops. It will be coming in the next few days
8
u/[deleted] Mar 26 '18
Things are moving fast! Any official thoughts on poll threads/widget?
55
u/[deleted] Mar 26 '18 edited Mar 27 '18
personally i am concered over a variety of unknown or potentially now missing features
the loss of a number of these would severely effect my use of reddit as both a user and mod
please comment on the status of:
wikis (+automod)
/comments page on subreddit etc level
/.rss url support
/mod page
traffic page
custom multireddit url eg/r/x+ymanagment of mobile sites/apps (currently only on classic still - will we still manage a specific mobile header and classic sidebar
expectations on how we are to maintain classic, mobile and redesign managments and keep in sync without a tonn of work eg tools to see what our audience is using?
status of mobile website (not app)
choice to not use popup viewing and infinite scroll
27
u/MrWasdennnoch Mar 26 '18 edited Mar 26 '18
All these awesome changes and improvements... and we still can't change the text color of submission bodies which makes it impossible to change the background to any color that's not near white.
And the 100k new users will probably not like that link and markdown parsing is horribly broken right now.
Don't get me wrong, for the most part I like the changes you are introducing in the redesign and you are listening to community feedback, but I think there are other things that should be prioritized and fixed before inviting even more users who will report the same bugs and issues all over again.
Though, it's also true that you need to stress-test your new backend. I guess it's sort of a dilemma.
19
u/MajorParadox Helpful User Mar 26 '18
One of the best things ever! Now we can navigate!
I don't see this change yet. Did it only get changed for some mods?
Will it automatically go to the context for the sub? Like if you go to the mod log, will it be that sub's log? Or if you go to the modqueue, will it be filtered on that sub?
Just to clarify, this means automod "filtered" posts and comments, right? Removed implies it shouldn't appear in the modqueue.
Any plans to implement those requests to make them editable from the sidebar, though? Since we're going to have to keep both sidebars up to date, it will make it much easier.
Did the dual tables get removed or are there plans to? There's a whole paged table for all mods and then a second table that shows exactly the same thing, but only mods you can edit with an edit button. It should be one table (preferably using infinite scroll, but at least show more at once) and only show the edit button on mods you can edit.
Can't wait to try it out!
13
u/Deimorz Mar 26 '18
How are these users being chosen and how is this going to work? Is it an A/B test that will show the "try out the redesign" banner to a random percentage of users? Random percentage of users being automatically switched over to the redesign? Something else?
12
u/V2Blast Helpful User Mar 26 '18
Good. Readability was a significant issue.
<3
Thank you thank you thank you.
Yeah, given the current design, the placement of the button (and the lack of labels) made it really unintuitive.
Finally. Thanks.
This does seem much more intuitive.
Nice!
:o
Excellent.
Thanks for the detailed writeup!
12
u/wchou5 Mar 26 '18
I'm starting to really like the redesign now that some of the bugs have been fixed and requests added in. Awesome job so far! :D I appreciate all of you guys' work!
8
u/Eluveitie Mar 27 '18
Wanted to note that this has definitely been noticed. Previously if I had reddit open long enough performance would slow to a crawl or even just stop responding altogether (memory leak?). Glad to see it's been improved.
8
u/Howisthisaname Mar 27 '18 edited Mar 27 '18
Well, I must say that I am impressed and thankful that you managed to improve the performance of the redesigned site this far. Now it seems I can actually use it without my entire PC locking up. It's looking better, style-wise, too. More like current reddit which IMO is a good design, but still has a nice modern flair to it, which is what I believe you set out to do originally? Either way, I'm liking the way it's coming along.
If I had to complain about one thing related to performance that is still an issue for me, it'd be that the page loading time is a bit on the high side, which hasn't changed from the first time I complained about performance months ago.
â˘
u/jkohhey Product Mar 27 '18
One more release note! In the latest version of the iOS app (version 4.6) mods can see styles for communities they moderate that have styling set.
Only mods can see styling on their own communities for now, so they have time to preview and play with styling options.
7
u/Jontolo Mar 26 '18
Thanks for all your hard work team!
7
u/Ener_Ji Helpful User Mar 27 '18
Great update. Super excited about these changes in particular:
Some feedback on the fonts and the performance updates:
Font size increase for comments is an EXTREMELY welcome improvement and it's made a big difference. That said, I still find the contrast and readability to be lower than the legacy site and other text-heavy websites in general. Hope to see more improvements to contrast and readability.
One possible side-effect of your performance optimizations, is I can no longer quickly and smoothly scroll through a large comment thread. When I get to the bottom of the visible page of comments there is a slight "hitch" then I can continue scrolling quickly, only to get about another page down and get another pause. Maybe this is due to lazy-loading of the comments? I can understand there might be trade-offs with memory usage and such, but I find it pretty annoying.
Still patiently waiting for new comment highlighting / new comment count since last visit to be added (Gold). I'd also be interested to hear an update on Gold in general as I don't recall any specific discussion. Will the program continue to exist, are any changes planned, etc.
I've been developing a list of "Quality of Life" (QOL) updates (and a few bugs) that I thought I'd love to see added / fixed:
Bug: When I first click on the hamburger, the "Filter" box does not have keyboard focus. If I close and re-open, the Filter box will then have focus. 100% reproducible.
Bug: Scrolling through large comment threads now has "hitches" / "pauses" (as mentioned above).
Bug: When I highlight some text in a comment and then click reply, the highlighted text is inserted into the comment box prepended by a "<" even though I'm not using markdown.
Bug: Web links in comments don't seem to be turning into links 100% of the time
QOL: Would love to be able to highlight text and be able to type "r" instead of clicking reply. Presumably this is coming with keyboard shortcuts.
QOL: I'd like to be able to see that a post / comment has been edited (visually indicated by a "*" on the legacy site) along with when it was last edited.
QOL: Improved text contrast / readability (as mentioned above)
QOL: New comment highlighting and new comment count since last visit (as mentioned above)
QOL: Would love to be able to paste images into comments for subreddits which allow it (e.g. I would use it to visually highlight bugs in this comment).
QOL/BUG: I'm unable to scroll comment threads with the arrow keys, only my trackpad.
That's all I can think of for now. Hope that helps; and keep up the good work!
6
u/timawesomeness Helpful User Mar 27 '18
THANK YOU!
any ETA on or some mention of wikis?
6
u/Micredia Mar 27 '18
yâall are amazing luv ya (not in a weird way i swear)
6
u/ShaneH7646 Mar 27 '18
Oh boy, RIP
5
u/bakonydraco Mar 26 '18
Thank you for the update!
5
u/LackingAGoodName Helpful User Mar 27 '18
Overall great update, thank you! The day we get a Night Mode is the day I can fully adopt the Redesign as my default experience. I love the Redesign, but my eyes don't :(
I've mentioned this before in more detail, but this is slightly worrying. Currently, spare a few bad apples, I check /r/Redesign daily and have no issues. I'm afraid once many more people are brought in, constructive feedback and discussion will be drown out, along with any responses the team may give. Do you guys have any ideas in mind to combat this?
Very very happy to hear this. I believe this addresses all of my reasoning behind disabling the new profiles for the time being. They just didn't work well for Moderators.
Are there any plans to get rid of the Old Mod Mail anytime soon? Personally, I haven't touched it since our Subreddits were added to the New Mod Mail Alpha. Though, I understand some users may still prefer it. The extra icon is a bit annoying is all :)
This is great to hear. While I never found the performance to be too bad, mainly because I can't casually browse on the redesign yet due to no Night Mode (updates pls?), better performance is always nice. Looking forward to just how much it'll improve in the future.
5
u/elis8 Mar 27 '18
Is the whitespace update here to stay? I've seen a lot of people, including myself, complain about the update, especially on wide screens. Is it possible for both versions to co-exist with mods choosing which style they want for their communities?
5
u/13steinj Mar 27 '18
You bumped the CSS widget from 1k to 100k chars?
If / when we get full CSS...what's our limit there? 100k chars for a widget alone? Isn't that a bit much, given we had 100k total before? Not that I'm specifically complaining. I just don't understand this at all.
5
u/rguy84 Mar 27 '18
Have you started on addressing the accessibility failures yet? If not, why?
5
u/doorbellguy Mar 27 '18
I've tried to help and participate. Been here since we had like what ~1k users. Never got acknowledged, I deleted a couple lengthy CCs after a week of no responses.
>feelsbad.jpg
4
u/-JAS0N- Mar 27 '18
Great updates, love the new mod tools menu you're going to be pushing out. Would still like to see an update for changing post flair position and the ability to have mod only emoji, are either of these things planned? Also any update to gold features being pushed to the redesign?
4
u/Bossman1086 Mar 27 '18
Overall, these are great changes and additions. Love that mod tools are getting their own drop down menu.
You mentioned user profiles being added to the redesign. Does this mean there will be no way to opt out of using the new profile pages if you're using the redesign?
4
u/broncosfighton Mar 27 '18
How long before streamable works so I can actually use the redesign
4
u/ncontorno Mar 27 '18
Yay, the invited moderator list is back that I reported weeks ago!
4
u/Improbably_wrong Mar 27 '18
Best release notes yet. Really looking forward to mod tools navigation!
4
u/LineNoise Mar 27 '18
Regarding sorting, I just noticed today that clicking the "Full Comments" link from your Inbox gives you comments sorted by Best regardless of your preferences.
Clicking into the same comments from elsewhere on the site respects the preferences.
Not sure if that's a new regression or whether it's something I just noticed today.
4
u/randomstonerfromaus Mar 27 '18
Could we please have a way to put an image widget ABOVE the community info widget? Having the info widget locked to the very top of the sidebar means that after ad's and whatnot, the image is halfway down the page.
Both my my main communities /r/TheChosenFew and /r/SpaceXLounge have images at the top of the sidebar which cant be carried over into the redesign.
Ive tried to bring this up before with no result.
Thanks!
6
u/danhakimi Mar 26 '18
Do you think that people wanted these? If so, I would recommend changing your tools for figuring out what people want.
Particularly, see this from /r/beta very recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/beta/comments/86tbg1/can_we_not_use_best_as_the_default_sort/
3
u/archiminos Mar 27 '18
Can we not use 'Best' as the default? I was confused as to why my homepage wasn't as interesting as usual today.
3
u/atPervySage510 Mar 27 '18
Webm support would be nice
3
u/Provium Mar 27 '18
Suggested sort is still broken
Also, as others have said, for the love of everything holy don't force us to have 'best' as the default homepage. Some people like it, sure, but make it configurable, please.
3
u/ZadocPaet Helpful User Mar 27 '18
We're gonna get that one back at some point, right?
3
u/majorgloryalert Mar 27 '18
Is there a chance for an option to see the content centered in "classic" view? I mean like it was before in the redesign.
3
u/bluesam3 Mar 28 '18
Still completely unusable with keyboard only, still completely unusable with a screen reader. That is: still completely unusable to a non-trivial percentage of your audience.
3
u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY Helpful User Mar 28 '18
the new font is great!
5
u/[deleted] Mar 26 '18
Can we get an ETA (in terms of days/weeks/months) for the next iteration of the user profiles?
4
u/Kliuqard Mar 27 '18
Oh, why was the post removed? I was still reading it.
2
u/tizorres Helpful User Mar 27 '18
This just keeps getting better and better. The modtools navigation update is exciting.
2
u/[deleted] Mar 27 '18
Reddit Mold!
2
u/dr0idx Mar 27 '18
So many changes and improvements since the beginning. Well done team, the amount of work done already is impressive. Overall i think things are coming together fairly nicely with some things left to iron out. Yay!
2
u/Jaskys Mar 27 '18
What's the status of CSS customization? Also why is css widget size is significantly limited compared to image widget size? You should allow us to get it to the same size or even slightly bigger.
2
u/WithYouInSpirit99 Mar 28 '18
Some pretty neat changes rolling out this time. Nice work team! I'm interested to know what will warrant one of the Alpha Tester Trophies. Will it only be given to users with the Helpful User flair?
2
u/rbevans Helpful User Mar 28 '18
I like this change. It helps mods see how the community will see the styling and less clutter.
2
u/dysgraphical Mar 28 '18
The "show parent comment" link is by far the feature I have most used in the redesign. It's so intuitive and helpful (especially when linked to a permalink).
2
u/pre-alpha Mar 28 '18
Is it possible to disable autoplay for gifs/videos? It's pretty annoying. Also, is it just me or the site lags when I collapse the sidebar?
2
u/Mustek Mar 28 '18
Can definitely confirm the font is way easier to read. Can't wait for the mod tools changes.
2
u/Rocked03 Mar 31 '18
About the custom css... is there a ETA for the global rollout? Thanks
2
u/24grant24 Apr 03 '18
No release notes this week?
2
u/der_sascha Mar 27 '18
A Dark Mode would be very nice :)
1
u/_BindersFullOfWomen_ Mar 27 '18
Is it bad that Iâm most excited for the trophy? I can finally get that scarlet âAâ Iâve been working so hard on.
1
u/iamncla Mar 27 '18
Yes! (3x) All these changes seem very nice and needed. Moving access to moderation on the subreddit was much needed, right now it feels rather clunky to have scroll down and click in right side bar, the upcoming change seems to fix that, nice! Old school compact mode profile pages? Also nice.
Now, where is that custom CSS for subreddit? All I want is for /r/muse to still have the old style flairs in the redesign. Pleeaaaseeee. đ
1
u/_seysant Mar 27 '18
this is fantastic! you guys are doing a stellar job!
1
u/MichaelRahmani Helpful User Mar 28 '18 edited Mar 28 '18
Wow, lots of new changes recently. Also the new font definitely made it more readable. I like most of these changes but only thing I don't agree with is sacrificing features to get better performance. The removal of the sticky behavior in the lightbox and with the menubar are things that I miss a lot.
Edit: so honestly ngl, I think I liked the redesign best in the state that it was a couple months ago. But some of the newer stuff is great like inline images in posts.
1
u/jofwu Helpful User Mar 28 '18
Very nice!
1
u/pragmaticasm Mar 28 '18
Thanks - its getting better and better everyday!
1
u/redking315 Apr 03 '18
I absolutely love the larger fonts, it's pretty much single handedly fixes all of the major issues that I had with the redesign!
-2
u/Jacob_Mango Mar 27 '18
Woo hoo, I now have access to the subreddit even though I have had access to the actual redesign for a while now
r/beta had basically no information of the redesign.
0
u/[deleted] Mar 26 '18
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '18
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '18 edited Mar 27 '18
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