I talked with Alexis, co-founder of reddit, and got a few updates on the status and changes to the redesign efforts on Reddit.com.
Currently expected to launch sometime next week, if no further bugs or issues are discovered, the Reddit community has been vocal in what they like and hate about the new designs. Since the release earlier this month on May 7th, 2008, there have been a few more changes, as of today, to the design over at http://beta.reddit.com.
Here is a basic overview:
1. Reddit has added a nice blue bar in it’s header to more clearly define where the navigational elements and the user submissions are.
2. They also decided to do away with the drop down menu they added in the first design, based on user feedback.
3. The color of the text links under the submissions, as seen above, was also changed back to gray instead of that green color, which I wasn’t too fond of. There is also a minor order change in the details of the submissions, where the time submitted is back in the beginning before the category submitted to.
4. One of the more noticeable changes, was the increase visibility on submitting articles and creating subreddits. Decently sized buttons are now visible on the right hand side offering these two features.
5. On the individual story pages, the comments and related links are moved back over near the top left of the page and they have added some quick push options in which to sort the comment on the page with.
You can limit how many comments you see total and sort by Hot, Top, New, and Old.
6. I noticed nice little on-screen adjustment of content when you select or un-select your desired subreddits on the right hand side.
You can also now save any changes you make permanently by clicking the “save edits” button.
7. You might have noticed in the original leaked photos of the new design, there where some arrows on the far left of the submissions.
The various arrows, as seen in the image, show the momentum of the submission and update every 1 minute.
These didn’t actually make it into the first beta and they are not in the new beta, so I asked Alexis if they were ever going to make it into the design.
We want to put those momentum arrows in. Maybe even replace the numbers with them since they’re more meaningful (like we talked about), but we just want a better design for them.
8. There is also going to be a new “friends” link that will take you to your friends section.
we definitely want to add the friends link, its just a matter of where. I think it’ll go in that dropdown you see on the toolbar with recommended and saved.
There were a few minor things that I was iffy on when they launched the new beta design for Reddit.com. The green font, massive white space on the front page, and the blue background on the subreddit selection box, all of which have been fixed and addressed.
It is clear that Reddit staff has taken the time to really listen to it’s readers before launching this redesign on the main site.
So congrats to Reddit on the great work and thanks for the effort to make sure your users had a voice in the changes.