The main feed has infinite scroll on the main feed (I am not especially a fan of that). When you click a link it is a popup over the top of the infinite scroll page. Close the popup and you are at the same position in the infinite scroll list. I didn't like the new design at first, but after using it for a bit it's not that much difference. The low quality of posts combined with heavy handed moderation is far more of a problem for Reddit than the UX.
I use RES so always had that.
Re:Employee #1: Reddit (2016)
by pcthrowaway on Thursday February 11, 2021 @08:57PM
(#26109971)
> TBH I struggle to see how the new interface could be considered better in any respect worth considering.
I think the new interface integrates more seamlessly with ads, so from reddit's perspective, I can see why they'd prefer it.
TBH I struggle to see how the new interface could be considered better in any respect worth considering. The only good feature is, I believe, showing images by default, which you can achieve trivially with Reddit Enhancement Suite and would have not required a complete re-engineering on a SPA model.
There might well be server-side improvements that make it worth to Reddit, but from a user perspective the new UI was a straight UX downgrade; without old.reddit.com they would probably have become another Digg.