r/google • u/justcool393 • Apr 22 '17

Mod Post Reddit Stylesheets, /r/Google Theme, and You

Edit: Thank you for all of your support! The admins have announced that they are reversing the decision and that custom stylesheets will be kept. Thank you!

Hello, it is your moderators, and we want to make you aware of something that is going on reddit-wide that will affect this subreddit as well as many others.

The ability for subreddits to add custom stylesheets is going to be removed in the near future by the admins. This will affect us because of the theme that we used, which is based on the Naut reddit theme.

There are also many other subreddits which are affected by this change, including gaming subreddits, subreddits dedicated to hobbies and interests (such as /r/anime, /r/videos, /r/pics, and many more).

/u/resph has provided a list here of functionality that this change would lose:

  • Functionality: /r/Dota2 has a list of current livestreams and their # of viewers

  • UX: /r/videos has a list of rules where on hover it expands out to explain each rule

  • Functionality: /r/Minecraft has a list of server status (icons) on sidebar

  • UX: /r/Hearthstone has notices & links on the top banner

  • Personality: /r/ffxiv has various CSS Easter Eggs to give it a bit more personality

  • Functionality: /r/Starcraft has a "verified user" system

  • UX: /r/Guildwars2 increased the the size of "message the moderators" to make it stand out more

  • UX: /r/ffxi has a small tooltip if a user hasn't set a user flair yet

  • UX: /r/DarkSouls2 has related subreddits linked on the sidebar with images instead of text

  • Personality: /r/mildlyinfuriating's joke where it slightly rotates "random" comment threads

  • Functionality: /r/ClashOfClans not only has a list of livestreams, but thumbnail previews of each

  • UX: /r/DarkSouls3 has a reminder when hovering over the downvote button

  • Personality: /r/StarWars has quote popups when you upvote

  • UX: /r/pcmasterrace has changed the "report" link to red

  • UX: /r/explainlikeimfive has custom colored link flair icons

  • Personality: /r/mylittlepony has countless emotes

  • Personality: /r/onepiece has a scrolling banner (which can be paused)

  • UX: /r/FinalFantasy has green background stickies to make them stand out

  • Personality: /r/mildlyinteresting has a moving gauge on sidebar

  • Functionality: /r/IASIP has a top menu

  • UX: /r/DoctorWho has a light red box on sidebar for new users to read

  • UX: /r/gallifrey disables the PM link on "Created by" so users focus on modmail

The reddit admins have made it clear that they intend to push forward with this change despite the negative response from the community (of general users and moderators). Without CSS styling, subreddits will all look the same, with their personalities being stripped and any differences being very limited. We wanted to let you know since users may be confused to see that the theme is removed.

The hope is that there may be some of our users who care enough about the CSS here and in their other subreddits that by being vocal and outspoken early enough that we can maybe prevent reddit from making this mistake.

Thank you.

(If you are a moderator of a subreddit that is affected by this change, you can head on over to /r/ProCSS for more information about this.)

51 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

10

u/SmashPortal Apr 22 '17

To those who didn't read the post linked in this post, they're not removing subreddit customization, they're changing over to a new system that's possibly more restrictive, but allows customization to affect mobile browsers that don't currently support the current styling methods. Their claims are that CSS is hard to learn, makes the website slow, makes the diversity of subreddit designs confusing, since different subreddits aren't uniform, and it doesn't always function correctly on mobile. They've also said that they're redesigning the website.

TL;DR They're replacing CSS with a new customization system, to make reddit more uniform and user-friendly.

11

u/Moomius Apr 22 '17

A part of removing CSS is making it a lot more constrictive, and perhaps making all of Reddit look very similar. I wouldn't call it more user-friendly.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '17

[deleted]

4

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '17

As a consequence, though, everyone's channels seem the same other than a header (which is basically a glorified profile picture).

1

u/themrpiggy22 Apr 26 '17

I loved being able to customise channels like this! Gives them more personality than the new onechannel layouts

1

u/LeoWattenberg Apr 27 '17

personality does not equal user-friendliness. something like r/ooer is highly personalized and an artwork in its own right, but it is (intentionally) not user-friendly whatsoever.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '17

[deleted]

5

u/Moomius Apr 23 '17

Replacing CSS is the same as removing it, correct?

1

u/SmashPortal Apr 25 '17

Technically, forward4 is correct, as they aren't removing CSS from reddit. CSS is what's mainly used to add graphic design to a website. The current system lets moderators add CSS elements to subreddits to make it look the way they want, instead of the default design. The new system wouldn't remove CSS, but it would take CSS out of the hands of the moderators and give them a different design system that doesn't require knowledge of CSS syntax.

1

u/Moomius Apr 25 '17

I understand that. I implied "removing CSS customisation capabilities." Obviously Reddit wouldn't ditch CSS. The problems that are going to be experienced are from the lack of customisable style sheets.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '17

[deleted]

7

u/Moomius Apr 23 '17

The issue is that Reddit will likely move to cookie-cutter structured styles, replacing our ability to tweak every single thing with a system of widgets that they don't know whether we'll be able to write or not.

My problem is that this is possibly removing individuality from the desktop designs. App design is important, but it could continue to use structured styles separate from the desktop style sheet as it has continued to do since it was released

3

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '17

Exactly. Or even let people design custom CSS for mobile devices as well, having multiple sets of style sheets. One for desktop, one for mobile.

1

u/Kougeru May 08 '17

CSS doesn't work on mobile and most users are mobile. I believe this is the biggest factor.

6

u/droctagonapus Apr 23 '17

Just throwing my $0.02 out there. I'm a web developer who's been feeling a lot of these problrms. I don't write CSS so much anymore, even though I'm designing and implementing entire application UIs (all in React like Reddit will use on the new desktop design).

After a lot of work I've come up with a few solutions that rely on JSON based customizations from an API response (I develop a completely white-labelled B2B2C application, meaning 100% customizable and fully brand-integrated UIs). It's definitely doable and I'm 100% for the change. Things like custom spoilers will probably go away, but things like button styles, most subreddit front-page styling, etc can be abstracted from CSS because I've made my own applications at work do the same. I feel like it's just people scared of change that are making a big noise.

If your customizations are necessary for the subreddit to function, maybe there's another problem that needs solving. I encourage mods to always think "will this work in a 3rd party client" and come up with a solution of it won't. If you did that from the beginning, there would be no problem.

For what it's worth, I always disable subreddit styling.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '17 edited Jun 23 '17

deleted

4

u/aviant- May 02 '17

This might be the stupidest comment I've ever seen on here.