Refining reddit

Reddit is a fascinating blend of news aggregator, niche forums, and social network. I went from curious to hooked in a matter of days, and the website quickly climbed to the coveted top spot on the “most visited” list of my browser’s start page.

But for a website that I spend so much time on, boy is it ugly.

Reddit Enhancement Suite is a popular browser add-on that offers fine-grained customization of your reddit experience. But my problem was the opposite. I didn’t want more knobs and twiddly bits - I wanted to get to the content as quickly as possible, and make posts and comments easy to read and navigate.

I didn’t want to get caught up in the karma game. I didn’t care about custom banners or flair. I wanted to read, respond, and vote with as few distractions as possible.

So I made a CSS theme for reddit that strips out the extraneous details, makes content king, and facilitates reading. If you’re a redditor, please do install it and let me know what you think in the comments. These are a few of the key features:

• The header area sticks to the top of the page as you scroll, so you have easy access to all your subreddits and your inbox
• Vote counts are hidden - the post’s position on the page is a good enough indicator of its popularity
• The content area is narrower, so you don’t have lines that stretch across the entire screen
• The softer colour scheme is easier on your eyes

P.S.: Two other browser add-ons have significantly added to my pleasure of using reddit: Hover Zoom and Reddit Hover Text. I suggest you install them if you browse reddit at all; it cuts down significantly ont he amount of clicking you have to do.

tl;dr: I made a minimalist reddit theme. Download it here.

Sam Nabi