Give Reddit A Makeover With These Tools
For the last years I have been ignoring Digg as it turned from a powerful news source into a site ruled by power users, news by top sites and bad management. I used to find Digg valuable then to discover new websites that I did not know about before. Now, it is just the same day in day out.
Reddit on the other hand managed to keep much of its identity and contents, making it my number one new site discovery service. If there is one thing that could use some improvement, then it's the layout and design of the site. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thinks that it looks a bit messy, and could use some polishing because of this.
The following is a list of userscripts and styles to give Reddit the makeover that it deserves. Before we start: Firefox users need the Greasemonkey add-on installed before they can make use of userscripts, and Stylish for styles.
Reddit web 2.0 but even more pretty
This userstyle is compatible with all modern web browsers. It modifies the Reddit layout giving it a polished and stylish web 2.0 look and feel.
Embedifier - Images and videos are posted often on Reddit. They are usually linked to the source website, which means they need to be opened in a new tab, window or on the same page. This userscript adds arrow icons in front of embeddable media, which will expand the media on the Reddit page on click. No more leaving the page to view an image or video.
Reddit Uppers and Downers Enhanced - ever asked yourself what the ratio of up votes to down votes was? Wonder no more. This userscript displays the total amount of up and down votes on Reddit comment pages to give interested parties an idea on a submission's popularity.
Reddit Enhancement Suite - one of the most sophisticated makeovers for Reddit. This userscript adds dozens of features, from loading and displaying all images on the page to keyboard navigation, account switching, auto loading of next pages to saving comments. It is all there and more.
- Configuration Console
- Inline Image Viewer
- Keyboard Navigation
- Show New Comments
- filteReddit
- Account Switcher
- Never Ending Reddit
- Never Ending Reddit
- Uppers and Downers Enhanced
- Subreddit Tagger
- User Tagger - now with ignore!
- Show parent on hover
- Full Comments Linker
- Single Click Opener
- Live Comment Preview
- User Highlighter
- Style Tweaks
- Username Hider
- Show Comment Karma
- Hide All Child Comments
Reddit Comment Boxes - draws boxes around comments which makes identification a lot easier.
Top Reddit Comments Preview - Firefox only. Displays a top link next to each submission. Clicking the link displays the two top comments on the same page.
Reddit SFW Check - If you need your Reddit fix at work or a public computer you may find this userscript helpful. It adds a link next to each article listing. Clicking this link will scan all article comments for the words nsfw and not safe for work. It then displays the number of occurrences and the total number of comments, so that the user can decide to view or avoid the linked website.
Reddit Secure Pro - Force https connection when visiting Reddit.
Digg2Reddit - Redirects you to Reddit whenever you load the Digg website (accidentally I presume).
Reddit Top Comments Sidebar - Displays top comments of a submission in the left sidebar. Great for a quick overview of the most popular comments.
Reddit Spam Button - With popularity comes spam. This userscript can be used to submit a spammer's profile to /r/repotthespammers .
Reddit Comment Highlighter - highlights reddit comments at the 75%, 90%, 95% and 98% levels (you can adjust these in the code) based on the comment points. Also, increases the font size of higher rated comments.
Reddit Username Colorizer - Automatically calculates the character sum of all usernames on a reddit page and colorizes them with it. Usernames will always have the same color no matter what page they are on.
Reddit Jerks - Remembers jerks you come across on Reddit and highlights their comments in the future with a JERK! sign so you can down-vote them again!
Think I missed something? Let me know in the comments.
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How to disagree with Digg and Reddit moving one downwards and the other upwards ? Thanks for the styles and scripts. Here I use a Userstyle called ‘The Dark Reddit” (http://userstyles.org/styles/19617) for the look, but scripts are certainly welcome to enhance/create functions. – Thanks, Martin
It says a lot about Reddit that it NEEDS so many third party enhancements. Say what you want about Digg, but they at least made the effort to style it.
The body comes after the soul, not before. That doesn’t mean the body should be forgotten, and that is the purpose of this article, as i understand it.
Could not have said it better :)
That doesn’t even make sense. Many websites make improvements after the site is up and running. Nobody cares what what happened “before” or “after”.
But Reddit has been around for five years and sill looks “messy”. Hundreds of users have asked them to display the number of up and down votes – it only makes sense to – but they haven’t done it.
Reddit is nothing but a message board where you can vote comments up or down. They don’t have the bandwidth to style it well or add interesting features because it doesn’t make money. They only have four employees, and they sit in a closet at Wired Magazine because the site doesn’t make money.
To try to spin that into something positive by saying Reddit has “managed to keep its identity” is just silly.
I don’t know about keeping its identity, LouF, but I’m glad they chose not to keep your identity. Y’know, since they banned you.
And that relates to third party enhancements how?