Some UX & UI issues I've come across and some suggestions to address them
issue: menus are not always immediately apparent
suggestion: style menus like sidebars (outlines and backgrounds)
issue: user menu elements on mobile are jammed against left edge
suggestion: add left padding
issue: content and comments are too narrow on large/wide displays
suggestion: add option to set min and max widths relative to viewport (CSS VW)
issue: main menu (from hamburger button) elements on mobile/narrow displayed as block is unsightly
suggestion: elements should be inline-block until they cannot fit on one line
issue: comment action icons are unnecessarily hidden
suggestion: show all comment icons persistently (could be grouped as [up/down/reply] on left, [message/flag/block/fav/source] on right; could be a user profile option to show/hide additional comment options persistently)
issue: message notification (bell icon) often indicates unread count when all messages are read
suggestion: fix
issue: auto-refresh on posts causes elements to move down as reading when scrolled
suggestion: implement option to disable auto-refresh OR move scroll position down correspondingly to total height of dynamically loaded post elements
issue: (if above feature implemented) must refresh page if auto-refresh disabled
I have always HATED the auto refresh features so many sites enable by default. Twitter does it, Facebook does it, Reddit does it (sometimes), etc. I can't stand it. I want to read what I scrolled down to not something that just randomly popped up. Or worse some of them do this weird thing where it scrolls me further down and automatically hides the previous ~5+ posts or something like that. Super annoying.
This type of thing should be a user setting, not a site wide setting, IMO.
Also, there should be a user setting (maybe I missed it?) to reposition the new comment box to the top of the page instead of the bottom.
Yeah, I gotta be honest, it works really poorly here, especially when viewing all/hot. It's just constantly loading new posts and pushing down and off-screen whatever you're trying to read or click. It's frankly unusable.
This type of thing should be a user setting, not a site wide setting, IMO.
Yep, this is exactly what I meant. Just the option to disable auto post loading so you see whatever posts where loaded at the time you initially opened the page. If I want to see new posts, I can hit reload myself.