Reddit

Reddit Home PageReddit is a really interesting, stripped-down, fast social bookmarking site; while it doesn’t have the CSS/Web 2.0 props of Magnolia or Digg, neither does it have the excruciating wait time or incredibly heavy page load (both are easily over 250KB home pages). Reddit weighs in at under 50KB and has sensible caching commands, so the browser isn’t constantly following some insipid order to check for new content every time you click something. It’s style is very spartan, but conveys all the information you need to know. Functions are designated with simple text, instead of icons; ratings are marked instantly and sent to the server with AJAX. All story and comment ratings, as well as which links you’ve already checked out, are stored online. Under each story, you can also click “save” to store it in your favorites list.[1] The simple up/down rating system is perfectly executed as in-place AJAX because it means you’re far more likely to vote on things like comments because it’s so easy to give points to clever users and take them away from jackasses. Each view can be sorted by bookmark rank, “hotness” (rate of change) or simple date order. Comments are also just as easy to make, with the editor appearing in-place (though a preview function would be quite welcome). All-in-all though, an eminently usable and useful site.