The URL was without a doubt the design decision that made me the most uneasy, and I'm far from set on it in its current design. I just can't find something that I really like.
The issue with the the two apps you posted is that Apollo handles content a little differently (as I'm sure you've noticed). You tap the content itself (be it the image, video, etc.) to view the content, or the post to view the post. The other apps to my knowledge either have a separate comment button (such as Alien Blue, and I really don't like having a separate, superfluous button in the UI taking us space in every cell), and with some others they rely on tapping the thumbnail (which doesn't always exist for links), or others you to go the comments first and then can tap the link.
So in Apollo, I can't just display the link subtly, because it needs to be something tappable. I don't want to rely on thumbnails, as for many links there's not an image that represents the link. I also am kind of uneasy about displaying just the domain (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2014/... -> thisamericanlife.com) because to me that looks like you're going to the homepage.
So this is the main thing I felt I was left with. Apps like Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Twitter, etc. display the URLs in tweets as simply a tappable blue URL, and it felt like the best option overall. With this, you don't rely on thumbnails and all the issues there, it's clear what domain it is, it's clear it's a link. Oh that last part is another thing, I can't stand how in so many apps you can't tell if it's an image or a link, because they both just show a thumbnail and a title to for the post. I tap on the image half the time and it brings me to an article, which is just frustrating because I'm normally expecting an image, which is displayed identically.
But I agree that it's a little too plain and the jargon in the URL is often unsightly.
I thought a bit more tonight and had two other ideas quickly:
Similar to when you post a link on Facebook and it aggregates information about the link and displays it in a little box. Here's a mockup. My main issue with this is that it takes a decent amount of room up, but more-so that the title and the like seem extraneous when the post title on Reddit is often identical, you just get this weird duplicate. That and the obvious issue of thumbnails not always existing or being miniature.
The post in the list of posts has a simple domain visible (thisamericanlife.com instead of something longer) maybe at the end of the post, and perhaps an icon by the subreddit. You then tap on the post, similar to a self post, and it brings you to the comments, there at the top – similar to the preview of the image in image posts – is somewhat of a preview of the website, an embedded rendering of the website that you can tap on to go to it in a web browser. Here's a mockup.
I really like the second option now that I've played around with it. It has the great advantage of loading the URL ahead of time when you go to the comments as well, so when you tap on the link it will already be partially loaded, and keeps the post list in the subreddit view clean. A lot of the time you go to the comments first anyway, or at least eventually, and they'll be right there for you.
What do you all think? If there's another idea you have, I'm all ears as well.
