4 min read

On Monday, Twitter rolled out the new website to the general public. Those who have already seen it, may find the new design refreshing in its subtlety. A few things have been rearranged in the new three-column design, and the site is noticeably faster, but according to users it seems there aren’t a lot of drastic updates.

The official blog post reads, “a refreshed and updated website that is faster, easier to navigate and more personalized. The site has an updated look and feel that is more consistent with the Twitter you see on other devices, making it easier to access some of your favorite features, and with more options to make it your own.”

The Twitter engineering team on Monday posted a separate blog on the new Twitter website and its architecture. They say that their goal was to create one codebase website that is responsive to more than just design and the screen size. The team posted, “Our goal was to create one codebase – one website – capable of delivering the best experience possible to each person.”

The engineering team also wrote, “On web, we believe in the “write once, run everywhere” philosophy.” They said the goal for this new website is two fold. First to make it easier and faster to develop new features for people worldwide. Secondly, provide each person and each device with the right experience.

This post gained a lot of attention on Hacker News and the users commented of appreciating the single code base for mobile and web but they feel the major turn off is how the Home timeline appeared on the mobile and desktop. One of the users commented, “To the posted article, I think it’s impressive they are shipping a single codebase for mobile and desktop. Modular features you can turn off for different views. It’s smart and I’ll be curious to see if other sites follow suit.

Unfortunately they’ve now ported one of the most offensive features from mobile to desktop. The “Home” timeline, with tweets out of order. And the real kicker; you can still select “latest Tweets first” but then the app literally undoes your preference every week or two, forcing you back to their “Home” view. It’s offensive.

Also a small thing, but the new desktop Twitter now has obfuscated CSS classes for everything. The names change frequently too, maybe at every deploy? Anyway it makes it a lot harder to modify the desktop HTML presentation with an extension or set of ad blocker rules.”

Finally let us check out the new features added to Twitter.

Updates to new Twitter

With the new features listed below the team at Twitter has tried to make conversations easier to find and follow – and a bit more fun:

  • More of What’s Happening: They have brought over Explore to bring the same great content found in our apps; you can expect more live video and local moments personalized for wherever you are in the world. Get context with profile information within conversations and check out your Top Trends in any view so you never miss what’s happening.
  • Easy Access to Your Favorite Features: Bookmarks, Lists, and your Profile are right up front and have their own spot on the side navigation, making it easier and faster to jump between different tabs.
  • Direct Messages All in One Place: Direct Messages have been expanded so you can see your conversations and send messages all from the same view. Now there’s less hassle switching between screens to send a message.
  • Login, Logout Struggle No More: Whether you have one profile or a few, now you can switch between accounts faster, directly from the side navigation
  • Make Twitter Yours: The love is real for dark mode themes Dim and Lights Out. Twitter has brought to you different themes and color options, along with two options for dark mode.

However, the new site for Twitter was all about “Woah, What’s this? a shiny new Twitter.com is here. ” Users seem to be unhappy with the statement and posted dull comments on the announcement. The users feel new features were added to the site but a lot of it is still missing. Here’s some of the tweet responses to the official announcement.

 

Once again Twitter only focused on the web design and UI, made no efforts for better or healthier conversations on Twitter, which is actually their motto.

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Fatema Patrawala
Being a Senior Content Marketing Editor at Packt Publishing, I handle vast array of content in the tech space ranging from Data science, Web development, Programming, Cloud & Networking, IoT, Security and Game development. With prior experience and understanding of Marketing I aspire to grow leaps and bounds in the Content & Digital Marketing field. On the personal front I am an ambivert and love to read inspiring articles and books on life and in general.