Show HN: Revert the Twitter UI changes | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Revert the Twitter UI changes

github.com

But why.

Why that hate for every new UI nowadays.

For example, there is a reason[1] why round avatars are a bad idea.

Although I must say that twitter.com seems to have improved in terms of keyboard navigation and the visible keyboard focus.

[1]: https://twitter.com/MattNavarra/status/875389431372533760

Avatars thought to be in a squared container looking bad in a round container... it's logical.

Another important reason circle avatars are bad: https://twitter.com/chordbug/status/875348114160459776

Perhaps if the new UI's actually improved presentation of information rather than being an exercise in aesthetic wankery that makes the site less usable?

I can see some improvements on font and icon rendering, though.

I know someone on the design team and they actually did user testing against the changes, and it's a mix of usability improvements and aesthetics.

You can't really say something is less usable without some evidence.

Ah, so that's why they broke everyone's avatars overnight. Much usability. So aesthetic. Wow.

..Snark aside, given that this is the company that won't even let people see their tweets in reverse chronological order, I don't put a whole lot of stock in their testing. Were actual users involved, or was it a tiny focus group?

You can disable the modified timeline if you wish to: https://support.twitter.com/articles/164083

That still isn't a proper reverse chronological sort (tweets still display out of order according to some magical backend fuckery), and that's before the constant injection of the "What you might have missed.." into my timeline no matter how many times I click the "I don't want to see this" button.

New stuff top, old stuff bottom. This is the simplest concept in computer science.

I'm thinking about exceptions.

These comments in HN, probably sorted by upvotes or activity.

FB replies, last one at the bottom, which I think is pretty natural.

Thunderbird's default of last email at the bottom, which I reverse in every folder. But the last at bottom conversation view is ok.

WordPress comments.

*nix mail's list of messages.

Probably many others.

Tested on samples of actual users. Unsure of size because I don't work there.

If you think making avatars round is a usability issue this conversation isn't even worth having. You seem bent on deriding change regardless of what I say.

You seem hell bent on defending change regardless of what I say. What's such a hard concept about not degrading the user experience? Nobody stopped to say "Hey, everyone is using avatars based on the box shape, won't changing the shape of the box make everyone's avatars look like shit?"

Apparently not, and that's the problem. It's a minor thing at the end of the day, sure, but it's also a symptom of a larger issue.

Sorry if I seem testy, but this is a recurring problem. Making things more "modern" while sacrificing usability, and as mentioned, I place nil credence on their "testing".

I'm defending the use of "usability" as a blanket term used to argue against subjective visual changes.

Unless you can show me evidence one way or the other, your use of the term "usability" is subjective bunk.

Resistance to change has no boundaries.

And the desire to needlessly overdesign UIs has a similar bound. All change is good change, right?

Nope, I happen to think the round images are a bad change.

... but it does have rounded corners.

Because they cannot even align button text in vertically?

- https://i.imgur.com/532Mdva.png

New Twitter UI is not as bad as their other new features (algorithmic rearranging of timeline, likes sometimes shown as retweets, autoplay video of sports broadcasts) but still looks like trolling by designers. It's too retro, too much Raygun Gothic aesthetic. It does not fit to rough and casual nature of Twitter.

Because the new UI is trash.

Well, a lot of it is designed to show ads and disguise lack of quality content.

It happens every time popular service does a redesign. People will eventually get used to it and will want it back as "the old twitter" when they inevitably do another redesign.

Usability is exactly the same (for better or worse), it just looks a bit different.

Because oftentimes the new UI is designed by someone who read too much on whitespace and aesthetics and sacrifices information density.

AmEx recently redesigned their site. Before, I could easily see all my credit card transactions with minimal clicks and scrolling. Now, everything is enlarged by 1.25x (probably a poorly done responsive design) and I find myself scrolling a lot more.

The Gmail iOS app redesign from last autumn was poorly done, too. They waste precious horizontal space on your phone to display a circle with an avatar or the person's initials. I don't need that shit for email. I just need the sender's name.

If designers focused on providing the information a user wants with a minimal number of interactions, I think there'd be less hate.

People jump on the social media hate train every time a major app redesigns literally anything (logo, website, whatever).

It's bandwaggoning that people promptly get over

I agree completely and it's super-ironic that many of these designs claim to focus on "content" while filling the screen with useless chrome (of the whitespace variety).

It is not nowadays, it's been like this forever. I remember even myself loudly complaining about some service(s) some decade ago when they changed. I have since come to the realisation that I'll get used to whatever is changed at some point, and that makes me not care anymore. Usually, anyway.

Skip Twitter.com and start using https://tweetdeck.twitter.com instead.

That has the same redesign.

It's honestly pretty much the same UI anyway. Totally just feels like a CSS hack on the web side.

Meh, Twitter's new UI isn't bad enough for me to worry about reverting it locally. If they pulled a YouTube that'd make sense, and even there I got used to it.

Can I just get a normal, chronological feed back again? None of this "We thought you'd find this interesting" crap?

I miss out on so many tweets I would actually find interesting because of this.

Sorry Twitter, but no, you're not capable of figuring out what I enjoy reading.

Look for a third-party Twitter app, or at TweetDeck. The official first-party UI seems to have permanently moved away from that.

Is that actually advisable? The same attitude made people stick with Windows XP or Firefox 3.5, don't you think?

It's in the same spirit as:

https://greasyfork.org

https://openuserjs.org

^ Both can be used with Greasemonkey (Firefox) or Tampermonkey (Chrome)

https://userstyles.org (used with Stylish)

While I'm not a fan of the project, I do think that comparison isn't fair. XP and outdated browsers give you a much higher chance of malware, because MS isn't really putting out XP security patches and browsers release security patches in newer versions, hoping everyone will upgrade to them.

Meanwhile, this project is essentially 16 lines of JS. Even the README takes up more space. Reading through the lines of JS, I don't see how they will make you vulnerable at all.

Yes, people will complain every time a UI is significantly changed. But there's something else too.

Perception is that significant product development resources were devoted to adding rounded corners. But issues often associated with twitter seem to get worse and little product development resources. A few include: harrassment, racism, armies of bots for brigading, and the increasing use of the platform as an instrument by a foreign power to exert influence on the American electorate.

Maybe they are trying and not communicating it well. But a UI refresh is clear indication of spent product development, and those issues seem to be getting worse.

Curiously you don't mention censorship of conservative accounts, shadow banning, and hashtag manipulation as major problems of the platform.

Sounds like we both agree there are important policy/usability problems that are being ignored or backlogged while effort is spent on a new UI.

I'll be honest: I didn't notice anything had changed until I read tweets complaining about it. The changes are minuscule.

why not using stylish (pure CSS, but the few icons you can blob in)?

OP uses JavaScript to remove 'edge-design' class (which contains all changes) from the body.

userscript than :)

Surprised nobody has mentioned turning the heart back into a star.

obligatory https://xkcd.com/1770/

Why isn't this higher.

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