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Twitter's missing manual

eev.ee

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Re: Twitter's missing manual

#51

Post by morgante »

lingben wrote: post #35
ape4 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Twitters "UI" is so messy is because its text. People can make up any convent they want. Like signing posts with ^.

compare and contrast to reddit: text but extremely simple, intuitive, you can follow conversations, know who is talking to whom, respond, link, etc.

I get what you're saying but I don't think we should hold up Reddit as a gold standard of accessibility.

I'm fairly technically proficient and I have a hard time figuring out how to "onboard" myself to Reddit and to understand the whole system. It's relatively intimidating.

If we want to stick to text-only, I think HN is actually a better example. Of course, Facebook is really the pinnacle of broad accessibility.

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#53

Post by marvy »

mrestko wrote: post #20
cornellwright wrote: post #9

> On one end of the spectrum you have tools like Notepad, where the only easter egg is that pressing F5 inserts the current time. I wonder how many people reading this just opened Notepad to try this.

I believe adding ".LOG" to the beginning of file also automatically inserts the date each time you open the file so you can use it as a journal. I don't have access to Windows right now to test that though.

I was about to post that this is the Notepad Easter Egg, but you beat me by 5 hours. I guess I'll upvote you instead.

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#54

Post by digi_owl »

ape4 wrote: post #32
lingben wrote: post #24

Too little, too late. Twitter has the most abysmal UI/UX I've ever seen, especially when you consider its clout and popularity (although that is fast waning). Any meaningful change will be so jarring that the dyed in the wool users will balk at it, kicking up a storm of protests and it will not serve to bring in new users (they come in not for good UI but for the network effect - but they don't use it and leave becau…

Maybe Twitters "UI" is so messy is because its text. People can make up any convent they want. Like signing posts with ^.

Nah, its messy because cloudcookoolander ui designers.

Notice how if you click a tweet in the timeline, you do not get a overlay to show the conversation. Nope, it push away the tweets below to make room. Then when you click anywhere else on the site the conversation collapse back, shifting the position of surrounding tweets once more.

Similarly, the only way to see a image full size is to basically drag and drop it into a new tab. If you click it you just get a floating view that barely make use of 75% of the screen, with a copy of the related tweet below it.

To make use of the twitter site i find myself liberally middle and ctrl clicking timestamps and similar to throw tweets into new tabs.

And their latest "innovation", embedded tweets, basically wrecks their own conversation view. Now you can't click a tweet and see the reverse timeline. Nope, you have to click each of them in turn to dig into the dialog.

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#55

Post by digi_owl »

morgante wrote: post #51
lingben wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

compare and contrast to reddit: text but extremely simple, intuitive, you can follow conversations, know who is talking to whom, respond, link, etc.

I get what you're saying but I don't think we should hold up Reddit as a gold standard of accessibility. I'm fairly technically proficient and I have a hard time figuring out how to "onboard" myself to Reddit and to understand the whole system. It's relatively intimidating. If we want to stick to text-only, I think HN is actually a better example. Of course, Facebook is really the pinnacle of broad accessibility.

One thing i like about Reddit is that you can temporarily collapse a noisy thread so you don't have to scroll past it.

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#57

Post by dhritzkiv »

henrik_w wrote: post #13

Just the other day, a tweet of mine mentioned $PATH (as in where to find executables in bash) with the unexpected result of linking to the Twitter account of path. Live and learn.

More specifically, the cashtag "$PATH" leads to a search results page with any mention of the term "$PATH" (which is useful for searching for finding tweets with stock symbols).

This search results page also shows any highly relevant users, which is why @Path shows up. Searching for $MSFT will show the account for @microsoft, for example.

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#58

Post by geostyx »

steveklabnik wrote: post #41
chillingeffect wrote: post #28

I think this is a brilliant illustration of the "wear marks" around a basic service. At its core, it's still 140 chars, but each of these subtle deviations represents a bend in the direction of features valuable to users. Developers and designers can benefit from this by not overspecifying how a technology is to be used until loads of feedback has returned. Kind of like the old story about the architect who didn't fi…

... I THINK I just upvoted you, which was my intention, but I'm on mobile and am also not sure if I downvoted you. If so, my bad: this is a great comment.

I don't think HN has downvotes...

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#59

Post by GuiA »

digi_owl wrote: post #46
lingben wrote: post #24

Too little, too late. Twitter has the most abysmal UI/UX I've ever seen, especially when you consider its clout and popularity (although that is fast waning). Any meaningful change will be so jarring that the dyed in the wool users will balk at it, kicking up a storm of protests and it will not serve to bring in new users (they come in not for good UI but for the network effect - but they don't use it and leave becau…

If you look closer at the most prolific users they are not accessing it via the site, but via either the official app or a third party app/service (i think Hootsuite is popular with heavy users, as it allows them to track and post on a number of "social media" services).

Yep, and Twitter refuses to give API access to their newer features like polls, information shown in the connect tab, group DMs, etc.

So they're pushing new features that heavy users will never see, because 3rd party clients are vastly superior.

It's a marvel their product managers and executives can get out of bed unassisted in the morning.

Re: Twitter's missing manual

#60

Post by digi_owl »

GuiA wrote: post #59
digi_owl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look closer at the most prolific users they are not accessing it via the site, but via either the official app or a third party app/service (i think Hootsuite is popular with heavy users, as it allows them to track and post on a number of "social media" services).

Yep, and Twitter refuses to give API access to their newer features like polls, information shown in the connect tab, group DMs, etc. So they're pushing new features that heavy users will never see, because 3rd party clients are vastly superior. It's a marvel their product managers and executives can get out of bed unassisted in the morning.

Well some third party client can, by pretending to be the official client. This by allowing you to insert the ID strings of said client yourself.
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