Twitter homepage – redesigned!

July 29th, 2009

One would think, that Twitter crew while busy inviting more and more celebrities over won’t bother itself with improving user interface. Couldn’t be more wrong.

I was always thinking of Twitter as example of perfectly executed UI job. Minimalistic, yet full of details, gathering user attention where it’s needed, coded as it should be… That brings Apple to mind, doesn’t it? I wish more companies would design stuff like they do.

Changes, earlier pretty rare at Twitter, now, after join of Doug Bowman as a Creative Director and few other guys, are common thing. Few pages, like list of people you follow, just needed redesign as fast as possible. So did homepage.

Why homepage was on list of priorities?

Because Twitter changed. Once it hit the mainstream, it’s not about What are you doing? anymore. It became a source of news, social buzz, protests, way to promote basically anything and so much other things far from original idea.
You’re not longer isolated from the rest of community thanks to real search goodness – although it’s been always kinda hidden and went through unnoticed for most users, now it’s hard not to see. On new homepage, search form is a main spot put right in the center.

Search matters now. As long as Twitter existed as a closed community for folks you’re interested in, now it’s basically entire world discussing every possible matter – not only people you follow. And you’re a part of it.

The design itself

First of all: it’s different. I mean, like for Twitter different. For service that even tiny change (remember dumping italic Georgia in tweet informations?) gets noticed by entire community. New homepage is entire new concept, focused on new things, but it’s still Twitter style as we love it.

Firstly, It’s rounded. CSS3 and border-radius is rounding the web one site at the time, and I love it. Almost every button is rounded, container got 10px of radius too, and this whole thing looks just sweet. Experience is much smoother than with sharp corners. Fortunately, they’re extinct.

To move on with CSS3 usage, text-shadow is all over the spot too! Nothing more stylish than a little white shadow on the dark text. Sexy.

More JS, too! See the darkish, but a bit transparent cloud showing up after cursor is above the question mark?
Lovely.



Same with logging in – we might fill in our data only after clicking Sign in button and when form will appear afterwards. No need to reload, obviously, but I’m still not sure about experience of this solution – one more click needed to log in? Uh-uh.

Search results were also redesigned to fit into new homepage style.

Impressions?

I am totally in love. Twitter is doing so great job on its interface to encourage new users and show the current ones what this thing is all about.
I sincerely wish them not to lose their style while becoming more and more popular. Just… keep your current crew, Twitter.

Also, can’t wait for other pages to get a redesign like this one – sooner or later, we all know it’s gonna happen. In the meanwhile, why don’t you just head to Twitter.com?

Also, follow me, if you’d like!