It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Twitterrific from The Iconfactory. I’ve tried a number of Twitter clients, but I keep coming back to Twitterrific. I think it has a lot to do with the minimalistic design. It just works and doesn’t have a lot of extraneous features. But, and there’s always a ‘but’, there are some things I’d like to see. Mostly I’d like a small change to the user interface. It’s something I’ve designed in my top secret design notebook, but since I’ll never create my dream Twitter client, I might as well share these minor UI tweaks in hopes someone will do it. Hopefully, The Iconfactory does it. You never know, it could happen.
Oh, please forgive the mess. I can’t spell Photoshop, much less use it. At least this hack should get the idea across.
Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s all hacked up, but it’ll do.
On the left Twitterrific as it sits today, on the right is what I’d like to see. What’s different?
- The account back button is gone.
- The title “All Tweets” is gone, replaced by the account name.
- The Profile Icon, gone. Replaced by the “Compose Tweet” button.
- The bottom bar/toolbar, gone. No replacement.
Since the back button is now gone for choosing an account it’s replaced by the account name in the top bar. Tapping on the name allows you to choose which account to view or what you’d like to view for the current account; All Tweets, Mentions, Messages, Favorites, or Search.
In the upper right corner we’ve replaced the Profile icon with the Compose Tweet icon. To show your profile you can tap on your avatar in a tweet, which works today.
In the lower left corner the refresh button has been removed. I kind of like having an explicit refresh button, but “Pull to refresh” is ubiquitous. If you’d like to have a refresh button, put it in the upper left corner.
The purple bar across the bottom works as it does today. It pops up for a few seconds after a refresh, then goes away.
I think that does it for now.
9TO5Mac: “By limiting the ability of third-party developers to create unique and useful clients for its service, Twitter is ensuring that new users will be forced to use one of its first-party solutions, whether that’s Twitter for Mac, TweetDeck, or the web. Unfortunately, none of these products are really worth using, and Twitter is shooting itself in the foot by attempting to drive users to these subpar experiences.”