For those that can't stand Twitter's UI: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1345146328058269696.html
replies(7):
Just ... Scroll ... Down ... Click where it says "read more" or "show more replies"
You're human; THE most adaptable creature known. Adapt!
I'm not saying that twitter UX is perfect, or even good. I AM saying that it is usable.
Once you scroll up, it sort of makes sense -- each tweet with a line connecting user icons but then suddenly the expanded tweet thread has the main tweet in a larger font, then the "retweet/like" controls below it, THEN another line of smaller-font tweets that comprise the thread. Then you get some limited number and have to click "more" for more.
The monochrome of it all reminds me of when GMail got rid of the very helpful colors-for-threads and went to grey on grey on grey.
It's not visually apparent at all.
The amount of stuff your brain has to filter in the form of user name, user tweet handle, additional tagged handlers, UI menus, UI buttons for replying, retweeting, liking, etc on every single code snippet makes your brain work way more than it should to read a page of text.
Just imagine if I had written this exact text in 3 separate HackerNews comments, and prepended each with a 1/ 2/ 3/ text, in addition to all the message UI, it would have been more difficult to read than a simple piece of text.
I'm saying it's usable.
I'm saying that complaining about it makes people look like they think they're royalty who need everything just so or their whole day is ruined... And now they can't tell the butler to take Poopsie for a walk because they're so shaken by the experience.
> Twitter was designed to have 280 characters max per message.
Twitter was designed to use 140 characters, plus room for 20 for a username to fix in the 160 char budget of an SMS message.
Their upping it to 280 later was capitulating to the fact that nobody actually wants to send SMS sized messages over the internet.
If I'm going to use something, it should be intuitive and usable. It should be fit for its purpose, especially with a myriad of single and multi purpose tools available to all. This doesn't feel like something I should justify too hard :-)
Twitter is not a necessity of life. I don't have to use it. They want me to use it and if so they can/should make it usable.
Its paradigm and user interface don't work for me personally (and particularly when people try to fit an article into something explicitly designed for a single sentence - it feels like a misuse of a tool,like hammering a screw) so I don't use it. And that's ok!
I don't feel they are morally obligated to make it usable by me. It's a private platform and they can do as they please.
But my wife is a store manager and taught me that "feedback is a gift" - if a customer will leave the store and never come back,she'd rather know why, rather then remain ignorant.
She may or may not choose to address it but being aware and informed is better than being ignorant of the reasons.
So at the end of it, rather than down vote, let me ask what is the actual crux of your argument? People shouldn't be discriminate? They should use optional things they dislike? They shouldn't share their preferences and feedback? Twitter is a great tool for long format essays? Or something we all may be missing?
Sure, you /can/ cut your steak with a spoon and a fork but... it is just "painful" because those tools were not made for that. Would we think you are a delicate flower for asking for a knife? (or to make the analogy better, let's say you are at your friend's BBQ and he is giving you the steak for free).
I like twitter, and I use it of certain specific things for which a 200 character text is quite good at.
That doesn't work. Neither "read more" nor "show more replies" appears on the page [1]. Nor does "show replies", which turns out to be what you actually need to click once you go to a place it appears. In fact, there's no indication that there even are more replies, or that "replies" are actually the main content.
To see the content, it turns out you need to click on the original "1/" tweet, which takes you to what looks like a new page (but doesn't change the URL, so you can't link to it).
It is not usable in any real sense. I only spent the time to solve the puzzle as I was trying to make sense of your comment.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/BL9M74m (the centre column is shown in full, and there's nothing down further)
Yes, their UI sucks. No, they haven't fixed it. I would not be surprised at all if that were due to necessity rather than incompetence. Even tiny changes at that scale make large differences.
And, honestly I would not be surprised if it were incompetence, either. The skill of the silicon valley developer (as demonstrated by the commenters here) does not impress me even a little.
I think it's a UI that's been designed for one very clear, specific use-case; that's been stretched beyond belief by people cramming it to fit radically different use-cases. Developers I'm sure are simply stuck; do they optimize for original use-case and its legions of users; or other use-cases and those legions of users; I genuinely believe they cannot make everybody happy.
But as a user:
1. As an author, you have a choice not to try to cram a square kitchen through a round sink (long-form articles onto twitter)
2. As a reader, you have a choice not to consume content from a platform not designed or well-supporting of that content.
There's a million lifetimes worth of fascinating, useful, interesting, readable content out there.
Puzzling through a maze that is Twitter long-form article threads... is not how I choose to spend my time :).
As I asked in another post, I'm not sure what your underlying point is - that the UI is good and fit for purpose? Or that we should put up with it? Or that we should be more understanding of it, and that implies not criticizing it?
I think you are using a more extreme definition of "usable" than most people.
Originally, I clicked on the link, saw there was almost nothing there and no visible way of getting more, and went looking for a usable mirror in HN comments.
I'm 41. I'm not a paraplegic, but I am physically disabled; I've spent most of my adult life unable to use keyboards, for example, and there are many ordinary things that most people take for granted that I simply can't do. I think I have a fair and reasonable definition of "usable".
This website is full of employees (and ex employees) of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, and any other company that has done stuff at global scale.
Scaling provides constraints, we all understand that. The interface being completely miserable to use is not because of that constraint.
I understand fetching all the replies all the time is next to impossible, that's not what I was criticizing, I get the impression that Twitter is doing a good job performance wise anyway.
> And, honestly I would not be surprised if it were incompetence, either. The skill of the silicon valley developer (as demonstrated by the commenters here) does not impress me even a little.
I think incompetence is part of it, but not the only reason. Twitter probably wants its mobile users to interact through the native iOS/Android apps. It's not as obvious as with what Reddit is doing but making the website act flaky and a bit unpleasant to use is certainly a way to get more people to use the app.
I imagine the app looks and feels better. I never used it and I don't intend to, for unrelated reasons. But then I guess I don't really have a right to complain.
That's not what I'm saying. Not even close. However, if you knew even a small number of the usability issues that certain people are forced to put up with every day of their lives, you'd cease viewing twitter UX as a problem worth even acknowledging.