 "Twitter pushes four-button UI back for alpha and beta testers on Android")
Twitter alpha and beta testers who thought the service had kicked them off the programme, don’t fret; the micro-blogging service has only been experimenting with the tests. After having teased a brand new design for its testers, facilitating better discovery, Twitter has reverted to its old design with only a few changes to its alpha and beta testers on Android.
The beta tests kicked off a few months ago while the alpha test for Twitter came up only weeks back on Android. Users had been greeted with some really cool features that regular users were not able to see on the Twitter application on Android. One of them – a widely appreciated one – was the swipe-able menu on top.
Instead of the regular four-pronged menu that includes Home, Mentions, Discover and Profile, Twitter trimmed it down to Home Discover and Activity in the alpha tests. Mentions became a part of Notifications on the top bar, as did the Direct Messaging feature.
Old alpha versus new alpha (Image credit: TechCrunch)
TechCrunch reports that the design was being tested for a while for beta as well as alpha users, hinting at the feature becoming a part of a public build. The design that was being tested had a lighter blue shade to it and aesthetics that conformed to the iOS 7 guidelines, making it possible that the changes could come to the Twitter application on both iOS and Android platforms.
However, an update to both alpha and beta versions of Twitter for Android rolled back all these changes, pushing users back to the four-tabbed menu. While Twitter is constantly looking at experimentation on the alpha and beta programmes, it looks like the company is taking a breather from trying to change the menu design that could be a part of as public release. One must note that Twitter’s recent changes to its design like image previews and the blue line that threads conversations have, after all, not met with positive reviews. Twitter would want to ensure that it gets the menu design absolutely right before rolling it out to the public build of its app.
The company kicked off its alpha testing for the Android app only this month. The company promised some ultra-volatile features in the app, which is also susceptible to multiple crashes and incomplete features. Twitter, of course, wants alpha testers to constantly provide it with feedback over features. The interface on the alpha build especially undergoes multiple changes in a week, sometimes changes come once every day. So while we cannot be sure what’s up Twitter’s mind with changes in the menu, it is definitely trying to keep its aggressive style of sudden and wide-rolling changes in check.
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