Another month, more Twitter PWA tweaks

Published by at

Last covered here back in April, Twitter keeps on improving its Twitter PWA, most easily accessed on Windows 10 Mobile through the official UWP Store application, even if the code changes are all server-side. It's the flagship social network for W10M these days, and here's what's new, updated and fixed! 

In fairness, it's going to be hard to notice much difference in the PWA here because there are a load of things which either don't apply on the small (phone) screens or which haven't rolled out server side to us in the UK yet.

Still for thoroughness sake, here's the full monthly changelog:

New

  • Compose: Tweet and DM composers will now keep your text while navigating to other screens and conversations. You'll still lose them when leaving the site or changing tabs though, stay tuned for more soon.
  • Conversations: Your conversations are the heart of Twitter, so we're testing ways to make them easier to read and follow. Some of you will see a new layout for replies with lines and indentations that make it clearer who is talking to whom, and to fit more of the convo in one view.
  • Conversation Controls: We're testing ways for you to have conversations with exactly who you want. As you compose a new Tweet, you can open replies to everyone, people you follow, or just people you @ mention. We're starting with a small % globally, so keep your eyes out to see it in action. Learn more
  • Media Conversation Sidebar: When viewing media on widescreens, you'll now be able to view and engage with the conversation around it! The sidebar is collapsible if you still wan an image-only experience.
  • Retweets with Comments: Now you don't have to miss the Tweets about the Tweet. Click "Retweets" on the Tweet detail to see Retweets with comments all in one place.

Updated

  • A11Y: Emojis now have a “title” attribute, meaning if you hover over them, they may show a translated description of what they are. 
  • A11Y: Alt text can now be entered without needing to enable a setting. As part of this, we’ve also redesigned the cropper and alt text editor to make alt text more prominent and the image larger so that you can more easily see the image you are describing. You can cycle between multiple images using the arrows near the done button.
  • A11Y: We’ve also enabled alt text composition and consumption for GIFs. If you choose a GIF from the library, it may automatically include some basic descriptions, but we encourage you to add your own as well since it will likely be more descriptive.
  • A11Y: Finally, we’ve given you a little more room to describe your media by raising the alt text character limit to 1000.
  • DM: Find users and hashtags more easily while composing DMs! We now support typeahead aka autocomplete within the DM composer.
  • Emoji: Updated emoji to Twemoji 13. Visual coverage of the changes can be found at Emojipedia, and more specific information can be found at GitHub.
  • Navigation: Improved main navigation for narrow and short browsers a bit. Items should now collapse into the “more” menu instead of scrolling.

Fixed

  • A11Y: Using screen readers in Instances where search fields return lists of users will now properly announce whether a user is checked or unchecked. This includes areas such as adding users to lists, composing DMs, and tagging in photos.
  • A11Y & Video: Screen readers will now read out the proper mute or unmute state for the volume control.
  • DM: Clicking the DM compose button on smaller screens and mobile will no longer refresh the entire page.
  • Media: Fixed a bug where images would not rotate correctly in Chrome 81. Due to a browser bug, this may still affect cropping images until a future update. If you have trouble cropping your image, try another browser or use software on your device.
  • Media: Fixed up zooming and swiping multi-photo Tweets on mobile devices.
  • Navigation: Fixed some scrolling issues where content would jump when zoomed in.
  • Video: Video UI badges will no longer obscure closed captions after interacting with the player directly.

Note that there's still no true DM 'push', and I'm not sure this will ever be possible under Windows 10 Mobile. But hey, once you're in the PWA it's becoming a fuller and fuller Twitter experience.

You can grab or update the Twitter PWA-ified UWP client here in the Store

PS. As a reminder, this application now trumps third party options like Tweetium UWP because of recent Twitter changes which knocked push notifications on the head. Along these lines, see also my (older) general round-up of ways to access Twitter under Windows 10 Mobile.