Tweetdeck - it used to be better
October 19th, 2008
After reading Paul Walsh’s post about why he loves Tweetdeck (play nice kiddies, he’s paying for my freelance lifestyle at the moment) I started thinking about the new UI that was recently added in version 0.19b. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great App - and Adobe should give this guy some credit for choosing Air on which to build the best Twitter desktop App I’ve ever used.
But it’s this bloody new UI added in the new version. Apparently, it’s “Overall new cleaner” - well, yeah, I guess. Trouble is it’s at the cost of usability. Fair enough use icons to denote functions in an App, but not when the icons used have no accepted meanings. Checkout a screenshot I lifted from the offical site of an early build - the main functions can be accessed by text buttons. No fuss, no mess. Want to Tweet? No worries, the button is right there…
But these have been replaced with fussy icons that don’t really tell me what they do at all.
Ok, I can see why this has been done, as using text buttons for all the new functionality that’s in the most recent version probably wouldn’t fit in the current configuration. But I say give us the choice, I don’t really know what these icons mean, so it’s a learning curve. Maybe I’m lazy, but the new “cleaner” Interface has made this awesome app (for me at least) harder to use.
Alright, rant over, I’m feeling like enough of t***t now. Bottom line - This is still a great app, and if you’re a Twitter user you’ll wonder how you ever coped without it.
