Twitter Gets A Familiar New Look

If you haven't noticed yet, your Twitter profile page has received a makeover.

About a month ago, Twitter announced plans to roll out a new profile page that would make profile pages represent their owner's personality even more.  If you think about it,  the old Twitter profile page was pretty bland and generic.  However, their new page is eye-catching, but it does resemble something.  Twitter perhaps received some inspiration from Facebook because the two profile pages look pretty similar now.  They both have a profile picture nested in the top left corner along with a large cover photo that stretches across the entire top of the screen.  Below all of this rests content.

The new profile page

For Twitter, this now includes best tweets, pinned tweets, and filtered tweets.  Let's check them out!

Best Tweets

Notice the size difference.  The one on the bottom is part of the new best tweet feature

If you take a look at your new profile page, you might notice that certain tweets are larger than others.    This is because they have been labeled as a best tweet.  According to Twitter, the tweets with a lot of engagement will appear larger on your profile page, which makes it easier to find the most important or interesting content.

Pinned Tweets

They sit at the top of your profile page

Have a tweet you are super proud of?  Or perhaps a celebrity interaction?  You can now pin tweets at the top of your profile page so that others can quickly see them.  Ideally, you will want to pin a typical tweet so that new followers will know what you are all about.

Filtered Tweets

Twitter understands the importance of photos and videos.  They are visually stimulating and our eyes automatically fall on pictures over text.  If you want to just look at tweets that have pictures or video, you can now filter tweets on your timeline.  Other options include view all tweets and view tweets with replies.

All of this is a lot to take in.  If you don't want to switch right away, Twitter is not pushing the switch just yet.  You can demo these new features, but they won't stick until you tell Twitter that you are ready.  With that said, all of these new features improve an already amazing web experience.  I think I'm finished talking, so if you haven't tried out the new Twitter, visit your profile page and try it out!

What is an API? A Brief Overview

If you’re new to the world of front end development, you might have heard the term “API”. API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and is something that we use all the time without knowing about it.  APIs allow for the communication between two different applications.  For example, a project can author an API that allows for other projects to pull features or data from their interface.  The original project doesn’t have to share any of their code for the features or data.

Here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

“An Application Programming Interface (API) is a particular set of rules and specifications that a software program can follow to access and make use of the services and resources provided by another particular software program that implements that API. It serves as an interface between different software programs and facilitates their interaction, similar to the way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.”

Mentioned previously, APIs are everywhere.  Let’s take a news article for example.  At the bottom of the page, articles usually have a social media bar that has links to facebook, twitter, reddit, etc. so that you can share the article on your own social media page.  All of these features are powered by APIs.  Even the comment system, which is sometimes powered by facebook comments, uses the facebook API to pull your profile name, picture, location, etc.

The LATimes uses the facebook commenting system for their news articles

What can you do with them?

If you’re a blogger or journalist, having those sharable social media buttons would be a nice touch for your content.  However, we’re not all journalists.

I think most people have a Twitter account nowadays.  Twitter has built a widget that uses their API to create a timeline for one individual.  You can then link this timeline on your webpages.  I’ve used this for several projects and it is a great way to show off tweets without having to actually go to Twitter.  Again, Twitter is using an API to share their features with another application without having to share their code for Twitter.

To access this widget, just go to your settings menu, then go to Widgets, and Create A New Widget.  

I decided to create a timeline for my master’s program:

Tweets by @EloniMedia

This is just one example of what can API can do.  I’ve also recently worked with Vimeo’s Player Embedding API to show all of my account’s videos on a web page without having to go to the actual Vimeo website.

For your next project, explore how you might possibly display something with an API rather than the normal way.