BACKGROUND CHECK . . . Are You Ready for the New Twitter?



What is Twitter and why does it keep following me around?



The New Twitter . . .

What It Means for Your Custom Background

This past Fall Twitter announced the launch of a completely new design, and it won't be long before there will no longer be an option to use or access the old Twitter. 

What I want to focus on is how that new layout affects all the cool custom backgrounds many of you have. The truth is it’s going to mess them up when viewed on small to medium sized monitors. Why? Because the new Twitter is considerably wider and that means the sides (where the background shows) are narrower.

This is what my old background on the old Twitter looked like -

Now here’s a screen shot of how it looked on the new Twitter.  As I mentioned, on larger monitors the background would still look fine because there would be more space on each side.



With the new design, Twitter backgrounds have much less space. Twitter used to give us a lot of space to the left and right of the profiles to show off branding and creativity, but while there are many benefits to the New Twitter, background images are mostly hidden.

So if you already put in the time & effort to brand your Twitter profile to match your website and/or Blog, it's definitely time to take a hard look at how the narrow space now available for that purpose looks with that background!

                                                                               

There are a few points you need to keep in mind when designing or altering your Twitter background to fit into the new site:

1)  The new Twitter utilizes a fluid layout, meaning that the browser window or screen resolution can impact the width of some of the columns, as well as how much of the background image is visible.

2)  Know Your Space Limitations: Use between 41 – 108px for the left side’s “Content Area” of your Twitter Profile Background.

3)  Always Visible: 41px will always show on each side no matter what size the monitor.

     * 70%  of Modern Computers: 108px on each side

        (Requires about 1280x800px Screen Resolution or Higher)

     *  27% of Modern Computers: 200px on each side

        (Requires 1440x900px Screen Resolution or Higher)

     *  3% of Modern Computers: 312px on each side

        (Requires 1920×1080 Screen Resolution)

While there are many twitter users that will be able to easily change their background to fit the new twitter format, there are many who will not . . .  

Use a Built-in Twitter Theme Tool

The excellent Themeleon tool from COLOURlovers has been updated for the new Twitter. You can access the tool by either going directly to the site or by selecting Themeleon from the sidebar in the Design section of the Twitter settings page.

You can login to Twitter in the app and customize your colors and backgrounds. The great thing about the tool is that until you hit “save,” none of the changes take effect. Think of this as a great way to test out color combinations and various motifs.



COLOURlovers Themeleon Tool

A good Twitter background using your branding makes your Twitter profile look professional and shows that you care about the small details!  Not only that, why would you want to miss out on any chance you have to help build your brand identity?



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