Textual Pornography

Tumblr recently changed its posting interface again. Here’s what it looks like now:

The new interface was inspired by the “super-constrained environment” of mobile apps, and with it they tried to compact Tumblr’s “years of features,” as one might “[move] a suburban house’s worth of furniture into a tiny New York apartment.” What does that mean? Pop-up menus everywhere!

The gear in the upper-right corner is a pop-up menu. Click it to access some of the more rarely-used post options.

The arrow notch attached to the right of the “Create post” button is another pop-up menu. Click it to access the visibility and queueing options.

Finally, we have the Twitter pop-up menu. Tumblr lets you send a tweet when you make a post, in case people want to follow your blog that way. Click it to edit the message that will be tweeted.

Except I lied in that description. This last one is not, in fact, a pop-up menu. It is a graphical checkbox that, after a short delay, pops up the text field when you hover the mouse over it, but only when it’s enabled.

There are two parts to that description, because the button has two different behaviors. First: graphical checkbox. When you click it, it toggles between blue and gray. Blue means that your post will be tweeted, and gray means it will not. This is not explained anywhere.

Second: when you hover your mouse over the button and it’s enabled (blue), the text field pops up after a short delay. If the button is disabled (gray), the text field does not pop up. This is also not explained anywhere.

The real fun comes in that the first behavior can trigger the second. Clicking the button also has the effect of showing the text field if you’re enabling tweets; if you enable the button, you’re now hovering the mouse over the enabled button, so the field pops up. Likewise, clicking the button will hide the text field if you’re disabling tweets.

This last, combined behavior, where clicking the button can show and hide the text field, makes it really easy to assume that the button is a pop-up menu. Especially when you consider that there’s no explanation anywhere of the complex way this thing really works, and that there are real pop-up menus in the interface too. Did you enter a custom message and then click the button to dismiss the text field, thereby disabling tweets? Have fun trying to figure out why your post won’t be tweeted! I did, for four days!

This fucking button is one of the most actively hostile UI controls I’ve come across, and I can’t wait until Colin and I move Nullary Sources off Tumblr.