I visited Twitter this morning and immediately noticed a few design changes to my profile (well, almost immediately… it is still pretty early, after all!). They’re relatively minor, but make the profile look just a little sleeker.

There main thing that changed is that items that used to be on tabs (like “Replies,” “Direct Messages,” etc.) are now on the sidebar, and the sidebar is arranged a little differently.

Take a look at a before-and-after (though these profiles are using different colors):

Aside from the content changes, you’ll see that following and followers are displayed a little differently, and the new version uses some nice details like rounded corners. It’s also “attached” to the main content, rather than set off by itself.

As the title of this post mentions, they also updated the design tool.

First, they created 11 new “themes”—one-click designs that change the background and give you matching colors all at once.

The new themes are very nice, and I also like that the new tool shows you a real-time preview but you’re not committed to the new look until you click “Save.” This makes it less scary to experiment.

You can still use your own background and colors, and it’s even easier now:

I think you’ll find the new version more intuitive and fun to use, and I expect more people will try their hand at a little customization. My only complaint is that I need to update about half the (meager) content of this site now to reflect the changes. A small price for progress!

You can read more about the changes on Twitter’s blog.