Twitter updates on Windows 10 and web with improved Spaces, Fleets, and Topics functionality

Twitter’s new voice chat feature, Spaces, has finally come to the web version of the social network which powers the Twitter web experience and the Windows 10 desktop app.

The feature still appears to be in its early stages on the web when compared to its implementation on the iOS and Android Twitter apps as there’s still no visible bar of active Twitter Spaces, Fleets, or livestreams along the top of the app’s UI to aid discoverability. Twitter Spaces is live and functional, however, but users will have to access rooms via mentions in individual tweets for now, similar to how Fleets are live but can only be viewed within DMs.

Testing of Twitter Spaces on the web was first noticed as recently as this past April so development of the public voice chat feature does seem to be progressing at a rather speedy pace. It’ll be interesting to see just how close to the mobile app experience the developers can get the web experience to look over the next few months as there’s almost feature parity between the various versions.

A host of other new improvements were also made to the Twitter web experience over the past month or so such as the rollout of the Topics link in the left menu, improved functionality for Fleets, and better DM search.

Applications for Twitter account verification were also opened last week but the process has now been temporarily paused due to the influx of applications.

Here’s the full release notes of recent Twitter changes:

New

• DM Search: There have been a number of improvements made to DM search, allowing you to search across all conversations instead of ones you’ve recently viewed. Read more here.
• Fleets: You can now navigate across Fleet threads in the Fleet viewer screen. Whenever you view a Fleet that’s part of a larger thread, you’ll have access to the whole thread. We’ve also enabled the ability to navigate to embedded entities like Tweets, and the reporting flow for Fleets.
• Spaces: You can now listen to Spaces on Twitter.com! Start listening by hopping in from the Spaces shared in Tweets. See more here.
• Topics: The Topics to follow sidebar is now available for everyone. This will give you more visibility into Topics you may be interested in.
• Verification: We’re relaunching the ability to request verification on Twitter.com! Look for the new flow from within the “Settings and privacy” and “Your account” menus. You can read more about the relaunch and process here.

Updated

• Accessibility: Improved the structure of the keyboard shortcuts menu so that it’s more easily understood by screen readers.
• DMs: We’ve made improvements to how we handle DM search terms that are empty, and improved the alt-text for the close search button.
• DMs: The DM search results will now properly paginate instead of returning a maximum number of results.
• Fleets: Interstitials will now playback instead of pausing all playback.
• Internationalization: Resolved inconsistencies in translations when using “Tweet” as either a noun or a verb.
• Push Notifications: Improved the handling of navigation for certain push notifications.
• Search: Your most recent saved searches will now be listed at the top instead of the bottom, preventing needing to scroll to see them.
• Tweets: Updated social context styling for unsent Tweets to match what will ultimately be rendered in timelines.
• Video: We’ve added keyboard shortcut controls for video playback. Use space to play/pause when the scrubber has focus, “k” to play/pause anywhere when the video has focus, and “m” to mute/unmute anywhere when the video has focus.

Fixed

• Accessibility: The “Clear all” button for recent searches should now be properly selectable with voiceover turned on.
• Accessibility: Focus navigation across the DM search bar will no longer automatically display recent searches, and you’ll instead be able to navigate through your DM conversations properly.
• Accessibility: Navigating across pages in the Quick Promote flow with a screen reader will cause focus to reset to the buttons at the top of the flow instead of the closest element.
• Accessibility: Icons without an explicit label will now be properly hidden.
• DMs: Fixed flickering issues when navigating between DM search results and the conversation inbox.
• DMs: Pull-to-refresh will now properly requery the provided search.
• DMs: Hitting return in the DM composer on iOS will no longer send the message and will properly add a line break.
• DMs: Fixed issues with the DM composer expanding before text has actually reached the end.
• Lists: The error screen will no longer flash if data is taking a bit longer to load.
• Quick Promote: Swapping your selected gender via the radio buttons will no longer leave your selection empty.
• Topics: The Topics to Follow sidebar will no longer display when empty or when in an error state.
• Tweets: Fixed instances where removing your like from a Tweet wouldn’t decrement the count immediately.

Have you used Twitter Spaces yet? Let us know if you like the feature in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter for more tech news.