Twitter has just announced a few major changes to its user interface that are going to show up on any device: desktop computers, mobile phones and even tablets.  Twitter said that they wanted the interface to be simpler yet still captures all the complexities and the functionality of the service. But we think that it’s to highlight advertisers more.  Nevertheless, news of its renewed push to make Twitter great for brands to be in is exciting for us.

What changed and what stayed the same?  Here’s what you could expect from the new Twitter design, if you are still not rolled over to the new version, at least.

1. Four Tab Navigation.

Every activity you have on Twitter is now categorized within one of these four tabs:

Home: This is basically your current news feed but with some changes.  Your photos and videos are displayed under your tweet, instead of clicking on the tweet to have it appear on the side.  Also, you would need to click on the new “Open” option to see details about your retweets and @replies.

Connect: Twitter retained this functionality, which it recently introduced and was one of the last additions to the old UI.  As before, this is where you will find your mentions and @replies.

Discover: Probably one of the most important we’ve seen on the new redesign.  If you have been using Twitter for some time, this is a great feature to use to find new people to follow, trending topics and hashtags.  Discover could prove to be a good way to find blog content and trends because it uses your own connections, language and location to serve up its suggestions and search results.

Me: This is basically your profile page on Twitter.  It is a whole lot bigger now and it records more of your activities than before.

2. Embed Your Tweets.

With the new redesign, Twitter offers you a choice to conveniently embed a tweet on your website.  So if you are writing a tutorial, there’s no need to use screenshots.  You can just embed the tweet and allow your users to follow you, reply or retweet that particular tweet without having to leave your website.  What’s more, if your embedded tweet has a link or photo, it will still be active on your website.

3. Keyboard Shortcuts.

Okay, so maybe this isn’t really new, but we would bet that out of 100 people reading this, only 15 know about it and only around 5 people are actually using it.  So here goes.

Did you know that very much like Microsoft Word, you could use keyboard shortcuts to make your Twitter life easier?

What are these shortcuts?  There are a few useful ones, such as:

• Click n to compose a new tweet.
• Click r when you have a single tweet open to reply to that tweet.
• Click t when you have a single tweet open to retweet something.
• Click l to close all open tweets.
• Click m to send a direct message.
• Click g then h to go home.
• Click g then m to access your direct messages.

If you are having problems remembering it all, you can view a menu of keyboard shortcuts by clicking on Shift then ?.