I don’t usually make public feature requests and I know our friends at Twitter are dealing with crazy scaling issues but I would like to register one simple request: the option for centered backgrounds. Background: Twitter lets you upload a background image, but it’s always left-aligned which means unless its tiling interacts awkwardly with the main centered window. But with a single line of CSS, background-position: center, you could use the width of Twitter’s content window (763px) to create something beautiful and exciting that dovetailed perfectly with the main content area. If you’re feeling crazy afterward, allow a different background to be specified for single-tweet permalink pages, which would also make Blackbird Pies even tastier. If your name is Ev Williams, Biz Stone, Dick Costello, Ryan King, Kevin Cheng, Mark Trammell, Doug Bowman… pass this on to someone. (And help me verify the WordPress account.) 🙂 I think a whole new Twitter design community could flourish. And I could forgive you for using a table for layout. Update: This is getting some nice pick-up.

How Twitter works in theory, by Kevin Marks. “Phatic” gestures are important to understand if you’re building on the web.