Twitter ‘Embed Tweet’ Preview Bug

I know what you’re thinking – ‘Shut the door, Twitter has a bug’.

Well yes it does, and we’ve found it – but thankfully it’s not too much of a biggie.

Those who have embedded a tweet, for example, on a website or blog will be familiar with the following screen:

All is fine here.

If you’ve ever embedded a reply to a tweet you’ll see a similar screen, but with extra options regarding the parent tweet:

Still, nothing out of place here.

But if you uncheck the ‘Include parent Tweet’ checkbox you may notice your browser window getting longer and longer, with the scrollbar getting smaller and smaller.  So what’s behind the page growth?:

Taking a look at the preview section below, you’ll notice that the preview isn’t clearing the previous preview and regenerating it but is instead just tacking it onto the end of the last preview.  Hit the checkbox a few more times and you’ll get a few more.

If you’re really bored and are looking for something to do – and in the spirit of full disclosure, yes I did, for a minute or so – you can keep clicking the ‘Include parent Tweet’ checkbox and see how large you can make your browser window without crashing your browser or computer.

It’s not often we see bugs fly through onto a live site by a company as big as this, but it’s not impossible.  It always goes to show that it doesn’t matter who you are, you need to QA your code before it goes live to the world!