It definitely seems to be quite an improvement in terms of usable screen real-estate :D
If your goal is to not hinder the unlocking of words, it might not be a bad idea to remove the 'visible' constraint on unlocking them since they are currently almost always off screen.
Also, I think this is a bug, but everytime I refresh, it seems like the game thinks I have zero unlocked words and they pop off until I've collected them all again (which is a bit distracting also :P)