twitulater’s posterous

Just a quick heads up to everyone.

After yesterday's release of version 0.14 we noticed some usability problems with certain new features and decided to promptly make an update with fixes for everything we could find. This was supposed to be a nice and quiet release, everyone should get a notice and update.

However, mister sod and his law got in the way and so version 0.14.0.1 also includes a fix for automatic updates to make them actually functioning as intended.

C'est la vie

Anyhow, please download the new version and update. Henceforth things should be going more smoothly.

If you're interested, here is a list of changes:

- fixed usability issues with groups config
- fixed a bug with tweet commands not displaying
- fixed a bug with displaying DM tweets in other columns
- improved usability of OAuth login
- improved the look and feel of tweet input box

~Swizec

             

Click here to download:

Twitulater_0.14_released.zip (988 KB)

tl;dr download the new Twitulater 0.14

Behind us are a few grueling days of long nights and cheerful moments, and a long month of developing Twitulater. There have been a lot of changes ranging from the basic feature list, the direction we want to take and most of all the entire structure of the project - development is now done by a team of two and we even have somewhere to work.

Among other prominent features Twitulater now supports grouping people and creating manual searches. We realise there are moments when automatic categorisation simply won't do, perhaps you want all your coworkers' tweets bunched together, or really want to see everything somebody posted (different twitter novelists come to mind). Searches, naturally, should help you keep a finger on anything you're especially interested in, like for example I was in OAuth over the past few days.

While we're on the topic of OAuth, Twitulater will no longer ask your password. To login you'll simply get a Twitter login and allow Twitulater to use your account - subsequent automated logins even work faster than they used to! We don't know of any other desktop client that currently does this, but it is our opinion that they all should. Security is serious business and you can't just let any old app handle your delicate information. You wouldn't give your bank account to just anyone either would you?

Other features include things like autocompletion when you're typing usernames or hashtags, a helpful button to create #followfriday tweets with a single click, resizable and draggable columns and filtering tweets in any column.

For your pleasure we've also made the screen footprint of Twitulater smaller by a 72 900 square pixels! The general look and feel of the interface has also been improved. We hope you like it.

Twitulater also has a new community page where you can post ideas, ask questions and tell us off when something doesn't work. The page itself is also incorporated into the app so help is always only a few clicks away if you ever get stuck.

DOWNLOAD now, what the hell are you waiting for?

Last but not least, the beautiful changelog:

• added support for groups
• added support for manual searches
• added Twitter OAuth support
• added auto completion for usernames
• added auto completion for hashtags
• added automatic updates
• added language rollback question
• added support/requests interface
• added followfriday helper
• added drag&drop columns
• added drag&drop resizable columns
• added drag&drop resizable column menu
• added column filtering
• added search to all people displays
• added bit.ly support
• changed the general UI layout
• fixed a bug with the language picker
• fixed slownes of people list display
• removed tr.im support because it died
• Download 0.14

     

Click here to download:

Twitulater_alpha1.1_knows_who_.zip (641 KB)

tl;dr: download the new version of Twitulater

After a long weekend Twitulater alpha1.1 is complete and ready for everyone to enjoy. The previous weeks were spent elbow-deep in refactoring and reshaping and resculpting the core code behind some of the functionality, namely the way social graphs are created. This step was taken so that I am now able to proudly present Twitulater's most prominent new feature and one I'd been long looking forward to -

- lists of people!

This is something @friedcell complained about over a pint or two several months ago. He said that in most other clients when you want to follow someone and don't have a tweet handy there's nothing you can do. Well now you can. Twitulater remembers everybody whose tweets you've ever seen and makes a list of them at your disposal. It even organises the list by how much it believes you like them. But not only that, Twitulater also enables you to see who your friends are, who you're following who's not following back and viceversa. This is much similar to friendorfollow.com, except it's right there, whenever you need it, at the touch of a button.

Another big feature is support for different languages, namely Slovene and Pirate. I've decided to add support for Slovene after observing a debate unfold around this notion on Twitter and Pirate ... well that's because Pirates are cool and @sparkica reminded me it should be added. Perhaps in a next version I'll add support for ninja as well, but I think that'd just make everything into ----

In other news, there's also a new feature @alesh666 asked about, manual refresh. This is something I will never in my life understand the need for, refreshes are too frequent as it is, but alright, if you want it, you got it.

In other other news: many bugs have been fixed and I think special thanks is in order for @robertbasic who swamped me with a slew of easy to fix bugs on Saturday, bugs I'd never have discovered on my own. You're awesome dude.

Lastly, I do believe some bragging with statistics should be done because I didn't think they'd be so impressive. After having put up alpha1 for download a bit over a month ago there have been 54 downloads for Macs, 275 downloads for Linux (straight .air files) and ... wait for it ... 12569 downloads for Windows. Hmmm ... yay? A lovely little tid-bit is also that the nightly was downloaded 26 times, nice to see there's interest for that as well.

So anyway, the changelog:

• added list of seen users, friends, fans, followers, blocked
• added ability to follow and unfollow
• added ability to block and unblock
• added user profile display
• added multi-language interface
• added support for slovene and pirate language
• added refresh button
• fixed shorten URL interface wrong default service
• fixed drag∓drop issues
• fixed tweets showing up as tabs
• fixed showing too many tweets in conversations
• fixed problems with commands not loading quickly enough
• fixed some other less prominent bugs
• removed read delay at startup
• removed closing delay
• a whole lot of refactoring and behind the scenes improvements

DOWNLOAD

PS: sorry @simonbelak for using your profile in a screenshot, but that avatar is just bloody awesome looking in that size

Po včerajšnji debati z @makonja @otobrglez @anejmehadzic @tomazstolfa @PlanetStark, v katero sem bil mičkeno vpleten s čivkom ali dvema, o približevanju Twitterja (čivkalnika) slovenskim noobom, sem se odločil prevesti Twitulater in v njem na splošno omogočiti podporo za različne jezike.

Tako je z včerajšnjo vsakonočno verzijo Twitulater postal sposoben govoriti slovensko. Prevodi so moji in sprejemam predloge za izboljšave, če se komu kaj ne zdi dovolj jasno. Trenutno je prevedena večina vmesnika, nekaterih stvari nisem mogel zaradi tehničnih omejtiev (beri: low-level hroščev v moji jQuery knjižici za gumbe), nekaterih pa še nisem, ker kaka stvar še ni dokončana in se zato ne morem odločit kako jo prevest.

V glavnem, prosim vse, da inštalirate vsakonočno (hah to hecno zveni, nightly je bolše) verzijo, se sprehodite do nastavitev in sprobate slovenščino. Ko to naredite bom vesel vsake pripombe na kak okoren prevod in druge nevšečnosti.

PS: trenutno se še ukvarjam s tem kako poenostaviti nastavitev jezika za začetnike. Razmišljam, da se bo verjetno ob prvem zagonu pojavilo okno z različnimi zastavicami in si bo uporabnik lahko nastavil jezik. Tako mu ni treba znati nobenega jezika razen svojega ... no, pač ideja zaenkrat.

tl;dr: Go to http://twitulater.com and get the new version

After six grueling weeks of fighting bugs and hardware failure Twitulater alpha1 is finally truly here. Yes you heard right, all the features have been implemented nearly two months ago and the rest was spent finding test rigs and fixing a few horrible bugs.

As a result, Twitulater is now snappier than ever. I dare say it's probably the best performing AIR based twitter client and what's more, it's perhaps the only one using Growl for notifications on both Mac and Windows. Love it! The feature everyone will like the most in this new release, but perhaps not notice at first, is highlighting the people you interact most with. This enables you to notice your friends with a single glance. Amazing!

Another useful feature are conversation threads. You can have an infinite number of simultaneous conversation windows open at a time and new tweets will appear in all of them all at once. Woot! No more trying to pick a conversation interspersed with hundreds of tweets, no more clicking like a madman trying to follow the crumbs. Twitulater does it all for you.

What else, the more tech savvy of you might notice that Twitulater is now plugins based and you can actually disable plugins you don't need. Uploading files will never fail again because there's always another file handling plugin to fallback on. TwitPic not working? Shrani.si will take care of it. Naturally, there will be even more plugins developed soon. Very soon.

Oh another thing. Remember those times when you just can't fit your thoughts into 140 characters? ShrinkTweet and TwitLonger will take care of that. Both options present themselves when you're being a bit too wordy and you can choose which better solves the problem. Wow!

Now that I've got you all fired up and happy, go download Twitulater alpha1 from http://twitulater.com (it's been redesigned a bit, see if you can notice it)

And here's also the changelog, of course:

• moved everything to a plugin system
• plugin managment
• refresh frequency settings
• ability to logout
• display conversations in a thread
• highlight important tweets
• fallback on available upload services
• disable growl notifications
• twitlonger.com implemented
• widened category menu
• drag&droppable tabs
• cleaned up login interface
• simplified install process
• tweets only stored on quit
• improved general responsiveness and speed
• fixed crashing/hanging problems
• fixed leftover zombie process problem
• fixed hidden interface problem
• fixed problem with saving autologin
• removed category menu close/open button

Twitulater alpha1 is finally completed after an almost two month development cycle. It's been a wild ride and as much as I would love to say it's over ... it's not. This is also why I'm writing this news on a Monday instead of over the weekend as promised.

See, the thing is that even though I've done all the intended features and fixed all the reproducible bugs I could find and even make Growl notifications work on Windows for users installing the latest beta version of Growl for Windows (as will be written in the instructions) and so on ... there is one thing I simply couldn't do due to a monumental hiccup with having my MacBook repaired.

I know it's been seven weeks since it broke and put a dent in the development schedule, but it's not my fault. They've last week finally decided to replace it with a new one and now we're hackling over whether I should pay half or not (for a computer that just died under warranty). Obviously I can't do testing on that platform now and unfortunately, after having two wonderful volunteers @alesh666 and @mr_foto test Twitulater, Growl didn't just work out of the box as I'd hoped. This is why I cannot release Twitulater just yet ...

So here's the deal, until I get my mac back I will be implementing features from next version, then just call it alpha1 and do a proper release with a massively massive changelog and everything.

Until then, you can download Twtulater alpha1_26052009 and give it a spin.

This is really just a quick call to arms of anyone actively watching this space. I know there aren't many of you left because of the prolonged release cycle lately and because I'm slaving over code to end this leg of the cycle over the weekend I'll keep it short.

Please download this latest nightly version and give it a whirl. You won't notice many changes from last time I released a sneak peek two weeks ago, but you will notice that it now actually works. This is exactly why I feel confident in being able to release this weekend.

Come back with any interesting things you find. Thanks. 

Wow! A month is such a short period of time when you've got too much work on your hands. Ever since the last release way back in middle March there have been no news, barely even a peep from Twitulater, but I am glad to inform you that things are happening and development is still gong strong.

It is for this particular reason that I have decided to give everyone a little sneak peek into the next version of Twitulater, which will be named alpha1. To be honest I'm not certain whether this is an alpha version in the classical versioning scheme, but it felt fitting - perhaps I just got bored with  having only numbers. Mostly I felt the previous versioning simply wasn't fitting anymore due to some fundamental changes in the way Twitulater works.

The biggest such change is moving everything to a plugin based system, which means you are no longer tied to any service. You can even turn plugins on and off and a distribution system will be developed so you'll be able to download and install plugins right from the application and thus get new functionality without having to upgrade the whole app. Then there's the redundancy system, when shortening an error occurs while shortening an URL or uploading a file Twitulater will jumpt to the next available plugin and give that one a shot - this gives you the best possible chance of getting things done without fuss.

Another big improvement are conversation threads (seen in the screenshot), which means you can finally see the whole conversation stream leading up to a tweet without having to click "in reply to" a gazillion bloody times. Personally I know I've been aching for something like this for months now.

There is also an ... let's call it an easter egg ... feature that's only a few hours old right now. If you use the pre-release version for a while you'll be sure to find it. If not, just wait for the real release when it's ready.

Have fun until next time, hope you're still out there listening.

PS: since my main testing computer is recovering from a broken graphics card, the poor creature, this pre-release isn't very, uhm, stable. At least it wasn't on linux and I'm not certain why since running it during development worked fine.

PPS: I've also updated the Twitulater website a little bit so you can see the rantings and ravings I do while testing and credit has been given to some good people who have contributed their suggestions or just shared what they hated about other clients.

Click here to download:

Twitulater_alpha1_pre.air (847 KB)

The long awaited Twitulater 0.11 has arrived and I have to admit I was quite taken aback when I realised it's been more than a whole month since version 0.9 was released. Hopefully none of you were holding your breaths waiting for this thing to arrive and if you have, I feel very sory for losing such wonderful prospects. Do hope you're all alright.

Let me explain a bit of what was going on this past month and why the jump from 0.9 straight to 0.11. The thing is, Twitulater is, for now, my hobby and sometimes silly things I would rather abandon in favour of Twitulater, like exams, come up and request to be tended to. During this time development grinds to a halt and before you can say "fat cheeseburgers eat kitties for dinner" two weeks fly by and that's half a month. Then you start developing like a madman, but realise implementing Growl is a tad more difficult than it looks and ... you get the picture right?

The reason behind jumping a version is simple - I wanted to produce something stable. A small community is forming around Twitulater, or at least some interest has started brewing and it's time to step it up a notch and become more careful when releasing. That's why when version 0.10 was ready I simply did not want to release it because things were laggy, stuff looked out of whack and it was all in all a Vista experience, which is something I don't want to put my users through. So while I was at it I also implemented some of the features planned for 0.11, why not eh?

Since a lot of things happened under the hood you might not notice them all. BUT I am fairly convinced you will notice the clean new interface that has had most of its buttons removed and replaced with automatisation. So for instance you no longer have to shorten URL's, just paste them in your tweet and Twitulater shortens them automatically. Uploading files a drag? Just drop them in the tweet and Twitulater uploads images to twitPic, everything else to shrani.si (later there will be fine grained control over this)

Mac users will also be happy to note that Growl is now used to notify you of certain events, which is something I personally have been missing for a while now ... so what else is new, oh right, you can now read Direct Messages and when the app starts it no longer pulls so many tweets out of the stream, but limits itself to 200 and rather pulls as many replies as possible. This is a much more useful combination, @robertbasic was right.

Perhaps there are some other things I neglected to highlight, so here's the full public version of the changelog. Of course don't forget to download at http://twitulater.com and give Twitulater a spin.