twitulater’s posterous

Because I've been terribly busy with exams and other stuff I was unfortunately unable to produce version 0.10 of Twitulater this weekend as I thought I would. So I did the next best thing - gave twitulater.com a facelift and did some reorganisation to make it easier to use.

What was previously a single page with a bunch of stuff to scroll through is now neatly organised and, to give you a glimpse of the future, the site's menu is now made with the same kind of buttons Twitulater will soon be sporting. Very soon I hope.

Oh and just so I don't forget, all of you who were having problems downloading the application where it would turn into a rar or a zip file or something like that - your problems should be solved. I made a simple download script that not only thanks you for your download (I always feel those are a nice touch), but sends the correct header information along with the file so your system should be able to recognise it properly.

Until next time,

~Swizec

The past two weeks have been a hair-raising horseback ride in Twitulater development, but with last night's all-nighter push to the finish I was able to get version 0.9 up and working properly without any major bugs, but unfortunately didn't get to implement some features I really wanted to.

However, there is still enough new stuff to warrant a new version. Twitulater is now completely abstracted from the protocol its running so it can, potentionally, support any communications protocol roughly similar to microblogging out there. So far we've got Twitter, as usual, and Koornk is the new comer. For those who don't know, Koornk is a Slovene blatant rip-off of Twitter and that's how they market it themselves. Eventually, perhaps, hopefully, Twitulater will sport a plugin system for protocols so users will be able to only have support of the protocols they use.

In other news, there has been a lot of improvement in the user interface department, most noticably is the new panel opening animation that is much mroe reliable and also less of a time waster.

Oh yes, and I've completely redesigned http://twitulater.com to contain our sexy logo and some screenshots.

Also, in other other other news, there is now a nightly build feature so those brave enough can give the current development version of Twitulater a test before it's released. Now since this is a completely automated process the nightly build will most probably often be broken, but I hope that some of you will find it a fun feature at the very least.

As always, downloads at http://twitulater.com and here's the changelog for this version:

# completely microblogging protocol nondependent
# koornk support
# protocol icon next to username in tab
# automatic login for secondary users
# automatically logs in several users at once
# ability to close panels
# css-styled pretty scrollbars
# fixed bug with followers reporting
# fixed panel open animations
# fixed some other less prominent bugs

The past few days I've been working like mad on redesigning the sexy new user interface for Twitulater. It looks much better now, has lovably designed buttons and doesn't look like something the cat brought in anymore. Since I'm currently at the Ljubljana BarCamp I won't say a lot more at this point.

Download at http://twitulater.com

For the past few weeks I've been working with Graham Smith on the Twitulater logo design and he did a great job! Graham was really cool throughout the whole process, put up with all my nagging and tweaks very well. After all the pushing back and forth between what a professional knows and what an over-excited customer thinks they want we came to a gorgeous result. Graham was even so nice as to list it amongst featured logos on the imjustcreative site.

The logo is everything I hoped for and expresses what Twitulater aims to become very well. And, if I may steal a certain popular CEO's presentation style, it's GORGEOUS! It's got a bird in it, a black background with a gradient, and it's gorgeous. Just look at it. Perfect!

After the longest development cycle of 13 days so far, Twitulater version 0.7 is finally available for your downloading pleasure. There have been three changes you will probably notice the most, the implementation of TweetShrink, a utility to shrink long tweets, the implementation of twitPic, which is something you're probably already familiar with and a way to filter all the displayed tweets so you can essentially search for words and phrases. Very useful.

On top of all that Twitulater has become just a little bit faster, more reliable and the interface is somewhat prettier. A full redesign of the interface will come with Twitulater 0.8 in about a week or so when Graham Smith is done creating the logo and icon. The designs so far look very nice.

Here's Twitulater 0.7 changelog in a bit more detail:

• implemented twitpic
• implemented tweetshrink
• implemented display filtering
• fresh counter in tab decounting when panels opened
• nicknames link to twitter profiles
• improved retweet detection for people using 'RP'
• tweet input focuses when clicking a command
• fixed a problem with displaying old tweets
• panel menu automatically adjusts height
• improved the look of characters left counter
• several interface speed improvements
• many bugs fixed

Now let's hope posterous works as I think it does (first time using it, be patient)