Blue Onion Software

Ok, I’m finally to the point where the new version of tweetz™ is good enough to warrant a beta release. For those who have been following this blog, you know that I decided to “start over” with tweetz. While the old tweetz was an OK gadget, it was bumping up against the limitations of it’s implementation.

The new version doesn’t do everything the old version did (yet). However, what it does, it does better. And more importantly, the code is more robust and extensible which means it should perform better, be easier to maintain and new features should be less disruptive code-wise.

Some things I was able to fix in the version.

• Better font – Actually the font is the same as before but it’s not bolded. I never did figure out why the older version bolded fonts but I suspect it had something to do with lame IE implementation of opacity.
• Better performance – The old version slowed down as the number of tweets increased. The new data model is much more efficient.
• Better interface – This is obviously subjective, but I think I’ve made some interface decisions that make the program better. Your feedback will be the judge.
• New features – I did sneak in some new features like hash-tag searches.

I’ll have much more detail in the release post. For now, I’m looking for feedback and validation of the new implementation.

Available on the downloads page.

Glad to see that you addressed the speed issue. I was beginning to consider alternatives to what is a nice tool.

Will try and report back.

As you say, look is a matter of preference.

I like the older look, with the rounded corners, which is in line with other gadgets.

The icons at the bottom also look vertically stretched in comparison with the old version. Not sure which I prefer.

I like the new tweets alert.

One beef I have with the old version is that if I am scrolling down through a load of tweets, the focus moves back to the top. So I have to scroll back down again. Will look to see how new version behaves on that front.

It might help if the user could set the interval between checks.

Looks promising, it's REALLY fast! Unfortunately it seems that it doesn't support accents (like èéòàìù). I'll stick to the old version for now, but I'm looking forward for updates. :)

Rounded corners will come back. Bugs in the gadget API don't allow using the traditional rounded corner techniques (you get magenta sparkles). The only technique that works is to gen multiple backgrounds of various sizes to avoid stretching too much. Art work is not my strong suit.

The stretched icons? Is this in expanded or docked mode?

Focus will not move back to the top on new tweets. Instead a notification appears at the top. When you click on the notification, it will go to the top. I could be persuaded to do otherwise if that's what users want.

I'll add the custom interval stuff soon. My focus for the beta is usability right now since those are the harder problems to solve. Once I get agreement that the "workflow" is good, I'll tackle the other issues.

I'll check into the accents issue tonight. I checked this in an earlier build and it appeared to be working. All posts are UTF8 encoded so in theory, it should work (it handles Asian characters sets for instance). Is it your tweets that are not supporting accents or are "rendered" tweets from others also exhibiting the issue.

Thanks for the feedback.

Is there a way to turn off the scroll to top after each refresh? I don't mind the auto-refresh, but it get annoying everytime I'm trying to read tweets, and it goes back to the top. Another suggestion, can you implement something like, automatically loading the 10 newest tweets, instead of clicking the link?

Hi Mike, thanks for the reply.
I can see accents on others' tweets displaying correctly, but on messages I send, they get replaced by other characters.
I just noticed that "enter key sends tweet" feature has disappeared, I can survive without it for some time, but please consider bringing it back. :)

I see the squished icons at the bottom when in docked mode, but it's not too hideous. :-) The "Home" written in Comic Sans is what bugs me (will have to try it on my Windows 7 boxen and see if it's supposed to look like that). :-)

GREAT job on 2.0.0.1 though! Liking it tons!

I think I'm still missing Retweets done via the Twitter API (rather than "RT blah blah blah"), but not 100% sure. Will verify that tonight too.

Looks really good, currently use Twitter Explorer which wastes real estate; alas Tweetz uses a font two points sizes larger, so doesn't show as many tweets. Any chance of adjustable font size?

I'll add a font size adjustment. I've complaints the other way on high DPI screens that the fonts are too small.

Squished icons. The icons were squished in the old version as well. I left the height the same and just changed width in this version. I couldn't distinguish the icons when I shrank them vertically. Also, I found that the click-able area was too small for my liking. I suck at drawing. If someone wants to come up with a set of images for the docked size however...

Hint: Ctrl+S sends messages. Also, Ctrl+S will bring up the compose message dialog. Makes for a nice workflow. Ctrl+S, type message, Ctrl+K to shorten urls, Ctrl+S to send message. No mouse required (once the gadget has input focus)

I plan on writing some documentation on all this once everything is working as desired.

Good design blog. Author fellow, will be your constant visitor. I learned many interesting thanks.

In my opinion you stole this article and placed on another site. I had already seen.