Blue Onion Software

I’m what you might call a casual twitter user. I follow a few dozen people and tweet 3 or 4 times a day. For a long time, I was content to use the Twitter Web site. I tried several clients including twhirl, TweetDeck and others. They all do a great job but I wanted something a bit more diminutive. Of the several sidebar gadgets available, I found Twadget to be the most useful but it had a few annoying quirks. I started fixing some issues and of course, being me, ended up modifying it into entirely new gadget.

TweetZ, like my other sidebar gadgets, docks comfortably in the sidebar. Balancing size, function and appearance has been a process of trail and error over the last month and while not complete, there’s enough here to warrant letting others try it. There are two sizes, a larger one when it’s not docked in the sidebar, and a smaller one for when it’s docked.

TweetZ works much like other Twitter clients. You can tweet and reply as expected. Click on the “What are you doing” button and the editing window pops up.

You can shorten links easily. Simply compose your tweet, complete with the long versions of your links and then click “shorten”. Tweetz will convert links that it finds into their short versions using the services of http://is.gd.

Use the “arrow” (by author works as well) and “bell” icons to reply and retweet. Move your mouse over a link (gadget must have the focus) and it does a reverse lookup of shortened links. Click on the author’s icon to go to their twitter page.

The scrollbar in the larger version allows you to scroll down to earlier tweets. The mouse wheel also scrolls. In the smaller version, scrolling can only be done with the mouse wheel. Scrolling is by tweet, which surprisingly, is not the case in many other twitter clients.

Updates occur every 2 minutes for the “Recent” time line. Every 6 minutes for “Replies” (Mentions), and every 10 minutes for “Direct” messages.

Of course, like all my other stuff on this site, the usual price applies (free!).

Vista and Windows 7 only

Available on the Downloads page.

fckn awesome.

LOVE IT !

hi, thanks for the gadget.

btw, I don't know if it's just me, but the reply feature (by clicking the icon) seems to be broken, it copies all the text in the timeline into the box which obviously overruns the limit by like 8000 letters. :|

oh, and I noticed the tweets posted from the gadget are labeled just "API" if looked on the twitter website. Is there any way to fix it, so it'd be "from TweetZ"?

I like this, however in the smaller version, I wish there was a way to scroll without using the mouse scroll wheel since I'm using a notebook and getting to see older messages are difficult.

kimtag: Fixed and updated - Thanks

Vinod: Touch pads usually have a scroll capability by sliding your finger up and along the far right side of the pad. I've been meaning to add cursor and page up/down keys to the gadget. Next version.

woow... thanks for sharing

I think is good start, nice work in progress if you will...
But I think the following should be nice upgrades:
1. Having the profile image right there looks cool, but it's taking precious space in the small size, so maybe should leave it only for the bigger one.
2. The direct message feature is not avaliable to all the people we follow, so maybe it should not be right there by default (it also takes space in the small size).
3. A settings option to change the refresh rates, or at least make the recent stream refresh every minute.
4. Don't know if its just me but in the docked size I see the font size of the tweets themselves smaller than the font for the "about [time] ago by [user]" text. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Also should add "from API" to this description text, in the bigger size of course.
5. Maybe a "tweet" & "cancel" in the "what are you doing?" pane.
6. The three buttons at the bottom should change depending where you are at the moment. Maybe add a "trending" button in place of the one being used.
All of this is constructive advice, of course. I see great potencial here (the best twitter gadget so far), so please keep the good work.
P.S. Thanks :)

Chester,

Thanks for the suggestions.

1. I struggled with the profile image in the docked position. It didn't look right without it to me. An option perhaps.
2. Direct messaging admittedly needs work.
3. I'll drop the refresh to a minute. I try very hard "not" to put options in a gadget.
4. Fonts are the same size but the italic does look a bit bigger to me as well. I've found that making it smaller doesn't work. The problem is that the small size requires just the right fonts. Arial looks way to thin at small sizes for instance. If you're the least bit inclined, you could change the style sheet and experiment with different fonts. If you find something you like better, send it to me and I'll consider it.
5. Retweet's quote. Escape cancels. Perhaps you want something in addition?
6. They buttons do change. The button highlighting is perhaps a bit too subtle. This area is going to change to icons in the future so I can add other features.

Again, thanks for the comments. They're really appreciated. People think I'll be insulted if they say they don't like it. If the comments are constructive (as yours are) I want to hear it.

This is a surprisingly challenging gadget to write, not from the technical aspect, but from the usability aspect. The real estate is so small in a gadget that you have to spend "every pixel" wisely. I have no illusions that this will be a "Tweet Deck" or "Twhirl" killer. There's just too much functionality in those apps to squeeze into 130 pixels. The trick is to make it useful without being clumsy or annoying.

Hey, my Tweetz seems to have a major problem!

For some reason, since yesterday it has started to just appear blank when I log in, just plain grey with nothing on it! It says its updating, and well, nothing happens. I reinstalled it too, and nothing happened.

It's a shame cos I thought Tweetz to be the best Twitter gadget, but it's just decided to die on me!

I would like to run TweetZ however when I download and try to double click and Install the gadget it comes up with an error.
"Desktop Gadget Error.
This is not a valid gadget package."

my filename is TweetZ.gadget

I am running Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit

I have a few day old install of win 7 64-bit enterprise and you helped me get tweetz working but when I try to scroll through my friends posts, alot of time it freezes up on me and I get the blue spinning circle thing, after a moment or two it will finally be able to scroll down and up, and click links etc.

Im not sure whats going on.

Im using an HP Dx2300 Business PC @ 1.8 ghz pentium dual core, with 4gb of Crucial Ram.

If you have any feedback I would like to hear it! I really like the gadget but this makes it nearly impossible to use.

I did a restart on the gadget itself and it seems to be working better.

Really love Tweetz.
It's the best Twitter gadget!
Keep up the good work!

Wow! Its imposible... I'm realy shocked :/

Hey Mike,

How about adding the ability to make the tweetz box taller, to fit the height of the screen to be able to show more tweetz at once?

Also, running multiple instances, sometimes (especially when booting up the computer) makes some tweetz "leak" over from another instance; were you aware of this? (windows 7 64-bit)

There are two things I would love to see you add. #1 I would love to have a counter on there that shows how many new tweets we got when it updates and then once we read them we can mark them read. Also #2 a chirp or ding or some kind of sound when a new tweet arrives. Can the app check for tweets more frequently like every 30 seconds or at least allow us to set the interval and make 30sec, 1 min, 3 mins etc. depending on what we want?

I'm working on making the box taller. Not sure if will be continuously sizable or discrete increments.

There's an option (on by default) to tweet when new status arrive. Check the settings dialog.

I've had several requests for indicating new tweets. I'm still trying to decide when a tweet has been "read". Any ideas?

Thanks for the comments.

Rather then deciding when a tweet is read, how about just requiring a click on the requisite icon?

Assume the state of all tweets "read". Now 3 new tweets come in. The UI would:
Colorize the "Home" icon (so the grey home would turn blue or whatever), and subtly highlight the actual tweets (different background color or text color, or whatever). This state would remain, regardless of user action until the user actually clicks on the "Home" icon.

At that point, the icon returns to it's grey color, and all the tweets go back to the original color/highlight/whatever.

The same interaction model can apply to DM and Mentions (colorize the icon to tell the user something is new, and differentiate the actual "new" messages, until the user clicks on the icon).

I think that doesn't present any interaction problems, since clicking on a "grey" icon will preserve the same behavior as today: switching to the page of already-read information.

I love the layout, PERFECTION! DON'T CHANGE A THING.

I'm just having a little trouble on the computer starting up when the gadget is on at shutdown. On Start up, it it gets everything from twitter like its supposed to, but remains blank, sounds like its loading newer tweets as they come in but just remains blank. Is there any way you can possibly put in a "refresh" button, maybe under the right click menu.

Thanks and love the wor ur doing.

How about allowing the ability to unfollow a user directly from GUI and the ability to add a user from a search form?

Great work, dude! This is the only good twitter client for Windows that I have seen so far. It's exactly what I was looking for. Small, good looking and functional. Just perfect!