About

I've been using Twitter for some time ("peSHIr" if you'd like to follow me), but have not been 100% satisfied with a number of WM6 Twitter clients that I've been using.

They all seem to lack copy-paste support in the update window (ceTwit has copy now, to be honest) and often seem too large and slow for what I want, for instance because they try to support everything in the Twitter API. I am mostly using TinyTwitter at the moment, but it seems that even with the large number of existing clients, to get it "just right", I simply have to write another one so I can tweak it whenever I want/need.

Short rundown of current features:

  • Meant to be (and stay?) small and quick instead of trying to implement the entire Twitter API. Original CAB size was just under 67 Kb (not including .NET Compact Framework v3.5). This has increased to about 175 Kb right now.
  • Shows friend timeline, including friend locations (as stored in their Twitter profile). Enables one key reading of the timeline using the space bar.
  • Currently, timeline view is just interpreted text in a disabled TextBox control. But this should start to look nicer later on; starting from Beta 19 this TextBox is now part of a view plug-in system that does not show itself yet because there are no other views available yet. A view showing location of tweets using Google Maps is under development.
  • Uses Content-Encoding: gzip to improve speed and minimize bytes transfered when requesting/downloading that timeline.
  • Updates Twitter status. (Duh...) But does so easily for more than one Twitter account. And allows you to do @screenname replies.
  • Any TextBox in the application has full cut/copy/paste/clear functionality in its context menu like internal WM6 Professional applications have.
  • Textboxes that can contain URLs (like in status update dialog, but also timeline for now) include all URLs in their context menu to open them in PIE (or whatever the default web browser on your device is).
  • URLs can be opened through "mobiler services" like Skweezer and Google Mobile.
  • URLs in status updates are automatically shortened, using the is.gd API by default. Other short URL providers are supported and many are recognize so their URLs are not automatically re-shortened.
  • If internal GPS has a location fix, you have a checkbox option to update your location in your Twitter profile (using an OpenStreetMap name finder call) as well as in TwitterVision using the TwitterVision API in one go when updating your Twitter status. GPS features are currently in limbo, but should return.
  • Easy keyboard shortcuts: see the About screen. Also includes online help.
  • Improved unexpected exception handling. If you do happen to encounter an exception, you should be able to send back detailed information to me by email and then restart the application.
  • Also mentions timeline (your @replies), users timeline (your own tweets) and the public timeline can be shown. A merged variant of users+mentions (named "Ego") is also available.
  • You can set a hashtag in account settings that are then easily appended to your tweets using a checkbox in the Tweet dialog. Very convenient when at conferences or when reporing of IRL events.
  • Support for FuelFrog, Buienradar and Unicode Klingon characters. (Don't ask; told you this client was mainly for me, didn't I?)

Planned features include:

  • Nicer timeline GUI, more views. (Probably also with avatar images?)
  • Reinstate location features. Also, add more location features: both Foursquare/Brightkite/Plazes/whatever checkin and OSM POI finding and editing/adding would be great.
  • Automatic periodic update of friend timeline, probably only when on ActiveSync or my home WLAN access point.
  • Ehh... not much else, I think...

Anyway, the application is called "peSHIr tweets" and is meant to be completey for my own use. However, I have already received an couple of open beta requests from my followers, so I have decided to make the CAB public for use on your risk. From the 3rd of april 2010 you can also find "peSHIr tweets" in Windows Phone Marketplace.

Happy Twittering!