Playing with Twitter interfaces

I’m a Twitterer. Yes, that means loser.

Since I don’t have a phone with which to produce and consume Twitter updates, I’ve been relying very heavily on ways to use the service from my computer. As with any oft-used process on my computer, I’m trying to optimize it.

Web interface

Let’s start with the basics. The first option is of course the basic web interface.

Unfortunately, this is way too blocky and inefficient. Worst of all, using it means I have to navigate to the webpage to view it; there are no “push” capabilities, informing me of updates when I’m paying attention to something else.

TwitterFox

For a while after ditching the web interface, I was using TwitterFox, and it treated me quite well. Since I more or less live in a browser, it was a convenient way to keep track of updates and post my own.

I find this interface very sharp, actually. The downsides were that it doesn’t function like a desktop application, as it lives within the browser, and therefore can’t be resized or repositioned. Initially I didn’t think that would bother me, but as I began to use it more often, I found myself really wanting this functionality.

Mitter

Cue Mitter. I found it by poking around on GetDeb and figured I’d give it a spin.

This interface is much more what I was going for, both sparse and pretty. And best of all, I can resize it and stick it wherever I want! I personally prefer to have Twitter communication located on the same virtual desktop as my e-mail client (in the absence of the up-and-coming Mozilla Messaging client, which should integrate the two), and now I can do that.

I’m currently using v0.3.2.2 of Mitter, so it should be obvious that the program is not without its problems. For example, the textbox does not resize for hefty tweets (like a twoosh):

Compare this with how the web interface handles it:

Pretty sad. In addition to that, there’s the silly problem of not being able to simply click on URLs. Rather, the user has to right-click on them and then choose an action from a nested menu. Gah!

This design decision definitely reinforces the “right-click everything” mindset of Linux that makes me feel like I’m playing Starcraft at all times.

Closing thoughts

I didn’t bother to include interfaces like the sidebar in Flock because right now they’re whining about changes in Twitter’s API. And while I’m sure there are very well polished desktop apps for Windows and OS X, I didn’t feel driven to try them out.

I think that for the time being, I’ll oscillate between Mitter and good ol’ TwitterFox. The former has a great presentation that integrates well with my desktop environment, and the latter is superior in terms of update notification. Ideally, I’d love to use both concurrently, but with the Twitter API only supporting calls every 5 minutes (and I often change my clients to update at 10 minute intervals, because I get blocked when using 5 minute checks during heavy load times), there’s no way I could keep both running.

I’ll keep an eye out for patches to Mitter, as I think it’s showing huge promise this early. But ultimately I think there’ll be a much more all-encompassing solution coming down the road in a few months, like a prototype for the Mozilla Messaging project I mentioned earlier. And that’ll really hit the spot for me.