Blog Entry
Jul 01

Twitter Explorer 1.0.0

Posted in Gadgets, Twitter Explorer

It was only a matter of time until we got around to Twitter. Plus we had a lot of requests for this gadget, so how could we not take a stab at it? The Twitter Explorer gadget is a basic foray into the popular social micro-blogging platform and we hope that it goes over well.

Features:

  • View recent activity, mentions, and trends
  • Search Twitter or view trending topics in either a flyout or the browser
  • Post updates, reply, or retweet posts in a flyout complete with short URL Bit.ly support
  • Click on a posting user’s name or picture to see their stats and info
  • 2 different full themes (way more than a background change)
  • 4 height sizes, each with a narrow and wide mode
  • Wide mode shows user pictures as well as names
  • View the rate limit and any errors in a small but handy flyout

As always, we appreciate any and all feedback, requests, error reports, etc. We will do our best to take everything into consideration for future updates and fixes. :)

Download: BuildAGadget.com – Widgipedia.com – Live.com Gallery


This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 3:31 pm
and is filed under Gadgets, Twitter Explorer.



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14 Responses to “Twitter Explorer 1.0.0”

  1. Brad Says:
    July 11th, 2009 at 2:14 am

    Great job as a first version guys. I’m glad to see a Twitter client that doesn’t use Adobe Air; a Vista/Win7 gadget is a perfect way to implement a full Twitter client. I do have a few comments.

    One thing I noticed just recently is Twitter Explorer tends to add a trailing space to all messages, meaning if you’re technically at exactly 140 characters, you still can’t submit the message. The addition of a trailing space will bump it over the gadget’s internal length checker; obviously if it was sent to Twitter it would just be truncated.

    I did some testing and it turns out this is being done by your FLYOUT_Encode_URLs() function, specifically the [xString += X + " ";] line. Might I suggest wrapping xString in a leading/trailing space trimming function before returning it, such as this one: http://www.qodo.co.uk/blog/javascript-trim-leading-and-trailing-spaces

    Hopefully in a future version you can work out shortening URLs before the message is sent to Twitter so that the extra space allowed by the short URL can be utilized.

    Any chance of getting Twitter Explorer to update more frequently than every 3 minutes, like every single minute? I don’t do a ton of updating and would imagine the 150 API accesses would still be enough for this.

    Lastly, don’t forget to go through the Twitter Application registration (http://twitter.com/oauth_clients/new) if you’re using OAuth (I admit I haven’t looked much into it) so you can get “from [App]” credit!

    Thanks & good work!

  2. The Staff Says:
    July 16th, 2009 at 11:37 am

    Brad, thanks for the tips! We’ll definitely look into patching some of the blank spaces generated by the conversion function. Accessing Twitter every single minute isn’t going to happen just yet until we can implement a selective update feature so that only one stream gets updated at a time. Otherwise, a person would run out of rate limit calls within 34 minutes. Twitter offers 100 calls per hour standard. The OAuth login is something we’re considering ongoing as we continue to work on this gadget. Twitter pulled a crappy move to force apps to use OAuth while grandfathering in older apps still using basic authentication. We had to make the choice between making things easy for our users and having our name tagged to the post. It could go either way in the future.

  3. Tom Says:
    July 29th, 2009 at 1:21 am

    Hey, so when I login to this gadget, it just says “sending” interminably. Any way you could help me out? I’m sure it’s my fault, but I would still like this to work….

  4. The Staff Says:
    July 29th, 2009 at 4:15 am

    Tom, try re-adding the gadget to the sidebar or restarting the sidebar program itself. It sounds like it might be in some kind of lock down. Let us know if neither of those work.

  5. Junwei Says:
    July 31st, 2009 at 9:22 am

    I got problem with the server update. ‘The update server is not currenly funtioning’, this is the message that I got, if i need to check for update. Could you help me?

  6. Paul Says:
    August 1st, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    Hi, I’m having the same trouble as Tom with the gadget “stuck” on “Sending…”. I’ve tried re-adding the gadget and restarting the sidebar without success. Any other suggestions?

  7. The Staff Says:
    August 1st, 2009 at 9:16 pm

    Paul, try erasing the user data for the gadget. Gadget Settings -> Help -> Follow the instructions on the bottom. If it’s still not working, maybe try changing your Twitter password. We’ll keep an eye out for anything that could cause this.

  8. jrg Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 8:02 am

    hi.. ur gadget twitter explorer rocks… its also.. but.. i have a little sugestion.
    Im at my job and im under a proxy, so the gadget could have some “network settings” to insert the proxy settings, because when i type my user and password, it says “invalid login” and i cant connect. but i can use the gadget from my home normaly… so.. thats it

    see ya

  9. Stephen Says:
    August 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am

    Best Windows gadget for Twitter I’ve seen. One suggestion: It’s be nice to adjust the font size of the tweets. It’s a little small at my screen resolution. Otherwise keep up the great work!

  10. LessZoa Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    great gadget! thanks guys! sugestion: add proxy settings (cannot use gadget well behind proxy server – keep getting 407 errors from twitter on posting) I am getting my updates, just cannot post. :(

  11. theMezz Says:
    October 12th, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    Anyway to make the fonts larger??

  12. The Staff Says:
    October 13th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    theMezz,

    Right now there is no functionality to change font size but we will put that in our list of potential upgrades for our next release. Thanks for the feedback.

  13. marcia Says:
    October 26th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    I will add to the request for larger font size. I like this gadget because of the theme choices (I can’t read white on black like so many others) but the font size is teeny!

  14. The Staff Says:
    October 27th, 2009 at 3:19 pm

    Hi Marcia, The font size has proven to be the most frequent suggestion that we’ve received. We will be sure to include in our next update and will post when that is available.

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