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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36 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.

  15. Sixshot Says:
    October 27th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

    This gadget works fine on a basic level but there are some weird issues here. Seems as though that whenever I try to make changes to the gadget’s appearance, the theme reverts back to the blue style. I prefer a darker theme so I selected that but I end up having to repeatedly go back into the preference to reset it.

    Another issue I have is whenever I make changes in the preference, the gadget would prompt for user/pass, even though I was on just seconds ago. Combine this with the annoying aspect of having to reset your theme whenever you make changes and it becomes a real pain to try to use.

  16. Wilksie Says:
    November 7th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Great gadget and very usable. One slight problem though. I found that when my password was all numbers it’s not reconised in the gadget. It took me ages to work it out as when i changed my password on the twitter page (using the same password of just numbers) i could log in but not on the gadget. When i changed my password to all letters… winner!

  17. ITForensic Says:
    November 8th, 2009 at 12:00 am

    I love your gadget but I would like to see https implementation…Lots of people sniffing open hotspots..;-)
    Keep up the good work!

  18. The Staff Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Hi Wilksie, Sorry you had to deal with that problem. I don’t think that this would be specific solely to having numbers in the password as mine has numbers in it and works fine. It is possible that a leading or trailing zero did not get recognized properly so if your pass either, that could be the source. I have passed this on to our developers and they are going to look at the issue more closely. Please let us know if you have any other issues and thanks for using our Twitter gadget.

  19. The Staff Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Hi ITForensic, We have added your suggestion to our master list for review in our next update. Please let us know if you have any other thoughts or suggestions. Thanks.

  20. Jes Says:
    November 26th, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Hey, great job, really, I love it. Very convenient!
    The thing is, every update says it was updated “about 16 hours ago” — i mean, ALL the updates.

    Plus, there’s a list feature and beta retweet feature twitter web has now.
    It will be great if you update this gadget an incorporate these new features.

    Other than that, terrific idea. One of my favorite gadgets ever.

  21. Charrion Says:
    November 27th, 2009 at 12:07 am

    Great gadget. One tiny request, any plans to update the gadget to support twitters new retweet format? The new retweets show up as blank.

  22. The Staff Says:
    November 27th, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    We’ll see what we can do about the re-tweet feature, they may have changed something in the API. We’ll consider lists as an added feature, but we’ll need to know more about how they’re implemented first.

  23. Dave Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 11:14 am

    What is up with the rate limit? What does this mean? Mine shows 150/150 and I haven’t had an update in over 5 hours. Is this something that is mandated by Twitter or something in the addon?

    thanks.

  24. The Staff Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    Dave, rate limit is the number of calls the gadget can make to Twitter in a certain period of time, usually 150 calls in an hour though we’ll have to double check the limit again since it may have changed since the gadget went out. If you’re maxing out your limit, you might have something else taxing it like another app or program or even gadget. It’s 150 per user, so that would explain any non-update errors you’re getting. Try re-adding the gadget to the sidebar to confirm, but you may have something else leeching your calls on you.

  25. nicki Says:
    December 10th, 2009 at 5:44 am

    Hey – little help please, downloaded the gadget, but it keeps telling me it is an invaild login. It is definately correct as i can log in to my twitter account just fine with the same info.

    any suggestions?

    thanks

  26. The Staff Says:
    December 10th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Nicki, are you behind a firewall or proxy? The gadget has a known issue with that. We’re going to work on it for the next version.

  27. Pete Says:
    December 13th, 2009 at 7:22 am

    Just realised that I am not getting incoming DMs. Apart from that, it’s really useful to have it in Vista Sidebar.

  28. The Staff Says:
    December 14th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Pete, we’ll eventually get DMs and favorites into the interface, not sure when, but it’s on our list.

  29. Lee Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 11:37 am

    Yo. I concur on the retweet function. It’s never worked for me. Another thing you might do is add an option for a ‘mega version’ of the gadget. I hand edited the gadget to be 950 pixels high to take up the entire side of one sidebar ‘window’. Now I can see more tweets at a time and not have to scroll as much. Maybe that could be a 5th option in the future? Just a thought.

  30. Greg Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 4:41 pm

    Great gadget, but a few comments. As already shown above, font size is at the top of my list. It would be nice to have a button to show DM’s and would also be nice to be able to DM someone from the feed. Fully adjustable height would be awesome. Keep up the good work!

  31. The Staff Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Greg, it’s all on our to-do list for the next update to the gadget.

  32. mehul Says:
    April 15th, 2010 at 4:14 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

  33. Ross Says:
    May 12th, 2010 at 4:50 pm

    Love this gadget. Use it on 4 different PC’s. However, starting yesterday the gadget died on one of my PC’s. It would never get new tweets, getting stuck in a permanent “Refreshing” state. I went through the general troubleshooting steps and removed the applicable .xml files, uninstalled the gadget completely, etc. Now with a fresh copy of the gadget, it can’t login! I’ve triple checked everything and it just seems as though I’ll have to wait for 1.0.1 since your gadget is really buggy

  34. The Staff Says:
    May 12th, 2010 at 9:53 pm

    Ross, we need to do some serious updates to the gadget to bump up the login system to OpenAuth (which should solve the problem) as well as the new retweet format and several other options. It’s on our to-do list, but I don’t have a current ETA on an update.

  35. JBBdude Says:
    September 1st, 2010 at 6:11 am

    Yeah, OAuth needs to happen like NOW. I love this app, and it’s my primary way of using twitter. I’ve tried other sidebar gadgets, which just don’t compare. Now Twitter has disabled basic authentication, so Twitter Explorer is broken.

  36. The Staff Says:
    September 1st, 2010 at 7:10 pm

    We are working hard right now to implement OAuth and get Twitter Explorer up and running again. When we have an update available we will let you know here, on twitter and on facebook. Thanks for your patience.

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