Twitter Thingy is a very simple yet powerful Adobe air based Twitter client for windows, OS X and Linux. It has all the essential functions that get you using the best parts of Twitter as quickly as possible, without having to learn a colossal new bit of software. It's also got some cleaver features like groups that make life that little bit easier.
Will it cost me anything?
Of course not. Twitter Thingy is completely free, paid for by the advertising on the site. But please remember, this software is still in beta, so there could be issues and bugs; and functionality can change as we try new things out.
Can I trust the install?
We hope so – this is of course up to you. It's not a signed install, so of course it's hard to trust that unsigned nature. Unfortunately the process of getting software signed is prohibitive if its intention is for it to be free. If advertising revenue allows some investment in a license, then that will happen in time.
What does it look like?
Here's a screen shot. There's nothing it to really, some buttons at the top to show different sortings of your current friend list and a refresh button if you can't wait for that to happen automatically.
This makes it pretty simple to use. As soon as you enter your user name, password and how often you want it to refresh and the friend list length, you’re off and running.
Most importantly is a big 'what are you doing' input field at the bottom of the main app window. Enter the usual 140 characters into the field, and hit enter – posted!
FAQ's
The following section will guide you through everything your need to know about using Twitter Thingy:
1. How do I install?
2. How do I use the application?
3. All about groups
4. All about searching
5. Quickly viewing replies
6. How do I update to the latest version?
7. How do I get in contact or make suggestions?
8. What has changed with each version?
How do I install it?
Download Air from the Adobe website, install it (quite simple), then click on the download link at the top of the page, download Twitter Thingy and run it. Air will install the app – place it in your programs/application folder and should run it.
You will of course be greeted by a calamitous message from Air stating that the application will have system access – (of course all applications you install on your machine have this). See the point above about trusting this app.
How do I use it?
The little explanation above should sort out the basics. To edit the finer details of a tweet, click the small arrow button in the bottom right hand corner of the tweet. This will slide out the actions tray, displaying what you see to the left.
If you roll over the icons, the tool tips should guide you through what each button does. The actions are broken down into:
- - Delete your own tweets
- - Reply to tweets
- - Re-tweet the tweet
- - View users details
- - Mark a tweet as a favourite
- - Change a users group (see below for a bit more explanation)
It's really that simple!
To edit your settings, click on the Twitter Thingy menu item, this will drop down a preferences item that you can use to access the app settings. Make sure that you add a setting for alerts if you're upgrading to version 0.70.10.
Groups
Groups and searching are new features added from version 0.80.00. These make finding things your friends have said, and controlling the people you see really easy.
You can see from the image to the left, the small yellow triangle - this indicates a users group (blue, green, red, yellow). If you click the group button within the actions tray, you will cycle through each of them in turn.
As this is not a standard Twitter feature, it's a tricky thing to implement. Using AIR's built in SQLite DB engine, Twitter Thingy will keep a copy of all your friend and reply status update lists so that you can create groups of people you follow, avoiding being bombarded by too much information, and not miss anything any of your 'real' friends are saying.
If you want to refresh your local database archive, you can do so by selecting Archive Refresh Status List from the Twitter Thingy Menu. This will attempt to refresh your friends status timeline, making any additions as it goes (e.g. you would like to add in a new friends past status updates). Remember though, Twitter delete status updates after 'a' period of time, so keeping a local copy is a good idea. It's also a good idea to create a backup of your local database - once the old messages are gone, there's no getting them back.
How do I search?
At the bottom of the app is a roll out tray that hides list controls. If you click this, it will roll up, and display in input field (for searching), a select drop down to delimit by group, and a previous and next button to run through the results (30 at a time).
Remember that you are only searching the archive of saved status' saved locally - this goes back much further than the usual Twitter friends list ever will.
How do I quickly view replies?
When there have been replies directly to a single status update, a green Replies link will be placed below the text of the update as can be seen in the image to the left. Clicking this link will show any reply thread for the update directly underneath the initial update within the list. To remove the reply list, click on the link again.
NB. When the list is refreshed, the replies will be removed.
How do I update to the latest version?
Download the latest version with the link at the top of the page, then click on the air installer package. This will ask you to install the latest version over your current version. If you are upgrading to any version greater than 0.80.00, then a database file will be created to archive all your status updates (and make groups useful) - this will take some time on the first run.
If you're having problems on mac, then it's good to delete the prefs files - search for anything containing 'twitter' in your users library preferences folder.
Upgrading to version 0.80.04 may cause some issues on mac - if you delete the encrypted store files located at:
~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS/com.twitterThingy[...truncated]
That should sort out any problems.
Get in contact
If you need any help, or have some ideas, please get in contact using this email address - contact AT twitter-thingy DOT co DOT uk.
Version change log
This is all the boring geeky stuff about how the app is developing
0.69.02
- Initial release
0.69.03
- Fixed tweet height bug
0.69.05
- Fixed avatar caching, now it's much faster at downloading and updating
- Removed some superfluous event listeners to speed things up
0.69.09
- Speed up display and switching between sort modes
- Input text cleanup, and removal of \n \r \t
0.70.00
- Fixed all the bugs from 0.69.09, placing of tweets was really messed up
- Add in actions tray - much easier to edit tweets
0.70.02
- Better text entry, and settings from the main menu
- Clearing of new tweet notification
- Tooltips in more places, and cleaner
- Version checking
- Re-tweet copies all the tweet
- Fix issue with window size on XP and Vista
0.70.05
- Now downloads the three lists - Friends, Replies and Favorites
- Update alerts now reflect this
- Better profile viewer
- Replies are now to the selected tweet
- Updates are way faster
0.70.10
- Fixed bugs with listeners, makes it run faster
- Added alerts for Windows users
0.80.00
- Added groups and searching
- Implemented a database archive of status updates
- Re-wrote a lot of the underlying structure to improve speed
0.80.02
- Fixed bug with missing authentication
- Fixed errors with avatar updates
0.80.04
- Moved to secure local storage for credentials, deleted shared object
- Corrected for DST
- Removed replies from status list - waiting for an update to thread replies
0.80.05
- Fixed header formatting error due to a Twitter API change
0.81.00
- Fixed a bug with text highlighting
- Added in reply viewing
