buzzbird

…here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

Let me start by saying that, when I began writing Buzzbird, I did not know Javascript. At all. And I barely knew any CSS. By trade, I was what you might call a “back end” guy. I’ve tended to write yucky stuff like “enterprise solutions” that run in “containers” with “highly scalable frameworks” and bla bla bla ick.

Since then, my career has taken a bit of a different tack. I’ve started doing more front-end web stuff. So in addition to futzing around with the Buzzbird project, I’ve been exposed to the work of a lot of top-notch Javascript geniuses and CSS cowboys.

Now, when I look at Buzzbird’s source code, I’m kinda embarrassed. Seriously, don’t look at it. It’s repulsive. If you saw it, you might even consider installing an AIR app instead of using Buzzbird (okay, I’m kidding, I guess it’s not THAT bad).

So right now I’ve started “refactoring” … I’ve started by making a clean API for the Twitter stuff. In the long term, this should make it easier to add support for identi.ca, tumblr, and other social services that support APIs that are similar to Twitter’s. Supporting additional services has always been a pie-in-the-sky goal for this project, and it won’t be possible until I clean house with the service code.

And working on this non-sexy drudgery means that I haven’t yet gotten a chance to work on cool frequently-requested features like Lists or Notifications. But it’s coming, I promise. Stay tuned.

Tweet on.

OK, so I watched the demo of Google Buzz (I’m still watching it, actually… they’re in the Q&A portion now). It looks interesting. I wonder if it’ll get the short-lived attention as Wave, or if it’ll actually stick. Time will tell.

My biggest problem is that I have to consider changing the name of Buzzbird again. If you’ve been following Buzzbird for a while, you know that this project has already changed its name once. The application was originally called Bluebird, but that name conflicted with another project. This project has nothing to do with Google Buzz – will the name “Buzzbird” confuse people?

Probably not. Probably Buzzbird can keep its name. I just wish Google had picked a different term.

Last night I launched a spankin’ new version of Buzzbird’s homepage.  The old one was a pair of static pages that I threw together, with a handful of links to the github wikis and a free Wordpress hosted blog.  I decided that Buzzbird really deserved something better, so I went all out and made a new self-hosted Wordpress site for it.

The old site wasn’t “lively” enough; it looked dead and unloved.  You couldn’t tell if anyone had done anything with Buzzbird in the past few months.  So I’m hoping to blog more often (even if it’s just a few quick sentences) to keep breathing life into it.  The Twitter widget on the front page shows what people are saying about Buzzbird right now.  Hopefully it’s mostly positive – it’s an unfiltered live search. 

See you all on Twitter!

This is the version you take home to meet Mom and Dad.  This is the version you bring to the prom.  This is the version you keep a photo of in your wallet to show to your friends.

I finally got tired of going into online forums and reading stuff like this:

…and I decided it was high time I do something about it.  So this version is a bit prettier than the last.  You’ll find a few new goodies in the latest version:

• Support for “Official” Re-tweets.  You can choose whether you want to use Twitter’s new auto-retweet feature, or stick with the tried-and-true manual retweet.
• Fixed Issue #24 – Changing active user after follow/unfollow.
• Fixed Issue #23 (Maybe) – Occasional disappearing cursor in the post dialog (this is a XUL bug, but I found a workaround that might help).
• Fixed Issue #19 – Remove Friendship button from friendship dialog, which caused a recursive black-hole vortex that accidentally bended space-time.
• Fixed Issue #11 – The “@kermit does not follow @misspiggy” text was wrong on the friendship dialog.

Get it now at http://getbuzzbird.com!

A lot of people have been saying they’d like to see notifications in the next version.  I was planning on doing lists first, but perhaps notifications is a bigger need?

I’m also working on a new Buzzbird website that should be ready sometime this week.  Stay tuned!

Now that I have friendship/following dialogs out of the way, I feel like I can finally focus on more interesting features.  I have a pile of ideas I’ve been sitting on, but I felt like I had to get past this milestone first.

Here’s the list of all the new features:

• You can now follow/unfollow any user from within Buzzbird – you are no longer sent to Twitter’s web page to do it. A new per-user dialog was added to facilitate this.
• (OSX only) You can now assign Buzzbird to a specific Space, or to all Spaces (this one is for you, Troy).
• Threaded replies now work.
• Buzzbird can now put the number of unread messages, unread mentions, or unread DMs in the titlebar.
• You can now choose to put your friends’ “real names” in bold (instead of their handles) when rendering.
• Clicking a hashtag can bring you to either search.twitter.com or hashtags.org (used to be only hashtags.org, now it’s configurable)
• Fixed some bugs which would cause Tweets to not be rendered if URLs within the tweets contained special characters.
• Failure to post a tweet because of network issues will no longer cause the text of your tweet to be erased.
• Upgraded xulrunner to 1.9.1.4 (which gives Buzzbird parity w/ Firefox 3.5.4).

Coming up next, I plan on adding support for Lists and official Retweets, and maybe a few other goodies.  As with every other release I’ve done, I intend to have a lot less time between releases for the next go-round, but despite my best intentions, that never seems to happen.  Let’s hope this time it actually happens!

Make sure you visit the site to get the latest version:  http://getbuzzbird.com

The 0.5 release has taken a while, in part because there are so many changes in it.  In version 0.5, you’ll be able to view individual users and friend/unfriend them for all of your accounts right within Buzzbird (instead of jumping to their online profile).  Of course, you’ll still be able to visit online profiles straight from inside Buzzbird, too.

I’m on track for a release by the end of November.  I’ll keep you posted!

Hey all,

I just released version 0.4 of Buzzbird.  This is the first release that supports multiple twitter accounts!  Here’s the complete list of all the good stuff included in this release:

• Multiple Account support – Buzzbird now allows you to add an unlimited number of accounts in the Account Preferences pane.  You can choose the active account via a dropdown on the main screen.
• Profile info on hover – You can now get a quick summary of a person’s profile by hovering over their avatar.
• Sent via (client) – When hovering over an individual tweet, Buzzbird will now tell you which client was used to post that tweet, and clicking the client name will bring you to that client’s homepage.
• Repying to (link) – On replies, a link is now provided that brings you to the tweet that the person was replying to.  Note that this requires the other person’s twitter client to supply this information, so not all replies will show this link (most will).
• Hoverbuttons more contextual (don’t allow reply to self, don’t reply to a direct with a non-direct) – This one is for my friend @beadinpath, who accidentally replied to one of her friends instead of DM’ing them when responding to a DM.  Hovering over a tweet will now only permit relevant actions.
• Support for Delete Tweet – You can now delete your own tweets from within Buzzbird, no need to visit twitter.com.
• Alternate retweet format (via vs. RT) – You can now specify in the Preferences dialog whether you want your retweets to begin with “RT @handle”, or end with “(via @handle)”.
• Buzzbird will now properly post thread info to the API on replies.
• Updated xulrunner to version 1.9.0.11.
• Bug fix – After leaving Buzzbird running for a long time, switching between “Show Mentions” and “Show All Tweets” could take a LONG time, and the app would hang while it was redrawing.  This has been fixed.
• Bug fix – Scrolling jump on update – In the past, Buzzbird had an annoying tendency to “jump” if an update occurred while you were scrolling through old tweets.  This has been fixed.
• Bug fix – Insert text at caret instead of end of tweet entry area – In the past, if you shortened a link, Buzzbird would always put the shortened link at the end of the tweet.  Now it inserts it at the caret position.
• Bug fix – Stop using JS alert()s, use Mozilla dialog service instead – This is just a cosmetic change in how Buzzbird issues alert messages.
• Bug fix – Need to be able to put plus signs in our tweets.

Get it while it’s hot.  As usual, you can get version 0.4 at http://getbuzzbird.com/bb/download.html.

If you’re interested in contributing to Buzzbird, shoot me a line at @mdesjardins, and check out the github repo.

Enjoy!

It’s been a long time coming, but Buzzbird’s recent mention on the word on the tweet podcast finally kicked me in the butt (metaphorically) and got me coding again.

I’m not sure about the UI.  What I have now is temporary and hideous:

I’ll probably either a.) try to combine the username and filter into a single menu, or b.) make the user selection a button dropdown that changes the image to the avatar of the currently selected user.

OK, it’s been a long time since 0.3 came out, and I’m way behind the “Milestones” I outlined on the Wiki.  Unfortunately, I’ve taken on a second client at work (I even had a third for a while), so I haven’t had time to devote to Buzzbird – I’ve gotta do the stuff that pays the bills, after all!  In the past month I’ve also set up an LLC for my foray into contracting, and I’m trying to establish a web and twitter presence for that business.

So, to make long story short, I haven’t had time to work on Buzzbird lately, but I still plan on releasing a 0.4.  Stay tuned!

I’m starting to think the new logo isn’t much of a priority, which is pretty understandable.  However, I do have a half-finished preview, so I’m just going to release it as-is for now.  I’ve been sitting on this version for quite a while now, so it’s time I got it out there for people to see.

I’ve put the download link back, I’ll be writing up some release notes on the Wiki, then I’ll announce it on the Buzzbird twitter account.  Next, it’s time to rev up for version 0.4!