buzzbird

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!

Version 0.3 should be ready soon.  Today I began tweaking the UI a bit, and changed the login page in anticipation of the new logo from Laurent.  Can’t wait to get it out there.    If you’re interested, here’s what the UI is looking like right now:

I’m trying to save some vertical space, and would like to shrink down or eliminate the status bar at the bottom.  I’m also doing this because I hope that version 0.4 will sport some tabs along the top, and the UI needed to be modified to support it.

I hope to have a new release by the end of this week, early next week at the latest.  I’m getting close to the rewrite of the back-end, after which I intend to add a few new features.  The next release will be version 0.3 and will feature a new default theme.  I’ll keep you posted right here!

I’ve started re-doing the main UI for Buzzbird… the iChat knock-off look that Buzzbird currently uses is pretty lame.  Here’s how it looks so far:  http://twitpic.com/3c0t4

I had planned on adding some underpinnings for theme support when I re-did the theme, but just getting this far has taken a lot longer than I had hoped.  Getting the @#$&! rounded corners to work along with the avatar and tweet text took me a while.  And the new theme still doesn’t color differently based on reply/direct/etc.

Right now, my priorities are as follows:

• Finish up with the new theme, get tweets to render in different colors based on tweet/reply/direct/etc.
• If there’s time, put some underpinnings for theme support in.
• Split up main.js into two files, one for back-end API stuff, which is embedded in the main XUL object, and one for the browser which is concerned only w/ rendering.  This will make way for support of multiple accounts and tabs

To summarize, Buzzbird isn’t dead yet.  I’ve gotten past sulking about the bad comments I saw in search.twitter.com.  I’m encouraged by the fact that someone forked it on github to add indenti.ca support.  I’ve gotten some positive feedback.  So I hope to have a new release put together within the next week or so.

I decided tonight, based on some feedback that I’ve received, that I probably released Buzzbird a bit before it was ready.  I thought that the “alpha” label on it was enough to let people know that it’s still a work-in-progress, but after careful consideration I’ve concluded that I should probably get it a lot closer to “feature complete” before releasing it to the public.

Releasing software is a funny thing, I guess.  The only other open source project that I had been involved with before this one was the Avant Window Navigator, for Linux.  In that case, there were lots of developers encouraging each other to make baby steps toward a great user experience.  In this case, I’m just one guy.  Making matters worse, because I started out with the same name as a Mac app, I’ve unwittingly attracted a lot of Mac users.  Unlike Linux users, Mac users are a lot more demanding of their apps to have achieved their Mac UI Zen (bear in mind, I say this as a Mac user myself).  Even though my app is very young, it’s getting a lot of bad press because those users are disappointed, once they’ve downlaoded it, that it’s far from complete.

So I’m pulling down the download link for a while, so I can polish it a bit more before trying again.  Hopefully I’ll have better luck the next time around.

I finally downloaded and installed Ubuntu 8.10 on my Macbook Pro under Parallels.  I did this so I could try buzzbird on Linux, and it worked quite well, requiring very few tweaks.  In fact, the only difference with the windows version is that the buttons in the statusbar don’t have an icon in the Linux version, as the default behavior for XULrunner is to draw the button outline on hover– thus, having the outline on the icon just looked weird.

Now I’m going to take a few days off to work on a few other things before tackling version 2beta.  I’m going to need to make some significant changes in the next release to support themes and multiple tabs.

Oh – one more thing, the forum on planetblur seems to be totally hosed.  Not sure what’s up with that.  But until now, no one has really used it anyway.