Twaddle » Screenshot

First screenshots of Twaddle / WP7

MrMDavidson — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:53:29 +0000

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago I have discontinued Twaddle for Windows Mobile in favour of working on Twaddle for Windows Phone 7. Without further ado, I present a series of screenshots of the new Twaddle;

My home timeline – this is the main screen of Twaddle. You can see the pivot control being used which allows the user to swipe to see mentions, messages, etc

Send tweet – Here you’ll see the character count indicator. This will show once you’re near the Twitter length limit. It’s a similar experience to the SMS screen.

Attaching pictures – here you can launch the picture chooser (and preview the result). This allows you to upload a picture from your library or snap a new one

Replying to a tweet – When you’re replying to a tweet you’ll see the original tweet in the update screen. I find this useful as you don’t have to remember exactly what the other person said

Settings screen – Or at least, part of it. I think you can all guess what this screen does. Enable/disable push notifications of different types, as well as Live Tile updates. These features are still being tweaked, but work fairly well for now

TwitPic integration

MrMDavidson — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 05:24:49 +0000

A few weekends back I finished implementing OAuth Echo support in Twaddle. This is the new, secure, way for you to use a third party site which communicates with Twitter for you. The classic example of this is photo sharing services such as TwitPic. Previously such services requires you to send them your username / password which isn’t a good idea. Using OAuth Echo you send them an opaque bit of data that uniquely (and securely) identifies the request as coming from you – the third party site then “echos” this data to Twitter to use for authentication.

OAuth Echo support – in conjunction with the new extensible architecture of Twaddle – means that over the course of a few hours I was able to provide TwitPic support within Twaddle. This support allows you to take a new picture with your phone’s camera (for devices with cameras) or to use an existing photo, both with preview support.

Image Upload – Take a new photo or upload a file

Image Upload – Selecting an image

Image Upload – Preview the image

Goodbye PINs, Hello XAuth!

MrMDavidson — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:51:49 +0000

Yesterday the Twitter API team granted Twaddle access to the (newish) XAuth interface. What does that mean? Well it means that one of the biggest criticisms of Twaddle is gone. You’ll recall in previous versions to set up a new account you had to hit “Start” which would launch your browser. You’d then login to the Twitter website which would give you a 7 digit number. That number would need to be remembered and entered back into Twaddle. This process, which is relatively painless on a desktop or web application, was incredibly frustrating on a mobile device. XAuth is designed specifically to address this issue. I think the following screen shots of the new account setup process explain better than I could…

Beginning the XAuth process

Finalising the XAuth process

“But isn’t this going back to username / password combinations which is insecure?” you may ask. Well, no, not really. The username / password combination is sent over a secure channel only once (at the time you fill out this form). Twitter verifies this and then sends back a token which is used for all subsequent requests. This is in fact identical to the OAuth process used in earlier versions the difference is how that token is acquired.

All you really need to know is that signing up with Twaddle is now pain free! Hooray!

Another milestone (2000 users!) and another teaser

MrMDavidson — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:55:16 +0000

So today I just checked the statistics for Twaddle and there are over 2000 users who have allowed Twaddle to communicate with the Twitter servers. Whilst I’d love for this number to be 10,000 and for each of those users to be paying me a fiver, I’m still rather happy with these figures. In order to celebrate this nice little milestone I thought I’d present you with a recent feature I implemented as part of the 0.3 release: Threaded Conversations.

0.3 Preview – Threaded Conversations

Here we can see a conversation I held between my personal account and the @TwaddleWM account. You may notice a very subtle tree structure of the list – this is to indicate the hierarchy of the conversation. This view only works when statuses are properly tagged as replies to another status (which Twaddle and the Twitter website do, but some clients seem to do less reliably). I’m so far finding this feature really useful to manage long running conversations throughout the day (and you can sometimes find some great new people to follow as a result!). This interface can be brought up from any of the other views within Twaddle and allows you to interact with the tweets just like they were in your normal timeline. Expect the interface and how this is rendered to change before the final 0.3 release – this is after all just a preview! If you have any suggestions on improving the layout, I’d love to hear them.

Also, don’t forget to take part in the poll on the right hand side – it’s a great way for you to voice your views on what feature you desperately want included in 0.3 !

200 Users!

MrMDavidson — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:01:37 +0000

Earlier today Twaddle Twaddle ticked over to 200 users. Not too shabby at all. Considering that I’ve had some things going on in my personal life that have prevented me from working on, or evangelising, Twaddle as much as I’d like.

In the same spirit as the 100 user milestone I present a screenshot previewing 0.2.

0.2 Preview – Received Direct Messages

As I anticipated in the previous post I’ve moved the icon bar to the bottom of the application. I find this is much more finger friendly as you can navigate without obscuring the screen. Additionally you can see the list of Direct Messages my test account has received (as well as the icon of the sender and your icon as an overlay).

Someone commented in my previous post about the icons used in Twaddle: Yes, they suck. I’m not developer not an artist. If anyone is interested in providing icons / colour advice, please get in contact with me. I’d love to hear from you.

100 Users!

MrMDavidson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:47:20 +0000

In the last 8 hours the 100th user allowed Twaddle to communicate with Twitter on their behalf. It’s good to see people are finding Twaddle useful.

As my gift on this milestone I present… a screenshot from the 0.2 version of Twaddle.

0.2 Preview – New navigation and @Replies

In this screenshot we can see two new features of 0.2: First of all is the new navigation control. This is a bar of icons displayed along the top of the screen in the same vein as Microsoft’s Facebook application. I’m thinking I’ll move it to the bottom of the screen so there’s less distance for your finger to travel to get to it. Additionally the graphics used here are placeholder images – if anyone wants to volunteer to provide design services for Twaddle I’d love to hear from you. When you change which section of Twaddle you view you’ll get a textual overlay to indicate what you’re now viewing – in this screenshot I’m viewing my @Replies. The second feature, you may have picked up on, is the @Replies. In this view you can see several tweets people have targeted at me (I do apologise to those who are pictured)

Anyway, if you have any feedback, suggestions, criticisms or problems, please let me know and I’ll do my best to address your issues.

First public screenshots

MrMDavidson — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:37:40 +0000

Yesterday I promised that screenshots and a build would be posted shortly. Well, in order to fulfil that I present a series of images! I’ve tried to get a selection of images which demonstrate various features of Twaddle. As I’ve tried to make sure that no one on my friends list has their privacy violated some features do not show up very well. This not only covers your friends, but anyone that they post an @reply to as well.

Your Tweets (Portrait)

The author’s current Tweets. Unfortunately all my test tweets tend to be fairly short so you cannot see that the individual items will flow and use up as much room as they require. Additionally my test user has the default avatar

Your Tweets (Landscape)

This is the same view as above but in landscape orientation. Twaddle will automatically reflow items when the orientation changes. It should also work across a variety of resolutions (I use a HTC Touch Pro which is higher DPI / resolution device)

Location Support

The focus of this screenshot is the context menu and the selected tweet. You’ll note the selected tweet ends with the text L:-33…,151…. Twaddle has recognised that as a set of GPS co-ordinates and the context menu includes a “View Location” item which will launch your default browser and show the location in Google Maps

Geo Tagging

There’s a couple of features to take in here. First of all, we’re getting a glimpse of the reply functionality of Twaddle. It’s automatically inserted the nick of the user we’re talking to and it shows the user’s avatar as well as the tweet we’re replying to. Secondly you can see that I’ve brought up the option to GeoTag this post. Currently GeoTagging is implemented by looking up your current mobile (cell) tower’s information in Google’s database. This means that GeoTagging will work on devices without a GPS chip. It is however less accurate. Future versions will likely provide the option to use GPS instead of Google

SIP Support

I think this screenshot flows on nicely from the previous shot – it’s the reply / post interface but this time showing the Software Input Panel (for devices without hardware keyboards). Compared to the previous image you can see that the text of the item we’re replying to flows differently. Additionally the entire interface has resized to accommodate the SIP. One final thing is the indicator for the number of characters you have left in your tweet

Short URL (Is.Gd) support

Still in the reply / post dialog this time showing the short URL integration. This is provided through is.gd and comes in two flavours: First, you can select text in this view and replace it with a short URL. Secondly you can copy a URL from elsewhere and when pasting the URL you can have it automatically replaced with a short URL.

Popup Notifications

Finally away from the post / reply interface. This time into the popup notifications provided by Twaddle. When a new tweet is received by Twaddle it will optionally perform popup notifications which provide an interface for replying and retweeting. I find this is really handy when I’ve been busy as a nice way to quickly catch up on what my friends have been doing.

That’s all the screenshots for now. There’s a lot more beneath the surface, but going over some of it becomes tedious. Additionally some features can’t be shown in screenshots (like finger scrolling through tweets).