But it’s not all bad news: I have already begun “porting” Twaddle to Windows Phone 7. The good news is that both WP7 and Windows Mobile have .Net at their core and Twaddle was written in such a way to separate the UI from the logic. As such I’ve made good progress on porting Twaddle. Additionally, it’s the UI of Twaddle that was always pretty poor (in my opinion), and the new controls in WP7 have so far made the UI a breeze.

I don’t have any screenshots suitable for public consumption at the moment but shall post some shortly.

If you have any major issues with Twaddle for Windows Mobile, let me know, and I’ll see if I can release an update, but I won’t be actively updating it.

• TwitPic support – snap a photo with your phone’s camera or upload existing images
• Viewing retweets from people you follow
• Switched to using the new “Home Timeline” which includes proper retweet support
• A new “View Conversation” – shows a tree of tweets related to each other. Very useful for tracking long-running conversations
• Support for reporting users as spam, blocking and unblocking users
• The ability to completely disable screens you do not use – a great way to reduce clutter and lower memory usage

As per usual you can obtain this version in multiple ways;

• AppToDate users can check for updates through AppToDate and automatically install the newest version that way.
• By visiting http://get.twaddle.mobi on your Pocket PC’s browser
• Pocket PC installation – Run this file from your phone
• Desktop installation – Run this file from your Desktop. Twaddle will be installed next time you sync with that PC

Finally, if you have Microsoft Tag Reader (visit gettag.mobi on your phone’s browser) installed on your phone you can scan the tag below.

This is a major release so please report any problems you have to me via email (support@twaddle.mobi), via the comments section or on Twitter (@TwaddleWM).

Thanks for waiting!

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

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!

A couple of things have caused the delay of the latest version: Firstly my Real Job™ I was the Technical Lead on a very large project (since released successfully) which took up a lot of my time and motivation. I have also handed in my resignation and am currently looking for a new job. The upside of this is I’ll be taking a few weeks off before starting a new job. Time which I plan to devote to playing video games / coding Twaddle.

Secondly the announcement of Windows Phone 7, and what it means for developers of Windows Mobile apps, was a bit disheartening.

Thirdly: I’ve worked on a lot of the internals of Twaddle. This working means that third party developers will be able to write plugins for Twaddle. Don’t like the way it does notifications? Write your own! Want Twaddle to automatically hash tag things? Write a plugin! And so on, and so forth. This affects every aspect of Twaddle (The User Interface, background tasks, response to other events, etc) and required a fair amount of thought and tweaking. It also turned out to be a much bigger task than I’d initially anticipated. As to if any third party developers start writing plugins for Twaddle remains to be seen. But even if they don’t it will allow much quicker development of features for Twaddle, providing they fit within the existing model. I’ll release more technical details of this closer to the release date of 0.3 / if people are interested.

In the mean time, I apologise for the delay, but hope the delay will result in something everyone is really excited by.

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 !

A partial list of features, to whet your appetite, include;

• A revamped interface
• Viewing mentions
• Sending, receiving and viewing direct messages
• Speed improvements
• Better UTF8 support

First off, I recently moved house which took a fair amount of time and effort to get packed / unpacked and have DSL connected at my new place. In addition to this I’ve had a few Uni assignments which took away even more time. In amongst all this my computer chair broke… I’ve purchased a new chair which won’t arrive for another 4 – 8 weeks. The dining chair I’m using in the mean time places a lot of strain on my back meaning I can only code for short periods of time.

Secondly, I’ve put a lot of work into making Twaddle a lot faster. On my HTC Touch Pro rotating the screen redraws virtually straight away and Twaddle continues to be responsive throughout the whole process. A vastly improved algorithm for laying out tweets (50 tweets get laid out in ~150ms on my phone) as well as moving non-visible layouts to a background process ensures Twaddle remains responsive throughout rotations. I’m still working on improving the speed of performing updates.

Long story short: 0.2 won’t be released as soon as I’d hoped as I’m putting a lot of work into it to ensure it far eclipses previous versions of Twaddle.

• Fixed problems sending Tweets with non-ASCII characters
• Fixed uninstall issues
• Fixed resending tweets
• Handle Twitter.com failures better

You can obtain this version in multiple ways;

• AppToDate users can check for updates through AppToDate and automatically install the newest version that way.
• By visiting http://get.twaddle.mobi on your Pocket PC’s browser
• Pocket PC installation – Run this file from your phone
• Desktop installation – Run this file from your Desktop. Twaddle will be installed next time you sync with that PC

Finally, if you have Microsoft Tag Reader (visit gettag.mobi on your phone’s browser) installed on your phone you can scan the tag below.