Nicholas Pike

Now that project #1 is out the door, and pending Apple review… it is time to start planning and working on the more important project:  Porting MobileTwitter to the AppStore.

Laid some foundation work this afternoon, will definitely need to revisit the icons used in MobileTwitter 1.5 (as they look like crap, and I need someone to make me new ones)

Updates in MobileTwitter 1.5

• The Update View has been redesigned and moved. It is no longer on the button bar at the bottom of the screen, but exists on the top right corner of every view. Clicking the “Update” button will slide the update view down over your current view. No more mis-clicking on buttons while going for the spacebar.
• Settings view reorganized, with new options
• Enable/Disable secure connections. This was enabled by default under the hood, but some users are experiencing connection problems, disabling secure connections may help.
• MobileTwitter now automatically checks for new @replies and direct messages, displaying the new number on the button bar for Messages. The “Messages” view has been updated to show this count, and also include the “>” arrow for each menu option. Any new @replies will show up with a blue sphere beside them (similar to MobileMail.app and new messages)
• New menu option when tapping tweets: View user’s tweets. This loads the users 20 most recent tweets.
• New springboard icon.
• Black UI
• Manual “Reload” button on each tab
• Smaller font for tweets seems to help with fitting all the text in one box hopefully no more trailing “…”s on tweet texts.
• Manually reloading a view will now make sure the view scrolls to the top
• Public Timeline renamed to “Everyone” in accordance with Twitter.com changes
• Many under the hood core changes.

MobileTwitter 1.5 is available on my private repository, and soon to be updates on STE’s community repository.  If you can’t wait, it is also available for manual install.

MobileTwitter

Managed to get some quality sit down time with the iPod Touch and my Macbook this evening… MobileTwitter 1.5 is coming along rather nicely.

Played with the UI a little bit as well, below are screenshots of MobileTwitter 1.5 in black – what do you think?

• *MobileTwitter will automatically check for new Replies when opened. The button bar will display the number of new replies waiting for you to view.
• Replies and Direct Messages Views now highlight unread/new messages.
• Tapping a tweet will now also give you the option to view the authors recent tweets.

MobileTwitter 1.5 is still a ways off, but I might release a beta version to my private repository for public testing.

* Automatically checking for Replies and Direct Messages at startup is costly. Twitter only allows 70 API requests to be made per 60 minute period.  Checking for both Replies and Direct Messages, as well as pulling your timeline will use up three requests every time you open the application.  To ease the burden on the API I am only checking Replies at the moment.

- [Core] Integrate with TwitPic.com (npike) – resolved.
- [UI] Hide UIProgressHud when switching to UpdateView (npike) – resolved.

The TwitPic integration isn’t really very useful to the iPod Touch owners (myself included), but should be rather fun for iPhone users. I have not tested this code on a 1.1.3/1.1.4 iPhone so picture uploading may not work.

If you have a 1.1.3/1.1.4 iPhone and can test this, it would be much appreciated.

Just a sneak peak at the latest feature to MobileTwitter… update coming soon once I can get some testing and tuning done.

• Messages view now lets you view Replies and Direct Messages.
• Keyboard and Send button swapped on the UpdateView.
• All Twitter requests should be made over HTTPS now.

MobileTwitter has been “released” to the public for a few days now – I’ve had to release two major fixes, and two minor fixes (1.1, 1.2 – 1.21, 1.22).

I would like to thank everyone for the feedback I have received so far, the coming week will be very busy for me so the next major version (1.5) of MobileTwitter may be a few days off.

I anticipate one or two more minor releases until then (one coming soon to move the Send button and keyboard on the Update View).

What can you look forward to for MobileTwitter 1.5?

Features to come…

• TwitPic.com integration
• Manual refresh
• Offline storage of recent tweets
• Replies view
• Staring/Favoring Tweets
• Better Chinese character support..
• Bug fixes for tweets that don’t fit in their box..
• Landscape mode for Update view

Bolded features are things that are priorities for me – and the other “primary” user of this application.  Italicized features are features that I will work on, but am not sure will make it for this version.