Twitterfall

Firstly. We are Mac and Linux users here at Twitterfall. We don't use Windows.

That's why over 100 SVN revisions ago, when we broke IE7, we had no idea.

But it's fixed now, the text doesn't blink on and off while scrolling happens. The disadvantage is that the time has had to move to the top of the tweet. Sorry, but it makes Internet Explorer 7 happy. We also tidied up the new tweet boxes so they look half decent in IE7, as a result the buttons aren't looking quite right, but we'll work on that at some point. But please, everyone, use Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera. Please!

There's also a few code optimisations. Updates aren't frantically added to the page when they are received, but are more calmly queued and added in a chunk. We're hoping to optimise this a bit further, as it's what's causing a fair bit of slowdown. Also we've really had a go at optimising the timeline hovering, so hopefully you'll find that quite a bit smoother (it's VERY slick in Safari/Webkit...).

We're launching a bunch of new features today here at Twitterfall. We're really excited about them, and think you will be too. We'd love to hear your feedback, particularly if you find any bugs, because a lot of what is being added today is quite hefty code-wise, and we can't test every browser/OS/use-case, so please let us know and we'll be sure to fix bugs very quickly!

The first feature, is custom colours. This has been requested a lot, and we're overjoyed to give it to you.

Simply click on the little colour box next to the search, and you can pick a colour you want tweets from that search to be displayed as. This is even saved in your settings so next time you come to the page, the right colours will be selected for you! The colour picker is quite Javascript intensive, but we're happy with it. If you have any problems with it (find it too laggy or whatever) let us know, and if we get enough mentions of problems we'll look into an alternative.

Special Trends

Thanks to some intensive work on the Twitterfall backend from Jalada, we now have the ability to add and remove our own 'Trends' and remove them again at will. This means that if there is some event going on that doesn't quite have the right trend (e.g. when Gmail goes down, but 'Google' is a trend and everyone is linking to twitterfall.com/Gmail) we can add it in ourselves to make sure people are using the awesome push technology we have implemented for popular trends rather than hitting Twitter Search. Also, if we know some conference is going to mention Twitterfall, we can be sure to give them a special trend of their own ;-)

Coupled with 'Special Trends', now, when a trend is no longer popular, Twitterfall will automatically add it for you as a custom trend, so you don't have to worry about adding it yourself. People were getting a bit annoyed with what happened when trends were no longer popular (it came up with a message telling you to choose another one), and we agreed; it wasn't ideal. So we're really pleased to bring this to you.

Timestamps

Next, a request particularly from @bensmithuk, who uses Twitterfall to monitor feedback about his UK Trains service. Custom searches, your timeline, and your direct messages now show the time since they were sent when you hover over them, so you get a much better idea of time when viewing less popular custom searches, or if you leave your computer and come back.

By popular demand, even though we don't know what it is (!) we're support MobyPicture when you hover over a mobypicture link:

Plus, hovering over an image now gives a little throbber, and any bugs of displaying the wrong images have been quashed.

We've still got LOTS more features to work on, which we will be busy doing. We're also working on improving the Twitter interaction so that it's quicker, smoother, and gives you better error messages (the PHP doing it at the moment is getting a bit sluggish).

Finally, the bug fixes (what I can remember anyway):

• Saving settings now works in Internet Explorer. We had problems because we were shifting people to the simple stylesheet, and in doing so it was losing people's settings. We've had to stop shifting people to the simple stylesheet, but we'll work on putting that back in soon (because IE can't cope with anything).
• The search box is limited to 140 characters now, as per Twitter Search API restrictions.
• Fixed some issues with IE and buttons, you can login and reply etc. now without it reopening the page.
• The hashmarksthespot images aren't accidentally persistent any more, they disappear properly!
• Removed the Reddit button, it was causing too much slowdown
• Switch the Digg link to the Telegraph article.
• Actually added a link to this blog!

I think that's just about everything. As always please @jalada or @x5315 with any feedback. And thanks for using Twitterfall!

We've recently launched some new features at Twitterfall to improve the usability and improve understanding of how some of the features work. We've already had positive feedback about the more obvious ones, but we thought we'd outline some of the more hidden features that are improving how you use Twitterfall.

The first thing you may notice is that searches and trends now have checkboxes next to them. This is purely aesthetic; it makes it easier to see what you are viewing, and what you aren't. A little hash also appears next to the checkbox if the trend is a hashtag. Clicking this hash will take you to the corresponding information on Hash Marks the Spot, a directory containing information about popular hashtags in an attempt to explain the more confusing ones.

See that 'sticky' link? That creates a 'new Tweet' box that doesn't close when you send a tweet. This was requested particularly by people who participate in #journchat who want to be able to quickly tweet something new without waiting for the 'new Tweet' box to slide open.

That's pretty much the only obvious visual changes/features. But in the background there are two major new features:

Twitterfall now uses browser cookies to retain your settings. This means that the settings above, and also your selections of trends and searches, are saved so that next time you visit Twitterfall you don't have to set everything up again. This was a massive request, and we're thrilled to be able to deliver this to you. At the moment, your Twitter credentials are not saved (because we are waiting for OAuth to become public), your timeline/dm intervals are not saved (we're working on this), and which panels you have open/hidden are not saved (we're pondering this too).

Finally, Twitterfall now checks for duplicate tweets in custom searches in the background. So if you're searching for "Twitterfall" in one search, and "Awesome" in another, you wont get two tweets in the 'fall when someone says "Twitterfall is Awesome!". However, you will still see duplicates if a custom search tweet overlaps with your timeline, because we think it's important to see what tweets are from people you follow, versus tweets from everyone. And it doesn't check for duplicates between popular trends and your custom searches (we may look in to doing this if it bothers people enough).

Hope you like the new features, be sure to let @jalada or @x5315 know what you think, or if you have any more suggestions for features and improvements!