So last night I came to the realization that I didn't like *any* of the Twitter clients for Mac OS X, but instead of accepting the 'grin and bear it' mentality, I decided to write my own.
"What would an ideal Twitter client be for me", I wondered. I shortly realized that I already had one, on my iPhone! Twinkle is what I've been using for the past few months, and I absolutely love the minimal but pretty UI it had. If I was going to go ahead and make a desktop client, I wanted it to look similar to Twinkle.
An hour later, and I had this all up and running using Matt Gemmell's MGTwitterEngine:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKDNofJlCBL5N8IJsvy3DknYKBC0wTHDeleGty0lbzNr18S7Xt0Qdo5Uw0rExmSBchTm7hA-cce2TwnbcROVclOWq4RGlFTyQyF-PSRHFCJTU__5K08r3MzskoLnQjYI0ruGtgS0HH1Qc/s320/Picture+595.png)
Sure, not bad for a first start, but not yet what I wanted. I had decided to use the WebKit rendering engine for the app's UI, as it allowed really quick layout and design with maximum extensibility. But I soon knew I wanted more than the default WebKit gives, so I investigated the WebKit nightlies mainly for their gradient support.
Very soon, I had an app with an embedded nightly WebKit (after a big of install_name_tool hacking!), and extended the design until it looked like this:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-wvyqV-2lxGVlJ4NWlExY5OWyYTUBwCf7F0McM9cFYglQg5QwSr-is5rucnY2NqGJ73k8dyAHQ70bezuZ1G5BmeE5uI74cdg_xFge94nviKNRRy29AAai5ig7mk2C5KjC3_pMOFEo5A/s320/Picture+622.png)
As expected, links and usernames are clickable and will open up in Safari; using HTML, CSS and JavaScript I'm able to make some very nice effects and I use the WebScriptObject methods to allow my WebKit-rendered UI to interact fully with the application code, allowing the user to click on any tweet to start an @reply to said tweet.
What I have to sort out next is direct messaging, and image uploading support (uploading directly to TwitPic from the app).
Anyway, that's just a quick glimpse as to what I'm working on; I haven't decided whether I will release this or not yet, but I've had a significant number of requests, so I'll look into it. Until then, pretty pictures will have to do! =]
This is the best twitter client I have ever seen. Fantastic job Steven!!!
ReplyDeleteLooks great! If you include growl integration I'd totally use it.
ReplyDeleteSorry Steven but... what about STACK???
ReplyDeleteStack is on cydia :P
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDo Want!
ReplyDelete