Shooting at Bubbles

In the Twitter desktop client space the two undisputed kings of the mountain at this time would have to be TweetDeck and Twhirl. However the days are numbered for Twhirl as its parent company Seesmic has just released a preview release of their new replacement Twitter client – Seesmic Desktop. As much as I may not like the idea of Twhirl going away I can understand Loic le Muir’s reasoning for this move.

I like Twhirl even if it is an AIR application and will be really sorry to see it fade into the sunset; but hey – that’s the nature of software. Now being a software junkie from way back I figured I’d check back and see what was happening in the new TweetDeck beta as well as checking out the Seesmic Desktop preview. My hope was that with at least TweetDeck it would have addressed my one big issue – the lack of user selectable fonts.

When it came to looking at Seesmic Desktop I kept in mind that this was a preview version (read that as meaning – it’s not ready for prime time by a long shot but it should keep you quiet for awhile and out name in the news). As such I didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what it would look like.

What I was looking for though was not so much what either of the applications got right – there’s enough people doing that – but rather what in my opinion they were doing wrong. With that all said here we go with:

TweetDeck

I really want to like TweetDeck because it has a lot of interesting ideas going for that other apps, including Seesmic Desktop, are blatantly copying. Once I grabbed the newest beta release and got it up and running I checked to see if my major peeve with the application had been dealt with

Font Settings

Nope.

There is still no option to select the font you want or a different size. One of the most important lessons I learned when I was developing was that if the application calls for it you always provide the option to select the type and size of font the user might want. Not to do this is just plain ridiculous – sorry but it is. It’s development 101 folks.

The one thing that I liked about Twhirl, and most of the .NET Twitter clients for Windows, was that it provided you with an option to select from a nice list of pre-defined color scheme. TweetDeck could do with the same option but I’ll get into the whole color thing in a minute.

Screen Resizing

As much as you might be able to resize the complete application you should also be able to resize each of the individual ‘decks’

Some might say this this is being way too picky but the point is that this is suppose to be an application for users to use the way they want not how the developer thinks they should. Granted not many might want this ability but I’d bet you dollars to donuts that if it is something I would have like to be able to do others have wanted the same.

One of the features that a lot of folks have liked about TweetDeck is the multi-deck display and when you start it up it by default displays three decks, All Friends, Replies and Direct Messages. However if you decide to run with just two and resize the application so that they fit nicely in the container you end up with this happening in the application title bar

The Tweets

Now when it comes to individual tweet messages these are some of the things that came to mind looking the program over

They break down like this:

1. I like to see easily without straining who it was that sent the tweet so it would be really nice if TweetDeck did similar as Twhirl and display the Screen Name of the author before the message, not at the bottom in an eye straining font size.

2. Being able to tell is this is a reply to me – which having the @ <username> at the beginning of the message signifies – in a simple quick glance would be easy if it was a different color than the rest of the message.

3. I’m not sure who thought that white; or some other light colored text, on a dark shade of gray was a really cool idea but after the first or second view it gets old real quick. Not to mention that in some cases it can be hard to read. It would be nice to see a little more of an interesting message display.

4. As with the reply link the posted shortened URLs should be a different color than the rest of the text for quick identification. As well if a different color is used then you would only need the underline to display when the mouse hovers over it.

5. It would also be nice to possibly see different color schemes for Direct Messages and Replies. This way it would make them easier to spot when they hit your timeline rather than having to double check to see if you have missed anything.

I like TweetDeck and think that it has a lot of promise but much of what I just said are reasons that hold me back from using it full time. Now on to:

Seesmic Desktop

The big caveat here is that this is still a very Alpha version of where they will probably be going with Seesmic Desktop so I imaging that a lot of the things that I and others liked about Twhirl will make their way into this program. In the meantime here’s a few things that I really think need to be addressed.

Fonts and Settings

The thing about Twhirl that was nice that it allowed you to select the type and size of the font you wanted to use. As well it had a wide selection of color schemes that you could select to use. With Seesmic Desktop the settings dialog is a little sparse

The Resizing thing

I don’t get it with these programs and why they think they all know exactly what size things should be. While the additional timeline windows in Seesmic Desktop resize as you resize the whole program they won’t let you resize them individually. On top of that the main timeline window besides the new taskbar won’t resize at all

The Taskbar (or whatever it is called)

As an interesting idea the Seesmic team have added an activity taskbar to this program that sits permanently open on the left side.

I like the idea but I also agree with the folks who have seen this and say that you need to be able to let us close it. I would also add we should be able to select which side we want it on – left or right.

Having been a developer of a Twitter Windows client in the early days of Twitter it is interesting to see where folks are going in this area. There is a lot of potential especially as we see a convergence of social media services which both TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop are well positioned to become the dominant players. I just wish that they would keep in mind that their users don’t use their applications the same way their developers do.

Interesting times ahead though for both applications and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do.