In January, I posted a list of complaints I had about desktop Twitter clients, and how they stacked up against mobile clients and the official Twitter website. Several months ago, Twitter user MrBretticus reminded me of that post, and I figured it would be fun to check up on some of the popular clients and see how they’re doing now. I started writing this post then, and ended up forgetting about it. I’ve dusted it off to start the new year, though, so here’s where we are today.
Blu
Wow. Despite having a new version available, Blu really hasn’t changed at all. It still only has four settings (none of which are an SSL toggle), doesn’t let you customize/disable toast notifications, has annoying UI animations, and refreshing bumps the tweets in the timeline making you scroll around to find where you left off. Yep, still crap.
All four of Blu's settings
Seesmic Desktop 2
Basically, SD2 has the same issues as Blu. Not enough settings, screws with your timeline position if you’re scrolled to the top, no in-app media previews, and doesn’t know where you left off when you relaunch the program.
MetroTwit
There have been a few improvements since I last used MetroTwit. The client has always had a wide selection of settings, but now there are options for forcing the use of SSL, disabling Toast notifications, and even allowing you to choose which services to shorten URLs and expand them with. Nice! However, there are still two concerns I have with the program: The unread count is annoying, there still isn’t an in-line image preview, and the UI is noticeably slower to respond (not to mention that going in to Settings, changing something, and then saving results in your columns blanking, forcing you to restart the program to see any older tweets). Happily, clicking on a link to a service like yfrog, twitpic, or most other image/media hosting services (including YouTube) now results in a small in-app popup with a preview of the media!
MetroTwit now also remembers your timeline position after you close the program (sort of)! When you reopen MetroTwit, it will automagically refresh and marks the last read tweet from your previous session with a mark line on the tweet itself and on the scrollbar. Given, it still starts you at the top of the timeline, but this makes it very easy to scroll down and start reading where you left off. You can also toggle a setting that allows the timeline to stay where it is when MetroTwit refreshes.
A fair word of warning, though – MetroTwit does include an ad. Yes, just one. By default, it sits at the top of your Direct Message column and is very subtle. I rarely notice it, but even when I do, I find the ads to be nothing objectionable. If you want to remove them, you can pay a one-time fee of (currently) $16.11CAD ($14.95AUD).
With all of the improvements that have been made, and with the release of New New Twitter, I’ve officially switched the MetroTwit as my full-time Twitter client. It really is that good.
Comments (0)