N900 tips & tricks: Updated Witter Twitter client has better UI elements
Lately I have been bouncing between the Nokia N900 and Google Nexus One. The Nexus One is one of the slickest Google Android devices available and the application support is outstanding. After using it now for almost two weeks I am indeed finding that I am experiencing the 3G/EDGE poor connectivity issues where the device jumps between these two wireless data connections and at times even drops the connection all together. The Nokia N900 on the other hand has outstanding 3G connectivity and is a very solid performer. There are a few applications I want to see on the N900 and as I have talked about before Twitter is important to me. Back in December, I found out about Witter and while it is much more functional than Mauku, there were some parts of the application that were lacking in user interface elements. BTW, Witter has been developed by Daniel Would as a project to see what he could do with Maemo.
I was chatting back and forth with him on Twitter the other day and mentioned that I really disliked the tap and hold functionality and pop-up menu on Witter. The pop-up menu had four lines that required your fingernail or stylus to tap on accurately and then you had to tap one or two more times to make an action occur. I mentioned some things I liked about apps like Gravity on Symbian and how I thought double tap was a better way to open an action menu. I was thus very pleased to see what Daniel was able to do with Witter with this latest update where a double tap now opens up a slick pop-up at the bottom of the screen with options for reply, retweet, direct message, follow, unfollow, open URL, and dismiss. Each button is large enough to be tapped with your finger tip and not just your finger nail. To close the pop-up you simply tap dismiss. IMHO, this UI update makes Witter a much more attractive and functional application on my N900 and it looks like I will go back to using the N900 as my primary device.
My next suggestions for Witter are to have a way to show more Tweets in the timeline and add capability for multiple Twitter accounts. I go some days without using Twitter so when I jump back in I sometimes like to read through a ton of Tweets and there is some limit on how many appear in Witter. There is no way to set a number in the preferences or to dynamically request more. I have seen this number implemented in a couple of ways and I personally prefer the option where you scroll down to the bottom and then have the option to “load more” which results in another 40 or 50 loading up on the device. This way I don’t always have 100 Tweets loading up (if this was a setting in the preferences) if I don’t necessarily need 100 Tweets.
I have my main Twitter account, but also have the Nokia Experts Twitter account to manage and would really like the ability to manage and use both accounts on the N900. I can do this now with Witter for my Palmsolo account while using the web browser for managing the Nokia Experts account, but it sure would be nice to use a native application for both.
The next application I want to see is Foursquare and I understand someone is working on an application for that on Maemo as well.
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