Since fixing the Twitpocalypse bug in DestroyTwitter 1.6.4 Beta, a new problem has arisen regarding notifications—they aren’t showing up. This is only for some people, so it might not be happening to you. If it is, you can correct the issue with a simple text editor. Go into the Documents/DestroyToday/DestroyTwitter folder. Inside that is a folder with your username. Inside that is a notifications.xml file. Open it, and change all the values to zero (0). If you have the issue, some values, if not all, will be NaN. Save the file and open DestroyTwitter. Here’s what the final file should look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mostRecent>
	<home>0</home>
	<replies>0</replies>
	<messages>0</messages>
	<groups>0</groups>
	<search>0</search>
</mostRecent>

I put in a request for Twitter API whitelisting last night and was greeted with this email today. There are a few ideas/features I need to test heavily and 20,000 API calls/hour should suffice. Mr. Tweet pointed me to a new set of Twitter API methods that are still alpha, but certainly show a lot of promise. I’m thinking there will be a DestroyTwitter update sometime this week. It all depends on whether I can get this one major feature finished in time. I’m keeping this one close to the chest, but it’s a goody. Stay tuned.

There’s just a small update to DestroyTwitter today. A number of issues needed be sorted out sooner than later, so here we go. Before I get to the fixes, I added yFrog and TinyURL support. I had the extra space for another URL shortener and TinyURL keeps it oldschool. I’m also introducing a new feature called Restore, which inserts a tweet that was lost via close or escape into the Compose panel. There’s also now a Clear button in the Compose panel as well. I fixed the “=” URL linking issue and “http://http://” issue with Digg and migre.me URL shorteners. I also fixed the “newer” paging issue and the dismissal of Exclude keywords. That’s honestly all of it, so go out and get to updating. And if you like using DestroyTwitter as much as I like developing it, please donate and show the love.

I decided to squeeze in this last update before leaving for Aruba. It fixes the four bugs found in 1.6.1. Those bugs include the infamous “Older” bug, links including “?” and “:” (MobyPicture), Flickr URLs with hyphenated usernames, and the URL Preview appearance. I’ve also added a last minute feature, migre.me support. Enjoy it, amigos!

Download the update here.

I’ll be graduating in about 5 hours, but I’m taking this time to release the most recent build of DestroyTwitter. My family and I have “five tickets to paradise—pack your bags, we’re leaving” the day after tomorrow! Anyone who watches The Office will understand that one. We’re heading to Aruba, which means no technology allowed. I’m excited, to say the least, because I haven’t had this sort of break in a long while and the timing couldn’t be better. DestroyTwitter 1.6.1 Beta fixes many, many, many bugs caused by the last release. At the same time, it includes a handful of new updates.

One of the biggest improvements this time around is the new Groups UI. I really wasn’t happy with what I had designed before. It wasn’t as thought out as the rest of the app, so it needed to change. This new UI splits the panel in two to make room for keywords. The lists of both the users and keywords have scrollbars, so readability now stands a chance.

I’ve also added the much requested hotkeys to Groups. To open the Select Group panel, use command+G (Mac) and control+G (PC). To open the Edit Group panel, use command+shift+G (Mac) and control+shift+G (PC). While editing a group, shift+U prompts the Quick Friend Lookup to add friends and shift+K opens the keyword prompt to add keywords. Since the previous release, I changed the “G” hotkey, which adds the user of the selected tweet, to shift+G. There’s currently an AIR bug with OS X that triggers the “G” key when command+tab is used.

Regarding scrollbars, the Quick Friend Lookup is now equipped with one. Selecting friends couldn’t be easier. This also helps Groups because you can simply arrow down the list of all users and hit enter on the ones you want.

I love in-app image viewing in DestroyTwitter. I love it so much that it’s now extended to Flickr, TweetPhoto, MobyPicture, yFrog, img.ly, and Radar. As more and more services allow grabbing photos through their API, I’ll be sure to add them all.

While we’re talking about Services, I added the Digg URL shortener as well as TweetPhoto and img.ly.

This last feature is a favorite of mine. Whenever you have the URL of a Flickr photo in the clipboard, DestroyTwitter will automatically shorten it to Flickr’s flic.kr address. This gives everyone so much more room to work with and hopefully encourages the use of Flickr—one of my favorite websites.

Finally, onto the list of fixes and B-list features. Many Groups bugs were fixed, including the ones preventing more than 20 users and randomly adding the user to the group. I fixed the reply action in the Notification window for direct messages as well as the inability to save your own tweets. A few new hotkeys have been added, including command+[ (Mac) and control+[ (PC) for older, command+] (Mac) and control+] (PC) for newer, and command+shift+] (Mac) and control+shift+] (PC) for most recent. The CPU usage in DestroyTwitter is greatly improved, now using 4 levels of speeds to optimize responsiveness while in the foreground and soundly sit idle while in the background. The “event:url=” copy to clipboard bug has been fixed and link highlighting has been improved. Lastly, words prefixed with “$” link to Stocktwits.com.

That’s all there is. I’m off to graduate, but if you want to contribute and help me pay off my tuition bills, feel free to donate. Every penny is much appreciated.

Today is finally here and I couldn’t be more relieved. DestroyTwitter 1.6 Beta is complete and available to download. It’s been weeks in the making and through nonstop testing for the past few days. The most requested feature of DestroyTwitter’s lifetime is here, Groups.

Groups joins the workspace aside Search and Saved. It runs off the Home canvas, so any tweet retrieved by Home is inserted in the Groups database. Because of this, Groups can be paged through instantly without using any API calls. Clicking the “Groups” header or plus sign next to it prompts the Select Group panel. Clicking the group name prompts the Edit Group panel.

The Select Group panel is initially empty with the option to create a new group. Clicking “create new” starts a new group and prompts the Edit Group panel.

Here you can rename the group and add/delete users. All group editing occurs in realtime. This means anytime you add or delete a user, the canvas refreshes to show the change.

Instead of entering usernames by hand, you can add a user to the current group by pressing the G key with a tweet selected.

To make way for the Groups canvas, I condensed the Messages and Sent canvas into one, single-stream canvas. This saves both memory and API calls.

Rules have been greatly improved to allow combining Include or Exclude with Links. Keywords have also been added to allow any word or phrase to be either included or excluded. This works for literal words and phrases as well as regular expressions.

Finally, multiple image services are now available in the Preferences canvas. Because TwitPic can be unstable at times, Twitgoo, Posterous and Mobypicture can be used instead.

This release brings many new features along with a handful of bug fixes. I hope everyone enjoys it. I’ve had a great time developing DestroyTwitter and it’ll be nice to sit back for a while. I’m graduating in two weeks, so until then I will be hard at work, finishing up my time at MICA. If you love DestroyTwitter as much as I love making it, feel free to donate. It will certainly help pay the tuition bills.

Today marks the launch of DestroyTwitter 1.5.3 Beta. The previous release was rushed as a result of Twitter changing their API without notifying anyone. Because of that rush, the release wasn’t tested thoroughly and contained a few bugs. This update fixes a lot of those issues and adds a handful of new features. Be sure to take a look through the changelog to see a list of fixes.

In 1.5.2, I introduced a custom window chrome. Since then, I’ve added a drop shadow to the window and made the chrome a preference. It’s disabled by default, so if you liked it from before, be sure to enable it.

Two new features that I’ll be using a lot relate closely to links. Because I needed to create a custom protocol for links without http, right-click-copying resulted in a url prepended with “url=”. To avoid this and make copying a link twice as fast, shift-clicking any link will automatically copy it to the clipboard. Along with that is a feature I’ve been meaning to introduce for quite a while. Alt-clicking (PC) or Option-clicking (Mac) previews a URL before opening it in the default browser. This is especially handy for shortened URLs.

In 1.5.2, I transitioned from is.gd to tr.im. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, tr.im decided not to work, rendering in-app URL shortening useless. As a result, I add a preference to choose between tr.im, bit.ly and is.gd in case one fails.

That’s about it. There is a long list of fixes, so be sure to check them all out. And, as always, if you love using DestroyTwitter as much as I love developing it, feel free to donate.

Exactly one week after launching DestroyTwitter.com alongside DestroyTwitter’s ability to install custom themes, the theme count has surpassed 200. I couldn’t be happier with the response to this new feature. The themes being designed are awesome. Some of them make me have second thoughts about using the Destroy Today theme! If you haven’t checked out the site yet, get over there right now. It’s filled with downloads, news, and, of course, themes! Also, take check out the full-size theme collage.

Today, I’m finally announcing the latest major release to DestroyTwitter along with its dedicated website. It’s true, both went public two days ago, so I guess this is considered a belated announcement. DestroyTwitter 1.5 got off to a rocky start due to a happy trigger finger, so we’re already at 1.5.1 now. I made an update to the Regex code that highlights URLs, but forgot to change a $1 to $2. This simple typo on my part added an extra “http” to URLs and caused all sorts of havoc. The really bad part was my decision to launch it right before I went to sleep. I woke up with 100+ bug reports in my inbox and just as many Twitter replies. Now that it’s all sorted out, let’s go over what’s new.

The biggest feature in 1.5 is the introduction of Themes. At first, I felt reluctant to integrate color configuration. Then, I thought about it for a while and in order for me to include it, I’d want to make it more than just customizing the app on the users computer and keeping it at that. To keep memory usage low, I didn’t want the configuration to be inside the app, so I made a Theme Builder. Next, I thought about the importance of sharing these themes, so I created my own filetype, .dtwt. It’s an extension of XML and can be double-clicked to install the theme. There’s a repository of user-designed themes on the DestroyTwitter website and the list of installed themes can be found in the Preferences canvas.

This next feature came really late in development of 1.5. I’m a big Twitpic user. It’s perfect for sharing screenshots, especially with DestroyTwitter’s ability to upload via drag and drop. The problem I had with Twitpic, though, is that it’s a website. I like how DestroyTwitter is a standalone application because it’s small and lightweight—a browser window is not. On top of that, opening an entirely new browser window for a single lo-res photo?—no thanks. With that being said, I decided to build a Twitpic viewer into DestroyTwitter. It scales itself to the window whether you’re using a single canvas or wider workspace.

The remaining features and fixes are a long list of little things. Each one has great importance, but not enough to justify a screenshot. Let’s just list through them. URLs without the protocol “http” are now highlighted and clickable. This caused the hiccup with the launch, but it’s all fixed now. Once again, I managed to reduce memory and CPU usage. I’ll be working to get this even lower next time around. A number of hotkeys have been added as well. These include: clicking L with a tweet selected will open the first link in its text, control+tab and control+shift+tab navigate through canvases, and holding shift while prompting a reply acts as a “reply all.” In the preferences department, ones hav been added to open user profiles in the browser, position notifications in the bottom right, and clear themes. Dialogue is now threaded, so pressing the right-arrow when in the Dialogue panel will continue down the conversation. Quick Friend Lookup now works with direct messages when typing “D” followed by a space in a new tweet. The remaining aspects of 1.5 are mainly fixes that can be seen on the development page.

Now onto DestroyTwitter.com. To be honest, I’m really surprised it was finished on time. There is one aspect, Discussions, that’s missing, but it will be appended shortly. With the growth of DestroyTwitter and the introduction of themes, I knew it was time for a dedicated website. On top of that, I wasn’t happy having multiple places to report bugs or suggest features as I had with GetSatisfaction and Google Groups. They’re great services, but I much prefer answering emails via Gmail. Nothing beats “Send and Archive.”

The website consists of a handful of pages, with a lot more space for content than the 450px column on Destroy Today could provide. The landing page is an overview of DestroyTwitter. It shows the latest release, new themes, info about the app, and what’s being said on Twitter.

The Download page is pretty much the project page on Destroy Today for DestroyTwitter, which now links to the new site.

I added a page for screenshots for those who need to see what they’re geting themselves into. With a name like DestroyTwitter, you can never be so sure, right? The Development page is home to the release history and roadmap for future builds.

The Theme Builder is a dedicated web-app for designing themes to use in DestroyTwitter. You can import, download and submit themes. A color picker is available for easy configurating and there’s a long list of parameters to modify.

The Themes page is a repository for all the themes designed with the Theme Builder. You can sort by most recent, downloads, and awesome. I added an FAQ page because some questions were getting to the point where a dozen DT(w) users would answer it for me. It’s about time for a list to reference. I condensed the bug report and feedback forms to one. Lastly, I added a Donate page for those looking to support my work. Donations are accepted through either Paypal or Dreamhost referrals. With every referral I get from someone signing up for hosting, Dreamhost donates $100 to DestroyTwitter. Pretty cool, eh?

As soon as I’m done posting this write-up, I’ll be back to work on 1.6. I love developing DestroyTwitter and, even more, I love seeing the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the app. It really means a lot and makes me feel like it’s not just another Twitter AIR app. Thanks.

I’ve been working non-stop on destroytwitter.com and wanted to share a preview of the progress. The main focus so far is themes, but I finished it the other day and will be moving onto another section. I’m not sure what I’ll tackle next, but I think I’ll end up launching the site before everything is complete. 1.5 is dying to be public, but I know the themes section on the website needs to be available alongside it. Take a look at the following screenshots and let me know what you think.