I’m really disappointed with myself over the lack of activity on Destroy Today. The good thing about this, though, is that it means I’m really hard at work offline—this is true. I feel like I’ve been only communicating my plans and ideas lately on a 1 on 1 basis through emails or Twitter replies. Because of this, certain questions are answered a dozen times by to a dozen different people. I have no problem responding to each individual, but I think the people who want to know, but don’t ask, end up missing out.

The latest project I’ve been working on is DestroyTwitter. I see it going the distance as an application with a lot of potential. Because of this, I decided to develop a separate website for it. It’s still in the works, but each day I work on it, I become more and more excited to launch. I originally planned to release DT(w) 1.5 this past weekend, but I really think it should launch along with the website because of the introduction of Themes. The DT(w) website features a repository for themes as well as a realtime Theme Builder. There’s a great amount of community features built into this website and I simply can’t wait to share it with everyone. I’m hoping it will bring even more transparency to the future of DestroyTwitter.

As soon as I start up the Google Group for DestroyTwitter and post about it, my registration for Get Satisfaction gets approved. I’ll transition over soon, but continue to use the group as a harbor for user themes. For those who have feedback, bugs, or praise, head on over to DestroyTwitter’s Get Satisfaction page and get to it!

This last weekend has been a full-out sprint to get DestroyTwitter 1.5 Beta’s major feature out to the public for testing. I posted the 1.4.3 Beta prerelease sporting the feature, Themes. So far, it’s been a tremendous success with dozens of themes already designed and up on the DestroyTwitter Google Group. Included with the prerelease is a handful of themes designed by myself and one by Joshua Corliss of AgencyNet. I’m anticipating the release of 1.5 this upcoming weekend and will certainly be working non-stop to meet that deadline.

I’ve been looking for a way to build a better sense of community around DestroyTwitter. Up to this point, support was provided through Twitter and email. After hundreds of bug reports and tons of feedback, many of the same issues were brought up and addressed. I looked around for an easier way to make issues public. Unfortunately, most of the best bug/feedback tracking systems cost a serious amount I just can’t afford. Someone then gave me the idea of using Google Groups. It’s free, simple, and open to the public. I plan to use the DestroyTwitter group to have open discussions on feature requests, bug reports, known issues, and releases. It’s a lot easier to talk about DestroyTwitter when not restricted to 140 characters. Feel free to join the group here: DestroyTwitter Google Group.

Today marks the release of DestroyTwitter 1.4 Beta. This major release includes the most features and fixes out of all the releases to date. Just as 1.3 helped move DestroyTwitter into the 10,000+ install count, 1.4 will bring the count to 20,000+ before the week is through. Let’s dive right into what’s new.

The most requested feature this time around was the ability to specify which users appear in the Home canvas. After a lot of planning and designing, I decided on a set of preferences called Rules. At the moment, this set consists of Include, Exclude, and Links. The first two are lists of users that can be added to in a number of ways. There’s a plus sign to the right of the text that prompts the Quick Friend Lookup and there are also key shortcuts, Cmd+Shift+I/E (Mac) and Ctrl+Shift+I/E (PC), that do the same. The third rule is Links. This rule displays only tweets that contain links.

Along with using Quick Friend Lookup, users can also be added to the lists from the tweet canvases. With a tweet selected, pressing I/E adds the tweet’s sender to the Include and Exclude list respectively. An alert appears notifying that the user has been added or that he/she is already in the list.

When a rule is activated, a subheader appears aside the Home canvas’s header. The rules can be activated and deactivated in the Preferences canvas or with key shortcuts. The shortcuts to switch between rules are Cmd+Option+A/I/E/L (Mac) and Ctrl+Alt+A/I/E/L (PC) for All, Include, Exclude, and Links respectively.

There are a number of additions to the preferences in 1.4. Under Tweet/Message, options to display users’ real names, twenty-four hour time, and use an alternate retweet marker are available. The alternate retweet marker replaces the RT prefix with the greater-than symbol (>) in order to save an extra character. Under Notifications, a preference to disable home notifications has been added. This allows the user to only have notifications from the Replies and Messages canvases. Lastly, a Debug section is at the bottom to clear icon cache, regular cache, and preferences. This should primarily be used for troubleshooting.

In addition to preferences, a number of new key shortcuts will make using DestroyTwitter even easier. Along with the ones mentioned previously, here is the new list, which can also be found in the documentation page.

DestroyTwitter’s Replies canvas now retrieves tweets that aren’t prefixed with the username. It also does this in page format in order to save memory. In the Search canvas, focusing the input prompts a search history that displays the last ten keywords. To remove a keyword, simply click it while holding Option (Mac) / Alt (PC).

Finally, the long list of fixes. The right arrow hotkey is now disabled for non-reply tweets so error messages don’t appear. The autoupdate icon presence is fixed to disappear when the progress bar appears. The Dialogue panel is fixed to show for tweet’s from locked users. The only issue now is that for those tweets, an API call is used. All other non-locked tweets don’t use calls. The bug that marks the first tweet as read when pressing the up arrow key is fixed. The user’s tweets in the Search canvas are now marked as read automatically. Hash tags have been fixed to not link numbers. The Account canvas and Tweet/Dialogue panel icon issue is fixed. HTML entities convert to the desired character. On Mac, the toggle button click area now highlights only when the mouse is not over the resize area. Quick Friend Lookup is fixed to work with non-English keyboards where @ is not shift+2. The unclickable bug that froze everything is fixed. Drag and drop is now delayed half a second for when files are dragged over the window and not intended for dropping.

That’s everything. Phew. It’s been a solid two weeks since the last major release and I’ll be getting to work on 1.5 soon. In the meantime, download DestroyTwitter, spread the word, donate if you’d like, and leave feedback. Thanks to everyone who’s been testing. DestroyTwitter would be nothing without you.

I announced destroytwitter.com on Twitter not too long ago, but completely forgot to post about it. Since DestroyTwitter is really starting to take off, now with over 12,000 installs, I feel compelled to make it more accessible to find and download. I don’t know what was stopping me, considering a domain these days is only $9/year, so I logged into Dreamhost. I purchased the domain with some of the donation money earned over the past month—using contributions to better the app is always a good idea. At the moment, destroytwitter.com takes you to the DestroyTwitter page, but I’m thinking at some point, it might be smart to develop a separate site. We’ll see. Thanks again to those who have made donations—it really helps.

If you’d like to donate to Destroy Today, click here.

I promised I wouldn’t post about download counts until the big ten and here I am. DestroyTwitter 1.3 Beta was released last night and downloads skyrocketed. I couldn’t be happier. Everything has been going so well and it’s all thanks to everyone taking DestroyTwitter for a spin. The rate in which the word is spreading far surpasses any expectations I had prior to developing the app. Here’s to 10,000 more!

I’m proud to announce DestroyTwitter 1.3 today! The 1.1 release was huge and 1.2 was even bigger, but 1.3 takes it to the next level. If I had any doubts about developing DestroyTwitter in the first place, they are now crushed. Let’s jump into the new features.

The most requested feature this time around was the ability to see more than one canvas at a time, so I added a Wider Workspace preference. It triples DestroyTwitter’s width and rearranges the canvases to have Home, Replies, and Messages grouped together. Though I don’t see myself using this very often, it does have a time and a place. DestroyTwitter was built to be compact and unobtrusive, but the option is now available.

This next feature is not featured in any Twitter client (that I know of). Quick Friend Lookup is prompted when @ is typed in the tweet panel. It holds a list of the user’s friends and will auto-complete the intended user instantly. The users can be panned through with the up and down arrow keys. To insert the user, simply hit enter/return or click the name. Hitting escape or space will close the lookup. This feature is not yet available for non-English keyboards due to lack of AIR support for the @ keycode.

Another feature new to Twitter clients is Away Mode. It pauses all tweet canvases in case the user needs to step away from the computer without it continuing to update. It can also be used to disable notifications in a single click without navigating to the Preferences canvas.

The second most requested feature for 1.3 was a preference to set the number of tweets shown in the Home canvas. This can now be found in the Preferences canvas under “Canvas.” It will update with the set amount next time the canvas refreshes. Even though an amount like 200 was built to have a minimal affect on memory, the CPU usage is increased as well.

1.3 brings with it a dozen new key shortcuts built to make reading tweets a breeze rather than a chore. Above is a snapshot of some of the current shortcuts, but there are certainly more to come. This list and more can be found in the new documentation section, which thoroughly walks through the many aspects of DestroyTwitter. It’s a work in progress, but most of the standout are there.

That’s the list of major features, but there’s a serious number of minor features/fixes in 1.3. Tweetshrink is now supported in DestroyTwitter to condense tweets within the 140 character limit. The user profile and dialogue requests no longer use API calls. Hash tag links now include special characters such as the German umlaut. There is a major overhaul on CPU and memory management that reduces usage drastically. A close button has been added to the Notification window and its timer has been reduced. Preferences are now organized with headers. Tweeting from the Home canvas while on an older page won’t refresh the canvas anymore. The tweet-eating bug has been fixed for good. The inaccuracy of the follow/unfollow actions in the user profile has been fixed with a workaround that avoids Twitter’s API bug. A preference has been added to disable canvas transitions. Tweet dates now link to the tweet’s permalink. Lastly, the notification window will now close when disabling notifications. That bug has seriously been plaguing Linux users.

If you’re still with me after reading this novel of a post, head on over to the DestroyTwitter page and download the latest 1.3 release. Be sure to let me know what you think and if it’s worth anything to you, feel free to leave a donation. I develop these apps between work and school, so anything from a donation to an email letting me know how you feel means a lot. Thanks to all of my prerelease testers. This release wouldn’t be nearly what it is without your reports. If you’d like to be the first to know about prereleases, follow me and keep an eye out.

One last thing. Users updating from 1.2 might experience an issue doing so from inside the app. If this is the case, your best bet is to download from the badge in the DestroyTwitter page.

This is three posts for the price of one. It’s been a busy week, and between work, school, endless emails and the like, something had to slip. I’m back on track now, so tri-post go!

I know it’s extremely late in the game to do this, but I created a FeedBurner account, which now houses the Destroy Today news feed. I meant to do this eons ago, but it didn’t stand high on the priority list. For all subscribed to my direct RSS feed, please use the new feed URL. In implementing this service, I’ve also fixed my feed so it’s now valid RSS 2.0. There were a few inaccuracies that have been worked out and that’s that. Looking forward, I will be adding feeds specifically for application updates.

This is small news, but I figured I’d share it considering I posted about it for both DestroyFlickr and Dwarf. Softpedia has deemed DestroyTwitter “100% Clean.” This means it doesn’t contain any spyware, adware, or viruses—phew.

Now, onto the big news. I’m 99% done with the redesign of Destroy Today—better known around my apartment as, “v2.” There’s not a huge difference, but it definitely doesn’t look like a basic blog anymore. One of the biggest issues I had with my site, that I lived with for over a year now, is that older posts are pretty much gone for eternity if they’re kicked off the front page—no longer! In v2, it’s incredibly simple to view every single post. You can even read the ones dating back to 2007 when I blogged about gripes with Comcast and the first version of DestroyFlickr. I’ll continue to put the finishing touches on it tonight and we might just see it up and running.

DestroyTwitter has reached the 5,000 download milestone! From now on, I’ll only be announcing every 5,000 downloads—if it gets that high. I’ll try to work on DestroyTwitter as often as I can, but I’m also anxious to finish up the v2 of Destroy Today. Thanks again to everyone for trying everything out and continue to leave feedback!