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!

It seems the new release of DestroyTwitter has had a positive reception so far and I thank everyone who spread the word. It’s been about three weeks since DestroyTwitter went public and I think with each release, it feels more and more complete. Now, that doesn’t in any way mean I’m going slow down. My plans will easily have me developing tirelessly into the summer. At the same time, school just started yesterday and being my final semester, I might not be able to release nightly builds as usual—especially since this is all for fun. If you’d like to see more consistent updates, a donation would certainly help.

It’s been ten days since the 1.1 release of DestroyTwitter and here I am announcing the 1.2 release—quick turn-around, eh? I couldn’t be happier with the feedback that’s been flowing in. I try to respond as quickly as possible, but sometimes it piles up. Regarding this new release, it’s just as big a leap if not bigger than 1.0 to 1.1 was. There are also a lot of hidden features with keyboard shortcuts, so read this post thoroughly to get the most out of DestroyTwitter.

I like to begin with the biggest and most requested features, so let’s start with read/unread functionality. DestroyTwitter now marks unread tweets with a light border and shows an unread count next to the canvas’s title. A tweet can be marked as read by clicking it or hovering it if the new “Read tweets and messages on hover” preference is checked. Clicking the unread count will mark all as read. If you don’t need this feature, just leaved the new “Highlight unread tweets and messages” preference unchecked.

Going along with unread tweets is the ability to select tweets. Simply clicking a tweet will select it, show the actions, and enable the keyboard shortcuts. With a tweet selected, clicking or holding the up or down arrows will pan through the next tweets in that direction. If the next tweet is not completely visible, the tweets will scroll to it. Holding shift while pressing either direction will select the top or bottom tweet and scroll to it. For key commands specific to the selected tweet, there are a number of actions available. Pressing “s” will save or unsave a tweet, “r” will prompt a reply, “t” will prompt a retweet, “m” will prompt a direct message, “u” will switch to the author’s profile, and if a tweet is a reply, the right arrow will prompt its dialogue. Easy enough, right?

I’ve been meaning to include this preference since I started DestroyTwitter and I’m extremely pleased to present it—Canvas refresh intervals. With it, you can configure how often canvases refresh to your liking. Twitter limits each user to 100 API calls for each hour, so those who use Twitter a lot or having multiple clients open will often see an alert preventing further usage—this preference will help. For example, I don’t use direct messages very often, so I have it set to 30 minutes. I receive replies frequently, so I set it to update each minute. There are also checkboxes next to each interval in case you don’t want a canvas, such as the Search canvas, to update at all. Right below the intervals is an indication of how many API calls will remain for things like prompting a dialogue, loading a user’s profile, or seeing older tweets. This amount will change in realtime as you change any of the amounts with exception to Search since the Search API doesn’t use any calls.

In addition to a notification of how many new tweets there are, the most recent tweet will be displayed as well. The links within the tweet are all clickable without having to go into the DestroyTwitter window.

For my Mac OS X users, the dock icon will highlight when there are new tweets and the DestroyTwitter window is not in the foreground. Once you enter the window, the icon will revert to the original.

Finally, there are a handful of smaller features without screenshots to breeze through. Tweets containing a search item using the # sign will link to the Search canvas. An “Always on top” preference has been added to keep the DestroyTwitter window above others. A link to the user’s Twitter page has been added to the user profile as well as a tweet action. The source is now visible in Twitpic images to show “from DestroyTwitter.” For Mac OS X users, navigating between canvases can be done with command+[1-6] and switching to preferences with command+comma. The dreaded huge icon bug has been fixed. The bug highlighting URLs ending with periods or parenthesis has been fixed. The bug preventing certain preferences from being remembered has been fixed as well. Lastly, there is now a clear button for searches.

I hope this post was long enough for everyone. It’s been a busy ten days of development for this and I’d really like to know what everyone thinks. Also, keep in mind I do this for fun between work, school, and sleep, so if you use DestroyTwitter a lot and feel generous, a donation of any kind is always welcome. And, if you’d like to test super secret, sneak peak prereleases, follow me and keep an eye out. Now, download this and let me know what you think!

It’s been only three days since DestroyTwitter made it to 2,000 and now I’m announcing 3,000 downloads. Thanks to everyone for spreading it around and giving feedback. I hope I’ll be posting about 4,000 sooner than later.

This is a record for me—over 2,000 downloads within the first two weeks of being public. The feedback keeps rolling in. I’m having a great time responding and adding features to the list of things to do. Less than a month ago, I was undecided as to whether DestroyTwitter would be worth pursuing or not. I’m glad I developed it and will continue to improve the app with all feedback considered. Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think about it.

I originally planned to release version 1.0.1 of DestroyTwitter, but I felt it needed a bigger jump. I want to start by saying how thankful I am to everyone who tested the prereleases and gave me more feedback than I can handle—it really made a difference. Let’s begin with the new features.

The About window has been changed to include links to the DestroyTwitter page, submit feedback form, and report a bug form.

This had to be the most requested feature: resizing. The window can now be resized vertically and DestroyTwitter will remember the size and position next time you start it up.

The second most requested feature was retweeting. Simply click the action found on the message and the tweet panel will appear with the message.

Now when new tweets and messages appear, the notification popup will appear, but the specific canvas’s button will highlight incase you missed the popup.

DestroyTwitter includes Twitpic integration, but also drag and drop support. The twitpic action can be clicked, but if you’re not a fan of browsing for files, simply drag it over and the upload will begin.

I’ve added eight new preferences that I’m hoping everyone will love. Regarding the application itself, it can open at startup and hide on close/hide to system tray on minimize.

International characters are now supported as well as a preference to bump up the font size for the 40+ users (wink). There’s also a preference to disable switching to the specified canvas after tweeting or messaging if multiple tweets need to be composed without going back and forth. Finally, I’ve added a few preferences for notifications. You can disable them all or disable only search notifications. The sound can also be muted.

As always, have fun with it and let me know what you think. Feedback is always a big help and keep in mind this has all been done on my free time for free. I don’t charge anything and never will, but if you feel generous or find DestroyTwitter very useful, a donation of any size is more than appreciated.

This actually happened the other day, but I didn’t have a chance to make a post announcing it. I’m really astounded by how fast DestroyTwitter is spreading. It took months for DestroyFlickr to surpass 1,000 downloads. At this pace, I’m hoping I’ll be able to announce 2,000 next week. To celebrate this news, I felt compelled to generate a bar graph using Google’s Chart API and the install statistics collected so far:

After releasing DestroyTwitter to the public on Friday, I was really anxious to see what everyone thought of it so far. The response has been tremendous and I want to thank everyone for trying it out. I wish I would’ve prefaced the release a bit more by explaining that this is the first beta release and there will be many more releases to come. In this first version, I wanted to cover the core features of basic Twitter usage. Now that I’ve completed it, I can focus on the more unique features I have planned—things not seen in any other Twitter client. You can keep track of the progress on the DestroyTwitter page or follow me for instant updates. Thanks again for the feedback and keep it coming!

ps—James Whittaker of RefreshingApps.com wrote a very generous review of DestroyTwitter. Take a look.

This is a big day. After exactly ten days of design and development, I’m both proud and excited to release the first beta version of DestroyTwitter. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll go over what’s included nonetheless.

DestroyTwitter opens with a login. Enter your information and you’re all set to tweet away. Unlike DestroyFlickr, you’re not required to go through an authentication process. Twitter’s API uses a token header for each call as its form of authentication while Flickr uses a frob/token technique. DestroyTwitter remembers your information for the next time you login and has a preference to skip the login screen altogether.

After logging in, you’ll be met with the Home canvas. The Home canvas contains all the tweets that would appear on your Twitter home page and refreshes once every minute. Just like DestroyFlickr, DestroyTwitter uses workspaces and canvases, providing a familiar navigation. The canvases on the top navigation bar consist of either tweets or direct messages and follow a similar look. Each one lists the 20 most recent tweets/messages of its kind and has actions at the top right to page through older content. Each tweet consists of the user’s thumbnail, message, username and date of posting. Mousing over a tweet will show its actions depending on which canvas the tweet is in and if it your post or not. Tweets by others can be saved, replied to, or a direct message can be sent to the author. If a tweet is in reply to another, a double chevron will appear to the right of post’s date. Clicking that will open the Dialogue panel showing the both tweets.

The Dialogue panel shows both tweets, but uses an API call each time a dialogue is viewed, so be frugal. Twitter’s API has a limit of 100 calls per user. I developed DestroyTwitter so it will refresh each panel often, but with enough calls left over so the average user can use it comfortably. The number of calls left can be found at the bottom of the Account canvas along with the reset time. If the limit is exceeded, an alert will appear at the top of the window to notify.

At any time, either clicking the speech bubble at the bottom right or pressing command T in OSX will prompt the Tweet panel. It includes a simple interface to write a new post and allows for quick and easy URL shortening through TinyURL. After submitting a tweet, the panel will close and switch to the Home canvas where the tweet will appear immediately.

Next to the Home canvas is the Replies canvas. Any tweet that contains your username or in reply to one of your tweets will appear here. Clicking on a tweet’s reply action will prompt the Reply Tweet dialogue. For easy reference, this dialogue displays the tweet to reply to. Since that tweet is specifically being replied to, the username isn’t required in the post if more characters are needed.

Next is the Saved canvas. Twitter refers to these as “favorites.” At any time, a tweet’s save action can be clicked to move that tweet to this canvas. It can also be unsaved and the tweet will be removed from this canvas and updated on any others.

The Search canvas returns a list of tweets from the given keyword(s). It will refresh every five minutes and the keyword will be remembered if you close DestroyTwitter.

A user’s tweets can be listed by searching for “from:” and the username. Tweets to a specific user can seen using “to:” and the username.

DestroyTwitter fully supports direct messages, included the abilities to receive, send, and see the messages that have been sent. Messages can also be deleted.

The Message dialogue can be prompted by clicking the message action in any tweet or in the People canvas containing a user’s profile. It includes the user’s thumbnail, username, and real name if available.

The Account canvas allows profile information to be edited. API information is also shown at the bottom of the canvas.

In the People canvas, a user’s profile can be seen by clicking on his/her icon or username in a tweet or message. This also uses one API call. The profile includes basic information as well as the user’s number of friends, followers, and tweets. Also included is the date in which that user opened his/her Twitter account and the most recent tweet. At the top right, actions to follow, unfollow, or message will appear. However, these actions might be inaccurate. Twitter’s API tends to say the opposite at times—I’ve contacted them regarding the issue and it’s being looked into. At the bottom of the canvas, “See more tweets” can be clicked to switch to the Search canvas and display the user’s tweets.

Lastly, any time a new tweet or message appears, a notification will appear at the top right detailing the incoming content. Clicking the notification will bring DestroyTwitter to the front and close the notification.

Unlike DestroyFlickr, which existed as a prolonged series of releases adding features with each version, I felt determined to release a very solid and robust DestroyTwitter the first time out. It consists of a lot of useful features, some of which run silently in the background. One to note is an image caching system, so any user icon that is loaded once will be recycled and appear instantly the next time it is used. This saves both memory and loading delay.

Overall, I couldn’t be happier with this release—especially considering how much time in such a short span I spent on it. If you come across any bugs or would like to request a feature, please do so. Also, the app includes a built-in updater when a newer version is released, but following my Twitter never hurts. I use Twitter to both announce new things and ask for opinions, so don’t hesitate to jump aboard.