/dev/null/kevin

Sometimes less is more.  It's a cliche, but an accurate one.  Such is twirl, an AIR-based twitter client.  Twhirl (a really hard word to type, btw) has lots of features, most of which I don't need.  Its also missing some basic features that I need.

The irony is that, like twitter, a product with few features that still dominates, twitterific is still a better client than twirl.  i.e.

twitter : pownce :: twitterific : twhirl

Twitter, with its small feature set is still better, and more popular, than pownce or jaiku (two technologies that have more features, but are still inferior and much less popular).  Twitterific, with its elegant feel, is still better than feature-packed twhirl.

Twhirl Pros

1. Multiple twitter accounts - I tweet as myself, but also as my daughter.  I put cute things she says in there, mainly just for myself and wife.  It's a bit of a pain to switch back and forth, so it's nice to have multiple twhirl windows open for each account.  I also know a certain someone who occasionally tweets as his wife by mistake.
2. Lots of display options - You can customize the color pallet and font easily.  You can apply filters, and you can select from several different view panels such as timeline, replies, friends, followers, direct messages, and archive.
3. Search - twhirl leverages existing services TweetScan and Terraminds for searches.
4. Retweeting - If you're into forwarding tweets, it's easy with twhirl.  Just one click.

Other than Pro #1, I don't use or need those extra features.  #2 is nice, but I just selected the one that looked like twitterific.    Search would be nice, but those two services don't work that well.  Terraminds was not even up as of this writing.

Twhirl Cons

1. Unread vs read messages not easy to distinguish - A tiny white dot in the corner is the only way to detect an unread tweet in twhirl, while the whole message is bold in twitterific.  It's much easier to visually scan with twitterific.
2. No real keyboard shortcuts - Yes, it has *some* keyboard shortcuts, but for things that don't need shortcuts.  The shortcuts that I miss are "Reply" and "Mark all as read."  If I used retweet, I'd probably want that, too.  Also, while I can scroll up and down using the arrow keys, that action doesn't cause the tweets to be marked as read.  I either have to click on them or click on the mark as read button.  In general, there is just too much clicking required.
   
3. Cluttered display - This might just be personal preference, but twitterific will display either the twitter id or the "real" name of a person in the header.  twhirl's display is more like the web display.  It puts the twitter id in with the tweet and appends the date stamp along with the "real" name.  See the attached image.
4. AIR is clunky - Maybe it's AIR and maybe it's twhirl, but the application has a slow and unsteady feel to it.  It's not horrible, but it's not as crisp as twitterific.
5. Breaks MacOS click behavior - In Mac OS X, if you click on a window that doesn't have focus, that click is not passed to the application.  The idea is that you don't accidentally click on something that you didn't intend to when you switch focus to another window.  This differers from Windows behavior which does pass the click to the application.  I expect that this behavior is a by-product of using AIR, since AIR also runs on Windows.  Still, it's annoying to have an application behave differently that every other Mac app.  Also, this problem is magnified when you consider that your clicks might lead to the next problem...
   
6. Web links open new windows, not tabs - Even though Firefox is set to open new links in a new tab, URLs launched through twhirl open a whole new Firefox window.  Not only is this not what I want, but it's also slower.  Is this another AIR-ism?
   
7. Does not pop down - Twitterific will pop up when there are new tweets but then pop back down if you don't click on the window.  Twhirl just stays up until you manually make it go away.  Anyone who actually gets work done knows that sometimes you just have to ignore twitter.  Not only does the window not go away, but all of the twhirl windows open up for all of the accounts you have open.  So even if my daughter's account doesn't receive a tweet, it still opens up when my account does.
8. Does not pop up - Depending on how you minimize twhirl it may never pop up.  If you close it with Command-H (Hide) then it will pop up with new tweets.  However, if you use Command-M (minimize), or the _ icon on the bar, then it won't pop up.  Twitterific disables minimize, I believe.
   
9. No spellcheck - Twitterific leverages the auto-spellcheck feature that applications using text windows get.  Perhaps it's an AIR limitation, but twhirl doesn't do this.  I need this feature.  I suck at spelling and typing (count the errors in this blog!) so I really need a spell checker.

Speaking of poor writing, read this part of the twhirl documentation.  Scroll down to the "connection settings" section.

So, the verdict is that twhirl is not for me.  Yes, they could fix some of these problems, but the one's linked to AIR might take longer to resolve as Adobe works to get AIR more widely adopted.  For now, it's back to twitterific for me.

Here's the screen shot comparing the two twitter clients.  Note that there are two twhirl windows for my two twitter accounts.  The top window has the message area hidden.