Html Twitter control (public tweets, no auth)

I plan to work on a Twitter client for Javascript. The client should display tweets very compact and might have some features of a Java Twitter client, I blogged about previously.

This tweet component is a first step. It shows the user-timeline of a given user plus tweets that the user replied to. It shows only public tweets, thus no auth is needed. You can enter another user to display its tweets, but the users tweets muts be unprotected, otherwise the tweets wouldnt be visible without auth.

Next step towards a client would be to figure out, how the auth stuff works, which looks somewhat complicated.. x) More infos about that probably soon in this blog.

Twitter client concept: Refer arcs

In my current twitter client, to follow conversations between users, I often have to scroll and search to find the corresponding tweets. To make this process more comfortable (especially the search part), I introduced refer arcs into a twitter client which visually connect tweets that probably refer to each other (replies, retweets).
On the right there is an animated gif, which demonstrates this technique. The updated twitter client ('Twaja') will be downloadable soon.

Thoughts on other stuff. Three recent (in my opinion) questionable developments in computation:

• Oracle sues Google over Java. Obviously the new owner has other priorities then the old one. Java might loose people working with it.
• Google and Verizon propose new policy to constrict net-neutrality. This might be a step toward the end of the open net.
• Google stops Google Wave. After just a year this innovative project is canceled. Thats quite few patience, reminds of canceled Google Lively.

End of rant. :)

Twaja 1.0.8 Release

A first version of the java twitter client Twaja is available for download here. There are binaries and sources. Twaja may also run as applet or via Webstart.
Comments and critics appreciated.

New project "Twaja"

Im working on a new project named Twaja. It will be a Twitter-client written in Java. The name is based on the words 'Twitter' and 'Java' and means 'Your' in russian.

There are a lot of twitterclients available, is there a need for another one? I currently use Echofon, which is comfortable and fast, but lacks some features I'd like to use. On the other hand there are other, more complex clients with more features, but they usually have a large footprint. Basically I havent found the ideal client for me, so I started to write an own. It will have the features, which I find important and it will have a small footprint.

It will be written in Java and will use the small jTwitter-api. It thus might run as an applet within a Website, but most likely as an Desktop-application (using Java Webstart). The Gui will not be based on Swing or SWT, but only on AWT, which has the smallest footprint. Here are some characterics and proposed unique features of Twaja:

• Combine friends feed and search. While I like to follow tweets of my friends I sometimes also want to follow tweets regarding certains topics from everybody, which can be found through twitter-search, e.g. using tags. The client will be able to display both, friend feeds and search results in an equal way.
• Ranking. Sometimes, when I was offline for a while, there are hundreds of unred tweets, which are uncomfortable to browse. There should be a form of ranking in the client, so that you e.g. can read tweets only from 'important' users..
• Innovative display. I will try to implement some new display ideas. E.g. tweets with tags may be displayed grouped with Taglines. Thus one can easy distinguish between tweets of different topics. I wrote about the concept of taglines here.

Soon there will be more screenshots and infos available on Twaja. Stay tuned! :)