Welcome to the Beta
This is the first large public beta I’ve held for Syrinx. So much code has changed for 2.0 that I couldn’t possibly begin to test it all. Interfacing with a web based service also introduces a lot of variables that one person could never begin to test.
On this page I will briefly explain what’s changed in 2.0 including new features and old features that have been altered. While I believe this is valuable information for beta testing, for those that just want to download the beta and start running it, feel free to skip to the download link below.
Timeline Changes
The most fundamental change for Syrinx 2.0 is the tweet timeline. 1.x’s timeline was built off NSCollectionView, which while it was easy to put together and full of slick animation, it was also a huge memory hog, CPU intensive and with a sufficient amount of tweets searching, viewing conversations and even scrolling became very slow. For 2.0 the timeline has been built on NSTableView with custom cells. This means a very small footprint and very impressive responsiveness, even with thousands of tweets.
By using a table, I was also able to tailor the user interface to make better use of screen real estate. Cells that are not selected are now just tall enough for the avatar to fit in. When selected the cell expands to fit the tweet buttons at the bottom. For tweet messages that don’t fit within the normal bounds of the collapsed cell, an ellipsis is present. Once selected the tweet will expand to fit the entire text and the buttons. Mousing over a user’s name still presents a tooltip with the user’s name and screen name. Mousing over the tweet timestamp still presents the Sent from client information. Double clicking the user’s avatar will open the Friend’s window and select that user if present. New to 2.0: If you are not currently follow the user it will ask if you want to start following them.
Replies and direct messages now have the reply/dm symbol overlayed on the corner of the avatar rather than the middle of the tweet.
There is now a filter bar just below the user status that allows you to filter the timeline to show All, Replies or Direct Messages.
Tweets
A few new tweet commands have been added, all of which can be found under the Tweet menu. Retweet will copy the current tweet into the status text field, prepended with “RT: ”. Open Links will open all the links contained in the selected tweet in the background. Delete Tweet is used to remove one of your tweets, it is disable for all other tweets.
Searching
The other biggest change is the ability to search twitter. For those who have never been http://search.twitter.com allows you to search all the public tweets from twitter. This ability to search is now built into Syrinx 2.0. You can create any number of search windows from under the File menu. Once you search for something that window will auto-update your search results every 5 minutes as long it remains open. Searches are not currently saved between launches.
Miscellaneous
URL Shortening can be found under the Edit menu. Select the entire link that needs shortening and then select URL Shortening. The TinyURL service is used.
The bookmark is now saved between launches. This can be disabled in the preferences.
Tweet text and usernames, both in the search window and main timeline can be filtered from within the preferences.
The Preferences Window has been redesigned and more Growl related options are included.
What’s New
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•Faster searching, scrolling and conversation viewing
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•Smaller memory footprint, less CPU intensive even with thousands of tweets
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•Filter bar for quickly viewing replies and direct messages
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•Double clicking the avatar of a user you do not follow will prompt you to start following them
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•Cells collapse and expand to make better use of screen real estate
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•Retweet
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•Delete Tweet
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•Open All Links in background
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•URL Shortening
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•Searching with auto-updating search results
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•Save the bookmark between launches
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•Redesigned preferences window
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•Text/Username filtering
Requirements
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• OS X 10.5+ (Leopard)
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• A Twitter account. Twitter accounts are free at http://www.twitter.com
