mike demers dot net

that’s pretty wicked awesome.

[...] Cool, some intrepid soul has gone and created a twitter sidebar for firefox/flock - go check out tweetbar. [...]

Just started using the Tweetbar… and what a brilliant thing it is too!

Thank you :)

Suggestions for tweetbar:

- Enable middle-click to open links in tabs.

Problems:

- URLs posted aren’t shortened via tinyurl.

Question: Each time I close the sidebar and reopen it I have to re-enter my username and password. Any way around that? Aside from that, awesome tool. (ok, maybe you could add sound?)

thanks for the feedback!

@anders: i’ll definitely be adding tinyurl support soon. as for the middle-click, i’ve noticed that the browser doesn’t treat sidebar links the same way as links in the main window. it doesn’t display a tip when you hover and, as you noticed, it doesn’t let you open links in tabs. i’m looking into it but for now i’ve been working around the problem by hitting Cmd+T before i click (i think it’s Ctrl+T on windows)

@sebastian: yeah, that is annoying… sorry about that. i’m trying to figure out a way to store some information in the browser so it will remember your login info, your “refresh” setting, etc. the best you can do right now is let the browser “remember” your info so that the username and password fields are filled in for you and you just have to click “Sign In”.

Been using tweetbar all day now. Works pretty good :) Another suggestion: - Show each users local time in the posts, if possible.

@mike: The way you have implemented the sidebar, am not entirely sure you will able to store the username/password in the browser as firefox will not let you cross the scope of webpage -> chrome for this (you can only really go chrome -> webpage).

One possible (very hacky) solution that springs to mind off the top of my head:

1) Store the u/p in firefox’s password manager.
2) On sidebar init, inject the u/p into the webpage using document.write from a browser based js file (many options how you do this, could be a hidden div with id username, and fill up its class value with actual username??).
3) Your webpage based tweetbar.js could then look in the document for the injected username/password.

tony

Control-Shift-T is doing weird things with loading new pages on the PC — probably has to do with an existing keystoke since Control-T is a new tab. I’m guess Control-Shift-T is something to do with cloning a tab with existing content. In any case, you may need to find a new keystroke on the PC.

It’d be nice if you could track the ID’s of the tweets received so that by clearing tweets, you only see new ones. That feature alone would be sweet.

Hi!

great app, i love it but the only issue is that when i try and put what im doing and click update it asks for the twitter API username and password? i tried my username and password and im logged in, any ideas?

thanks!

@anders: i have a fix going out tonight that will fix the time problems. now they will all be local and in the “x minutes/hours ago” format.

@tony: thanks for the ideas… i think i found a way to utilize the built-in preference store. i’m going to try to hack that up tonight.

@noah: yeah that sounds like a key-combo collision… what browser are you running?

@jonathan: good idea! i’ll roll that out tonight.

@steve: yeah, that’s a bug… (code monkey hangs head in shame)… the good news is that i have a fix and will roll it out with tonight’s update.

howdy - nice ! i like “your” sidebar, thanks for this !

will the extension manager be able to detect “new version available”?
thanks for all your effort

@steve & @sebastian: i added auto-login to the latest update. now you only need to log in once and the Tweetbar will remember your information and log you in automatically the next time you open it.

@jonathan: tonight’s update includes your idea… now using the “clear tweets” feature will remove all but the most recent batch of tweets.

@tony: i managed to get it working with the browser preferences system thanks to some code snippets on the mozilla site

@sebastian: yes, the Tweetbar will notice the update the next time it you open it… if it’s already open, close it and reopen to force an update.

@ Mike: Arhh, ok, didn’t realise the html page was in chrome:// not htpp:// so can cross the scope. You would be better off storing the U/P using the password manager as it is more secure. Storing in prefs allows anyone to view the U/P by going to about:config.

Very easy to do: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Using_nsIPasswordManager

Also, as you are clearly a lot more adept than I at this, please feel free to merge the idea of my twitterbar extension into yours if you wish (you can then have the name as well if you want?).

http://spatialviews.com/twitterbar

mail me mctones at gmail dot com

tony

Just checking out the new features and I thought I should clarify what my expectations were on the tweet clearing; just in case it’s a bug.

After clearing tweets, I expected that any refresh would only display new tweets; that is, not show any tweets that have appeared before. That way, I know that any tweets in the list are unread.

Hey, I’m running Firefox 2.0.0.3. Apparently Shift-Control-T restores the last closed tab. Who knew?

http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/firefox-2-tip-undo-closed-tab-keyboard-shortcut-210111.php

@tony: cool, the PasswordManager is exactly what i was looking for… i’ll roll that into my next release. as for my adeptness… uh… i don’t know about that ;-)

@jonathan: ah… gotcha. i have 2 items on my TODO list that should scratch your itch: first, i’ll be adding a fifth tab in the sidebar that will provide a was to customize tweetbar settings - one of which will be to only show the new tweets. also, i’m working on a UI element in the tweet list that will indicate which ones are “new”.

@noah: nice find! thanks. i think i’ll change the key-combo to Control+Shift+B in the next release. (Cmd+Shift+B on the mac)

also, i just removed a stray “alert(’foo’);”… sorry about that. (thanks to @kenbolton via twittermap search)

Hi!
what a job! your extension is really great thank you.

I think a link on the Tweetbar.username on top would be nice to go to your account.

I have done it in my firefox by editing line 667 of tweetbar.js (I downloaded your website files, hope it’s not illegal or something)

Great tool. I’m using it at home and want it in the office too!

Sadly, Tweetbar does not work with a proxy enabled. The login/refresh never happen. :(

@stombi: great idea! that will be in the next release of Tweetbar.

@soft: d’oh! i haven’t tested the Tweetbar behind a proxy… i’ll try to figure out why that isn’t working and hopefully i can get that fixed in one the next few releases.

@mike, just wanna first of all give 2 thumbs up for introducing this to the twitternation! i would like to suggest a few things:
1) add the star at the end of every twits just like in the web. so we can rate them.

2) make the writing field’s window taller negating the need for a scrollbar. Due to the space limitation, i need to scoll up/down to review what i have just written. besides there is max buffer of 140-char so the window will not have to be that tall.

3) adding a search field to inquire http://twittersearch.com will be a definite welcome addition. so we can do everything on tweetbar instead of going to another site.

4) add the preference/option to list how many past tweets to keep in the window or change colors.

5) add a right click just like in normal browser window so we can access the functions in there.

6) add update feature.

7) cant think of anything else as of now but it will come to me eventually.

I have to salute you for introducing the “friend list”, “follower list” and the “success” notification when tweet gets piped successfully.
Overall, this release has been great so far, crash-free, and very much useful. Looking foward to the next release.

I noticed longer tweets that are trailed with the … aren’t linked to the permalink for the tweet

tweets with more than 1 link only link the first url.

Id ilke if either their name, avatar, or a small icon somewhere would link to their URL instead of just their twitter profile, similar to what twitterific has.

I’d also like the favorite star so i dont have to go to the tweet to fav it.

Mike the bar is great. Now I don’t have a reason to update. But I hope you can get the hotkey to work. The reason your hotkey doesn’t work is because the hotkey you set is already “undo close tab”. Here is a plugin that shows all FF hotkeys.

Thanks!! I heard about this, where else?? Twitter of course!

Mike, I’m running on OSX 10.4.9 and FireFox 2.0.0.3 but the add-ons window said me, that the Tweetbar 1.0 not combatible with this version of FireFox. Could you help me?

Thanks for this great extension to Firefox. Another way to make my Mac and Pac experiences as consistent as possible (well at least in terms of how I access Twitter anyway);. Glad to see you’re being som incredibly responsive to inputs. The two biggies on my list are already on yours - fix the keyboard shortcut and add a settings tab.

You de man!

Twitter Tools…

There’s been a lot of hype lately about Twitter. I joined a few months ago when Chris Brogan invited me, but I never really got into it. It felt a little cumbersome to use since at the time you could only update and access the service via a web…

Start using it today. Nice and clean, and works great. Please, change the shortcut, as it is already taken.

Thanks for this. Tweetbar is cool. This is the first time I’ve really wanted to use the sidebar for something. Partly got around the hotkey conflict by installing Grippies so collapsing and expanding the sidebar just needs a click, but I’m still waiting for a working hotkey.

You should give the option to NOT store the username and password when Firefox quits–in a work environment where other people are using the same computer, it will allow the next person to log right back into Twitter when the program relaunches as someone else.

Just thought I’d let you know Firefox version 2.0.0.3 is telling me Tweetbar is not compatible with this version.

Is anyone else running 2.0.0.3 having this problem?

Dan.

great work mike - looking forward to see the next version with the new key combo as it conflicts here also (FF 2.0.0.3)

@dan1el: that’s no problem here (using ubuntu linux FF 2.0.0.3)

add: mike, an option to open links in new windows would be great.

HiYa! Thanks for the extension.

But say, I came across it while spidering for something else. I got fed up hacking at the twitter badge and imagined, well, imagined what you’re doing with “Friends List” i.e. the latest from each individual.

Please please, a way of putting that into a webpage?

TIA

p.s. http://tinyurl.com/299jnm … things “twitter” at LJ.

In “Twitterings for Tweeters” I blogged your XPI … lovely, thanks … (I’m installing it in this Profile too) … pointed to the Project page, not here; mebbe you could put the Install URL here too? No?

thanks again

[...] rant about taxes, tip their hat to Amazon Advantage, rant more about Wikipedia, explain Twitter, Tweetbar, TwitterVision, Twitteritas and the connection between Twitter and Second Life, share some recent [...]

Lovely, for sure …
… and for the past ?what? 12 or so hours it hasn’t been updating my Friends list. I thought I could jog it loose by logging out / in, clearing tweets, closing the sidebar, you know … rubber chicken stuff.
Just now I noticed something: clear tweets; log out; close the bar. Open the bar *poof* I’m still logged in and, yes, the last few tweets from friends are not summoned up by “refresh”.

Something’s sticky … and ATM this is the only window running.
*blink*

cheers
–bentrem

p.s. I haven’t found your tweet name posted anywhere.

Ok … this one I cannot credit to the rubber-chicken shuffle: I found no combination of key-strokes to job things loose … TVision was working fine in the back ground … my http://twitter.com/bentrem showed everything up to date … most recent in TBar was 20 minutes … oh-woop nope, now it’s ok.
*blink*

Is there perhaps a server between me and t.com that’s lagging?

Howdy. Tweetbar works well on my laptop that’s open to the world, but I’m having trouble getting it to work on my firewalled office pc. I’m wondering if Tweetbar is pulling any connection information from the browser, i.e. proxies and what not?

I’d love to be able to access the options in the Add-Ons menu and put in a corrected connection setting.

Thanks for the awesome work.

As a new person to Twitter, Tweetbar has been very fun to use. However, I was wondering if there was a way to change the background color? That Baby/Sea Blue just does not fit in with my Black screen themes.

Dear mike demers:

My name is Shotaro Hasegawa, a staff editor of “Windows Forest”

a webzine about Windows online software at Impress Corporation,
Tokyo, Japan.

Our website “Windows Forest” is known as an online software directory
service in Japan, and we have 34 millions pageviews per month. We owe
this figure to every online software author and users of our website.

We will announce you that we introduced your excellent software

tweetbar

today in our news article. Its URL is shown below.
We are sorry that no english page is available.
http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/article/2007/04/20/tweetbar.html

We thank you and if your software is updated or new software is
released, please tell us.

We appriciate your business,

Windows Forest
Shotaro Hasegawa, staff editor

Impress Watch Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
TEL:+81-3-5275-1040
mailto:mado-no-mori-info@impress.co.jp
http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/

Still developing this?

Just noticed (some have before) that my password is visible via about:config. I’d prefer that to be stored in the firefox passwords

@anders: yes! :)

i’m actively working on the new version of the TweetBar.

unfortunately, a certain fast-food chain gave me a super-sized side of food poisoning and it has taken me a week or so to get back on my feet.

i’ll post a more detailed TweetBar status report tonight and i should have a new release ready in a week or two.

sorry for leaving y’all hanging…

A small thing about keyb shortcuts, if you use Ctrl+T its taken (restore last tab), if you use Shift+Ctrl+B its taken (Adblock plugin), and if you use…

Would be nice with an option-page where you can set the shortcut…

Never mind… the keyconfig-plugin did the trick…

http://rbenson.info/mozex/keyconfig.xpi

Hilfreiches zu Twitter…

Keine Ahnung wie lange die Euphorie anhält, aber im Moment twitter ich halt mal. Aus diesem Grund gibts auch ein paar Links hier die ich auf der Suche nach Tools gefunden haben und für den ein oder anderen sehr nützlich sein könnten.Das deutsche …

Thanks for Tweetbar! I’m now using it for Flock.

My suggestion, theme support. I’d like to see Tweetbar have a dark background so that it would go well with the Flock Topbar, for example.

I played with Tweetbar and made it look as close as possible to Flock’s tobar. Here’s a screenshot of my work in progress: http://flickr.com/photos/jsuplido/476523169

Issue solved!
I had an issue where it would hang during login indicating “Signing in…” (details below). I solved this by confuring NoScript to allow javascript for mikedeemers.net. I am posting this here in the hopes that it will save someone else from frustration.

Issue that was caused by disabled javascript:
It worked great for a few days, now it hangs on “Signing in…” (aside: I assume that I upgraded, or installed, NoScript in the interval). The small login window overlays the sidebar and the button indicates “Signing in…”. The message portion indicates “loading…”. I have re-typed the name & password, restarted Firefox (2.0.0.3), rebooted the computer, and even un-installed Tweetbar. No luck.

[...] Twitbar - Forget Twitbin, this is much better Tags:links Web [...]

Hi Mike,

Just found out about twittbar, really great but limited to firefox (that I use on my mac). I’m sure webwag users would be delighted to have it as a module on http://www.webwag.com customizable start page.

I guess the work to do so is not big…

If you feel like doing so, have a look at our dev zone http://www.desk.webwag.com/

Thanks!

Florent.

Hey Mike,
Love tweetbar. Far better than the IM in my opinion. But as with all good things people think they have a way to improve it, and as do it.

If you could add nanoformats ( http://twitternanoformats.wikispaces.com/ ) and a search based on the formats it would (i think) push twitter in a new direction with easily searchable groups and tags.

Hello,Mike.
I use Tweetbar,and nice hacking.
I want to icon for Tweetbar,because I use All-in-one Sidebar.Tweetbar has not icon,so sidebar has no picture.
Thanks.

Hi, I’m the lead developer for the eMusic Download Manager 4.0 series, which is built on Mozilla’s Xulrunner code base. http://developer.emusic.com/

While the latest Alpha 3 release doesn’t support Tweetbar fully, my localized build does, ie Alpha 4 release, which will be out soon.

I’ve made sure that all urlbar and sidebar functionality mirror Firefox and have tested it very nicely on my local builds.

There are no code modifications needed but was wondering if you could add install.rdf and chrome.manifest entries to allow for installing into our next release.

Below are the additional entries needed, please let me know if you would consider adding us to your supported list and for the next alpha release I can add you to our Add-ons page http://developer.emusic.com/dlm/addons

install.rdf:

dlm@emusic.com
4.0a4
4.0.0.*

chrome.manifest:
overlay chrome://emusic/content/startup.xul chrome://tweetbar/content/sidebar-overlay.xul

Thanks again,

mel reyes a.k.a: mrtech

I have to second the vote for proxy authentication. Please!!

I installed the bar this morning and I’m getting the same issue as Steve above

when i try and put what im doing and click update it asks for the twitter API username and password? i tried my username and password and im logged in, any ideas?

thanks!

This is the best twitter-firefox plugin I’ve found, but it’s all-but unusable due to two issues:

1. the keyboard shortcut is taken and is not configurable without another plugin.

2. the above issue would not be a problem if there was a tweetbar icon so I could add a button to my toolbar to show/hide the sidebar. there is a button in the toolbar config, but it has no icon associated with it.

thanks, and keep up the great work!

Regarding request #2 I made above, I fixed it by renaming the file ‘twitter-icon.png’ to ‘twitter_icon.png’ in the chrome/skin/ directory, which is how it’s spelled in the CSS file. You may want to correct that. Thanks again!

i agree with @array. Please give us icon to Twitterbar!

Still not working with proxy. I’m behind a proxy 95% of my computer time…

(the same problem as steve and gill)
I can’t post my twitts becasue user name and password seems to be wrong!

Brilliant application, loving it!

Just one request; I have the facebook sidebar too, but that has a handy dandy button on my firefox toolbars to click on to open it - I don’t like them open all the time, but it’s an ace facility to check on those sites intermittently - it’s far easier to hit a button to spring open the sidebar than it is to view, sidebar, twitterbar!

So can I have a handy button for your wondrous twitterbar pretty please? ~grins and doffs cap~

Kat aka LeatherMG (also on facebook, livejournal and others).

Hey, don’t know how often you check this now, but Tweetbar seems kind of borked since the Twitter API update. It won’t sign in for me no more.

If you could fix it I would be greatly in your debt, it’s so much nicer than Twitbin which I’ve had to go back to.

I was going to ask about the “not signing in” issue, but seeing Warlach’s post (dated 10 weeks ago with no reply) leads me to believe you already know about this. I hope you get it fixed. Thanks.

Thanks to Matt Scilipoti for posting how to get Tweetbar to work with NoScript. Now the only thing to make Tweetbar perfect is the shortcut-key thing.

Hi,
I really like your Tweetbar application, but is there any way that you could get it to say “from Tweetbar” in our updates?

Thanks!

Hi, any plans on Firefox 3 compatibility?

Can I toggle off the icons for the posts? Would make it much more efficient. THX Awesome product!

Hi, we waiting to tweetbar 2.0 to install Firefox 3.
Thanks for twettbar….

Are there any plans to update for Firefox 3? I live and die by Tweetbar and it doesn’t work for FF 3 anymore. I tried Twitbin and that is completely 100% awful and barely works at all. Please consider an update (or at least a hack to make it work again)? Please?

Until this gets updated for Firefox 3, you can hack it to work by doing this: lifehacker.com/355973/make-your-extensions-work-with-the-firefox-3-beta

_________

Free iPhone-only Ringtones
ringtoneyouriphone.blogspot.com

Get this to work with Firefox 3 by doing this: lifehacker.com/355973/make-your-extensions-work-with-the-firefox-3-beta

There is a hack on Lifehacker to make older Firefox extensions such as this with Firefox 3–do a Google search for “make older firefox extensions work with Firefox 3″ and it should be at the top of the list. Works great for me in FF 3.

Hello All,

The TweetBar is rising from the dead… I’ve updated the original post with details.

Sorry for the delay!