To find a Twitter client that properly serves my Tweeting behaviours is actually not easy. This has been my problem for both my laptop and my mobile.
For my laptop, two most crucial criteria are:
- Work on Ubuntu 9.10, and
- Display Thai script properly.
I don’t care whether it is native Linux, on Adobe AIR, or a browser extension. However, these two criteria together rule out many decent Adobe AIR applications, including TweetDeck, Twhirl, and many others. TweetDeck shows only boxes, even with International Font selected. Twhirl displays the main characters, but the upper and lower vowels are missing, making it too difficult to comprehend.
Some AIR applications make it through these two criteria. Spaz, Ada, and Snitter are ones I have found. However, Snitter seems to have some problem with the display, making it quite messy. Spaz and Ada are quite good. I actually used Spaz for some time.
Apart from AIR application, another good Twitter client is Echofon for Firefox, formerly known as TwitterFox. TwitterFox was actually the client I used from the beginning. I used only TwitterFox until my Firefox 3.5 crashed regularly on Windows 7 RC, so I started to use AIR-based apps. I didn’t return to it even I came back to Linux because I was irritated by the fact that it couldn’t display more than 20 tweets. (This has been improved.)
Some may ask about native Linux apps. There are some, but they usually lack useful features. I tried them once, and they didn’t even have the (old-style) Retweet.
Right now I want to add another criterion. It’s not as crucial as the first two, but I really want it. It is:
- support the new official Retweet function.
I actually really like the new Twitter’s own Retweet. However, none of the applications I have mentioned passed these three criteria together. Echofon displays new RT, but can’t use official RT from it.
Yesterday I finally found some applications that pass all these three. They are Google Chrome extensions.
I already had Google Chrome for Linux beta installed, so I tried installing the extensions. The installation worked well. However, when I tried to use it, Chrome just shut itself down. This happened to all three extensions I tried: Chrowety, Tweetings, and Twopup.
Today I installed Chrome from the developer channel instead of the official beta. The extensions actually work, and it quite impressive, but I have another problem. The web pages blinks. Very often. That substantially disturb my web browsing, and I just can’t work on it.