Lost Website

Adobe Air is a new software platform from Adobe which mixes JavaScript and Flash technologies to enable developers to make rich Internet applications that can run on desktop computers. It is remarkable in the world of proprietary applications in the sense that it has included Linux support early on.

My previous post about Twitter clients might have hinted that I have had bad experience with Air applications in general. In this post I will vent of some of the grudges I have with this new platform on Linux.

This, again, not a very fair review. I have not taken the time to investigate the odds and ends of the platform and will overlook the developer’s point of view on the platform. I have heard over the tubes that programmers working on applications for the Air platform appreciate it, but that’s as far as my investigation (or lack thereof) have taken me.

Air applications aren’t so cross-platform

I have tried 5 Adobe Air applications, mostly Twitter clients: Spaz, TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, DestroyTwitter, Tumbleweed, Twhirl. Of those 6 applications only the later 3 worked out of the box on Ubuntu Hardy. The fact cross-platform compatibility isn’t guaranteed by using Air seems to be well-known of developers and most some them will not officially support Linux as an operating platform. This is a very bad average for a technology that is supposed to be cross-platform.

Air applications don’t fail gracefully

The failure mode for each of the non-working applications in also needs to be taken into account when judging quality of the cross-platform Air applications. The behavior of the applications I have tried is less than stellar. TweetDeck is supposed to work on Linux but in the cases where it fails, it shows a semi-helpful error message. Earlier version of TweetDeck failed in the same with Seemic Desktop fails. Seemisc Desktop works partially but the mail display of the application stays empty. SpaZ shows anything usable. Applications failing to work in such a way are very frustrating for the users because they are left to figure out how to use applications that are put in a undetermined state because of holes in the runtime.

Air applications that work on Linux won’t work on all desktops

Adobe Air doesn’t support anything but GNOME and KDE. I usually have the core components of both KDE and GNOME installed on the computers I use, so running applications relying on either desktop environment is not a problem. This is not the case with Adobe Air applications since they apparently rely on some specific features of GNOME or KDE window managers to work properly. This is something that is very seldom seen in the world of X-Window applications. X-Window Applications relying on components of either desktop will usually be happy running on any window manager.

Despite this, Twhirl will work okay-ish in OpenBox with only some graphical glitches to show for.

Adobe Air requires a compositing manager to decent.

I will admit that I’m rather old school and I have not joined the Compiz bandwagon. I did not use any compositing manager on any desktop I use. That means that all Adobe Air applications that use shaped windows, ie: all the ones I have tried, looked awful until I caved-in and enabled the limited compositing feature of KDE 3.5.

Air applications tend focus on the look

Look and feel was never a strong point of Adobe Flash. Flash based application usually don’t try to blend in in the rest of the system. In Adobe Air, Adobe are obviously trying to enforce some Feel in applications, but on the Look side, a lot still leaves to be desired. All Air applications I have tried put a very strong emphasis on design and not so much on blending with the user’s desktop. DestroyTwitter had been designed with fonts a lot smaller than the default size on my desktop. On my CRT screen, it made the application hardly usable. Even the option to use larger font in DestroyTwitter did not do anything to improve the situation.

The worst offender in that category in the applications I have tried is without a doubt Tumblweed, an offline client for the Tumblr web blog system. I had hoped this application would be nicer than editing blog entries through a web site, which is something I dislike. I was mistaken…

The application was removed after a few seconds as it obviously did not focus very much on making editing pleasant.

Okay, I swear this will be my last Twitter inspired post…

I have used multiple Twitter client since I’ve first started using the service. The reason for that is that most of them are in fact pretty bad and it took me a while to find the set of Twitter client I can use at home, at work and on my mobile device, on Windows but mostly on Linux.

I will not even try to make a fair review. The worst clients I have used have resided just a few minutes on the computer where I have installed them. This means the will be essentially based on first impressions. Also keep in mind that I have a strong interest in Linux even if I lately I have had to use Windows at work. I use Linux pretty much everywhere else, all the time.

To put things in perspective, I need to precise that I do not have high expectations from a Twitter client. All I need at the following features, in order of priority:

1. it must work on Linux; this sounds simple but most so-called portable client don’t
2. it must be visually pleasing, yet not look like an angry fruit salad; this is what shoots down a lot of Adobe Air application
3. have a reply feature; without this, people will lose track to what your reply to when you reply to them
4. have a retweet feature; because copying and pasting sucks

All additional feature are more layers of icing. Features such as followers management, themability, direct messaging, twitpic support, identi.ca support are useful but not required. I would happily use a Twitter client with only the feature I mentioned above.

So, here is my review of all the Twitter clients I have tried.

BAD!

Sadly, most client I have tried fall in that category. I have used some of them for so little time that I had to go back to the list of Twitter clients on the Twitter Fan wiki to make this list.

Twitux is available in the Debian and Ubuntu software repository, and that is its only quality. It’s also under-maintained compared to most Twitter client available.

Choqok is a Twitter client for KDE4. This is a client that will eventually become good, but I wasn’t impressed by the version I have tried.

Gwibber has too many GNOME dependencies for me. It did not seem to be worth the time compiling it on my outdated Ubuntu Hardy desktop and I don’t have anything GNOME related on my laptop.

twittaré is not a flattering name in french. This client works but has no distinctive features.

DestroyTwitter is a classy Adobe Air application. It works surprisingly fine in Linux but had one big problem at the time I have tried it: the default font it used was so small that I had to squint every time I looked at it. It might be worth the time to retry it since it has all the feature I want in a Twitter client.

Spaz is major Twitter client, and an Adobe Air application. Like many Air application I have tried, Spaz failed to work on Linux. I don’t even remember seeing the main window appear.

StickyTweet is made in plain C/C++ using the Win32 API so saying it is unappealing is an understatement. The guy that programmed that has probably lost a bet. Any high-schooler with a Delphi book could make a better looking application.

Ada is a minimal Twitter client for the Adobe Air platform. It’s very, very minimal. Too minimal. It worked fine on Windows. I have never used in on Linux.

twidge is a command line Twitter client from John “Real World Haskell” Goerzen. It does what it advertises and will be helpful to those more console-inclined than me.

twit.el is an Emacs script for Twitter. Even though I like Emacs a lot, I have never seriously considered using it. I have made it work on my laptop but never even the more features it may support. It is certainly a good option if you spend most of your life in Emacs. I don’t.

Seesmic, from the makers of my main Twitter client. I have never managed to make it work on Ubuntu Hardy. It starts fine but the user interface doesn’t work. It’s a well known client and some people apparently love it. I don’t remember seeing anyone saying that it works on Linux.

TweetDeck is another popular Twitter client, an Adobe Air application, that I could never get to work on Ubuntu Hardy. The program starts but then fail to work, but at least its gives a clear warning saying that it won’t work on the computer. This is also a very popular and heavily featured program that many people are using on a daily basis. It is also reported that it works fine on Linux but it seems my current distribution isn’t supported.

Okay

This is the list of clients that are probably not bad but that I have not seriously used for some reasons.

Twirssi is an irssi script. I have used irssi as my IRC client for a while now so it wasn’t illogical for me to try and see if I could merge Twitter and IRC. I have got it to work on my main computer and used it for a little while. I have not adopted it since installing it manually with CPAN has sent me into a dependency hell that I could not get out of.

Twitter Opera Widget is a sort of plugin which Opera calls a widget. It made a lot of sense to me to use an Opera plugin to use Twitter since I constantly have Opera loaded at home and at work. I have actually used this client extensively when I started using Twitter. It had all the functionality I needed and was correctly maintained by its author. Sadly, this widget suffers from a pretty bad memory leak which made made my desktop, let alone my browser, unusable after a few days. I grew tired of waiting after the leak to be fixed so I ended up switching to Twippera. This is what makes me categorize this client in the Okay category, otherwise I would still be using it.

The Twitter webpage itself is pretty poor in features. The retweet feature that is present in most good name Twitter clients is currently being deployed to some user as a beta feature. This should put twitter.com down in the standings of Twitter client in terms of features. It’s nonetheless a fact that most Twitter user start by using the Twitter website itself and since it’s by far the most used of all client, it probably gets the job done good enough. I have used Twitter.com to sometimes to tweet and I am still using it to check on my follower list and my followers requests.

Good

Twippera is another plugin for the web browser Opera. It has less features than the Twitter Opera Widget but it has no memory leak which cripples my browser. I only left this client to search for a client with more features. I’m still using it on my laptop because I have not yet looked for a replacement.

Twhirl is the client I use on my desktop computer. It is an Adobe Air application, one of the few which work fine out of the box on Ubuntu Hardy. It’s a excellent Twitter client which supports all the basic features I need but a lot more. It’s unfortunate that it is using the Adobe Air platform and that its thus quite resource intensive and only work on GNOME or KDE.

Mauku is the only client I have tried for the Maemo platform on the Nokia N800, and it may be the only decent one. The Maemo 4.x version is missing several feature I desire from a Twitter client but the display is good enough to work with and I’m using it whenever I’m away from my computers but close to my N800.

Brizzly is what Twitter.com should be. It is an excellent web client to access Twitter which include several features that are available in desktop clients. Brizzly exposes its features in a single web page, which is better than what Twitter.com offers. The feature I love the most in Brizzly is the display of Twitter trends with explanations that are free to edit by Brizzly users. This has since been implemented in Twitter.com but in a way that is less efficient that what is shown by Brizzly.

I have been a Twitter user for nearly one year now. It has been an generally pleasant experience. Microblogging is now part of my array my information tools, which also include: RSS (through Google Reader), Email, IRC. A more complete post about own I see Twitter as useful is something I need to do eventually.

I have recently made my Twitter page protected due to the rampant increase in the prevalence of spamming on Twitter. Doing this has bought me peace of mind, but it is pretty unfortunate that Twitter privacy is an all-or-nothing option. If you want keep spammers away from your profile, you need to set your profile to protected and you have no other options. A protected account has the following restriction:

1. People that want to follow you need to be approved
2. Your tweets don’t appear on search.twitter.com
3. “@replies” to user not following you will not be seen
4. You cannot share direct links to your tweet with others

For Twitter outsiders, it is interesting to know that, on Twitter, spammers are not like the obscure, badly worded email that sometimes slip through your email spam filter. A mom an pop plumbing shop hunting potential clients using keywords on Twitter search is also considered to be spamming, admittedly to a lesser level. Some people will call this marketing but it’s a pretty thin line between that a really spamming, especially if the shop is located in the central US where it’s unlikely I’ll ever end up travelling.

The third limitation is what has annoyed me the most about protecting my profile. I follow several people that have good reasons not to follow me and yet I would like to sometimes directly address those persons. For this purpose, I had to create another unprotected account. This is not unpractical as long as your Twitter client supports multiple Twitter account.

It seems to me that those problems would not happen if the privacy options were more fine-grained. I don’t need the full protection of a protected profile, but there are some features of it I can’t live without. Here is how I would split the privacy options.

Visibility

This would determine if only followers can see your tweets. If the user decides that his tweets are private then its of course the should not be searchable.

Followability

It should be possible to screen people that want to follow you on Twitter. Most people I have seen using a protected profile will accept being followed by just any human being, and just the fact of making the profile protected puts it out of reach of majority of spammers.

I understand why this is a feature reserved to protected accounts: if your tweets are public and searchable, then whoever really wants to follow you can do it manually without adding you to their followers list. So, without making the profile private, this option is next to useless to protect keep your profile away from spammers.

Still, there is nothing keeping Twitter from making this feature available independently of private profile. Weeding out your Followers page of the many spammers that stitches to any unprotected profile is something know to all Twitter users and it’s not a fun task if you ever forget it for a few months.

Searchability

Some users might not want their profile to be found on search.twitter.com. I simply don’t need that level of privacy, but it’s not unconceivable that some particular users of Twitter would want to be of the public view.

@replies to you

This would determine if you want to messages directly addressed to you from users you don’t follow. Since Twitter already has a Block feature which does that on an user per user basis, this would be like automatically blocking all users.

This could be useful for star Twitter users with little tons of followers that want to limit who can address them. Most of those people probably don’t read all those tweets anyway, so why give people the illusion they can talk to them?

This of course would be of no use to me since there is just not enough people sending me tweets.

@replies to others

This would determine if want your @replies to be automatically public. This would allow you to communicate with people You want.

This is of particular interest with low-rank Twitter user like me who just want to send messages to Twitter microcelebrities that have few enough fan to read what they say to them and that sometimes might even reply.

Findability

Since we are into adding privacy levels, why not put that in too? Some users might not want to be found using the Twitter “Search User” feature. A privacy setting could be added to disable that.

I’m proposing this just because I thought of it… The Twitter Search User page is pretty crappy and already ensure a base level of privacy which suits me fine.

Explicitely public tweets?

I think most of the problems I have with Twitter privacy settings would be solved if tweets could be made public on an individual basis. It would then be possible to address directly people that don’t follow you and take part in your favorite meme without leaving the comfy cloak of your protected account.

I must say that I have not checked what other microblogging platforms, like Jaiku and identi.ca have to offer. I admit that what I’m suggesting in this post might already exists somewhere else.