It’s been a while since we’ve covered what Ollie’s been up to in his spare time. Twitterrific 4.4.3 — a combination polish & maintenance release — launched this afternoon on the Mac and iOS App Stores. There’s a couple of new improvements here, especially in the iOS edition that’ll delight some and confuse others. So what’s in the rundown? Lots of stuff.
Search results are getting a swift kick in the pants with this release, allowing you to peep “real names” instead of usernames. It works universally with the Timeline options you can set in the Preferences.
Readability improvements are abundant in 4.4.3. The ‘Load More’ button continues to get better and now shows up in popovers so you can continue reading through someone else’s timeline. If you RT a piece of a conversation, Twitterrific will do a better job in displaying that it’s attached to a convo. RTs will also display the original time the tweet was posted (e.g. 6m ago). The broken image button can now be tapped to refresh the image if it doesn’t load the first time around. What we have is release that takes a bunch of niggling issues or minor inconveniences and patches them up for a better experience.
When Twitterrific 4.4 initially arrived, it gained the ability to display unwrapped t.co links in the timeline where possible. See the images below for an example:
If you wanted to take that Deadspin link outside of Twitterrific, you’d end up with a t.co link after a copy and paste. As of Twitterrific 4.4.3, Twitter links will be unwrapped for you as you copy them from your timeline and into other applications. Full URLs will be pasted instead of the Twitter-shortened links that were copied previously.
Two big changes to the iOS version are going to make lots of users pretty happy.
The first is that it’s even easier to include photos in tweets thanks to a *Use Lastest Photo option now available when attaching pictures to your tweet. Just like Tweetbot, it’ll pull in the most recent picture taken that’s available in your library.
The second is that the return key has been replaced by the @ and # keys on the alphabetic keyboard. Tapping the numbers key reveals the return key if you want to write a tweet with multiple paragraphs. Before you tweet @Twitterrific about a missing return key, it’s still there! I promise!
Aside from bug fixes galore, you’re looking at an improved Twitterrific that puts a focus on usability and the little things. There is one change you should note though if you’re using the free version. Google is going to start imposing fees for translation. Twitterrific is going to ask users who translate tweets often to upgrade to the premium version so you can translate tweets again. Otherwise everything works the same.
Twitterrific 4.4.3 is now available on both App Stores. If you haven’t updated yet, you can grab the Mac version currently for $4.99, and the iOS App (Universal) for free with a $4.99 in app purchase to remove advertising.
*Note: Upon updating, the Use Lastest Photo option wasn’t available for me. Reinstalling the app brought it to life. The conclusion Twitterrific devs and I came to upon resolving the issue is that you’ll need to say OK at the location prompt when asked.
