It has been a while, hasn’t it?
Even so, I’ve been working on Trowl, and I’m happy to make available the preview for Trowl 0.6. So why 0.6 when the last version was 0.5.4? Well, first of all: we’re talking about 0.0.6 of a version – does it really matter? ;) But more technically, I’ve made a lot of changes, both to the code behind the scenes and to what you see in the behavior and UI of the app. While a lot of the changes aren’t particularly groundbreaking, taken together I think they offer a substantial improvement to 0.5.4.
Plus there is a .NET Framework 4 version – but that’s coming later, so I won’t delve into that right now.
Before I give you the download link, I wanted to go over a few of the larger changes so you know what you’re getting into.
Backend Code
I mentioned that I made changes to the code that aren’t immediately obvious on the surface. This includes changes with the Twitter API: some of the calls are updated, and I further refined how Trowl checks your rate limit. There have also been changes to how Trowl parses the results it gets back from Twitter. Finally, I’ve made some modifications to how notifications are sent and received from Growl. Observant users will notice that I added the word “try†to the “show X number of notifications on screen at once†setting. I’ve made this a bit more flexible to handle occasional lost notifications or other oddities. So if you sometimes see more or less than your desired number of notifications, don’t freak out. :)
Different Growls for Different Accounts
A new advanced notification setting will force Trowl to register a separate “New Tweet†notification type for each of your Twitter accounts. What does this mean? Well right now, if you open Growl and look at Trowl’s notifications, you will see just one “New Tweet†notification type. If you switch this setting on, however, it will create a “New Tweet†notification type for each of your Twitter accounts. What’s the point? By doing this, you can configure each account separately. Want one account to forward to iPhone, and another not? Want one account’s notifications to be sticky, but another to close automatically? Now you have the power.
New Tweet
You can now use the hotkey CTRL-SHIFT-T to open the New Tweet window from anywhere. (Update: You can now toggle the hotkey option, as well as what the hotkey is.) Also, some minor layout changes were made to this screen. Finally, I added a button to let you switch between reply and retweet. Why? Well, have you ever accidentally hit “reply†instead of “retweet†or vice versa? Or did you hit “retweetâ€, only to realize you’d rather do an “old style†retweet? Now you can quickly switch between the two types right from the New Tweet screen.
Refined Catch-Up Tweets
For a while now, Trowl has offered the ability to show the tweets you “missed†while it was closed. Using a special “while you were gone†notification type, it would show all the tweets you would have normally seen if you hadn’t quit Trowl. You can now toggle this option to show all tweets, or just replies and mentions. (Of course, if you already have the account set up to only growl replies and mentions, this toggle will make no difference.)
Refined Silence Mode
In previous versions, “Silence†mode would simply cause Trowl to stop checking for new tweets. When you turned Silence off, it would show all the tweets you missed while it was silent. Now the default action is to not display any missed tweets. If you still want it to do this, “show missed tweets†has an option to include Silence mode.
Auto-Silence
Related to the previous section, Trowl can now detect when your computer goes to sleep. When it does so, you can have Trowl automatically go into Silence mode. When it comes out of sleep, it will turn off Silence, and then show what tweets you missed, if you configured it to do so.
Settings Backup
A new button was added to make a backup of your settings. It puts a file in a location that can be seen by all Trowl versions. If for some reason Trowl loses track of your settings (usually after a version upgrade) it will look for a backup and restore from it. You can also use the backup file to easily transfer settings to another computer, or do a manual reset if something bad happens.
… and more. There have been lots of other minor changes and tweaks too. This is actually a slightly more rough “preview†version than in the past. So don’t be surprised if you find any bugs – just let me know in the comments here, or at the Google Group, and I’ll update this post with any bug fix versions as necessary.
So if you get a chance, please download and try out the preview version. I look forward to any feedback you may have. Thanks!
Could you put in a toggle setting for the CTRL+SHIFT+T hotkey? It conflicts with Firefox’s open most recently closed tab hotkey.
Otherwise, great program – keep up the good work! :D
Hello! Yes, I’ll change it to a different key, and I’ll make it configurable too. Thanks for the feedback!
Could you put in a toggle setting for the CTRL+SHIFT+T hotkey? It conflicts with Firefox’s open most recently closed tab hotkey.
+1
If you download the preview again, you can now toggle the hotkey, or change it to something else :) The option is on the Trowl tab in settings.
I had to reformat my computer and when I went to use trowl again it says “ERROR: Could not retrieve the link to authorize your Twitter account. Please try again later.” It says that after I press the Authorize Account button, and until I authorize at least one account, nothing else in the application is accessible.
Any help you could give would be appreciated as I really like your software and want to use it again.
Hello,
It’s unusual that you’re getting an error for that. When it’s retrieving the authorize link, all it’s doing is asking Twitter for a link — nothing unusual or complex. In the past, people have received this error because there has been trouble communicating with Twitter: the website is busy, your internet connection is being flaky, or there is a firewall/proxy in place that is interfering with the communication to Twitter. I assume you’ve tried to authorize the account a few times? Is there anything about your internet connection that might be causing an interference?
Not that I can think of. There is a firewall, but I’ve allowed it access through it and I can connect to twitter’s website just fine.
If I can authorize it on a different computer can I copy the file in the appdata folders to my computer and have it work?
Correct, that would definitely work. If you do this, let me know if you need any assistance with it. I’ll also see if I can figure out any other reasons why it might be failing to retrieve the link.
Just wanted to let you know that it was either a problem with my system clock being off, which I know can cause a lot of different issues, or it was a problem with my .net framework. The problem fixed itself when I reformatted again.
Thank you for the update! That makes sense, actually. OAuth requests are sent with a timestamp, so if that is significantly off, it will be rejected.
I’m having a new problem where trowl just stops sending notifications. When I eventually close the program and then open it again, the timeline picks back up where it stopped sending notifications.
Strange, I definitely haven’t noticed this in my own use. How do you have your notifications set up? (sticky, 3 at a time, etc)
Sorry for the delayed response I honestly didn’t think you would still check this.
I have my notifications forwarded to my iPhone 1 at a time.