Both Alert Thingy and, very recently, Twhirl, have pushed out grand updates for both Twitter/Friendfeed desktop clients. However, I’m utterly disappointed in them both.
Alert Thingy Updates
- Twitter and Friendfeed updates in the same window
- Twitter integration
- Flickr integration
- More themes
- TinyURL integration
Ok great. These are all really neat integrations. Regardless of all of these new features, there are still many of the same bugs in Alert Thingy. Screw the integration of all these other apps! How about fixing the client UI cut off that occurs if an item in Friendfeed is too wide?! How about fixing the fact that when you’re typing something in Alert Thingy and an update comes along, what you were typing is completely thrown out the window?
Twhirl Updates
- New UI Design
- Separation of your items, friend items, and everyone’s items
- Search
- User Lookup
UI and performance issues with Twhirl haven’t been fixed yet either and the majority of the problems I’m having relate to my Friendfeed account. The new version freezes up now more than ever. The scrollbar and showing of updates is still wacky and occasionally out of sync. However, the Twhirl team did fix the issue of items not completely clearing when you click the trash icon to remove everything out of the window and updated items are moved back to the top of the window.I happen to actually like the redesign and addition of tabs instead of a drop down menu for everything.
Why am I so disappointed?
I feel that the additional features can come later. Fix the bugs first. None of these features are worth a dime of my time if I can’t even use the basics of the client first and foremost. What’s so hard to understand about that? Why doesn’t that come first? I don’t mean to be harsh because both apps are decent, but I’m the user that’s more concerned with ironing out the kinks rather than adding more to the bandwagon. Don’t pile new things on top just to hide or distract from other problems. In doing so, the whole bandwagon will eventually break.
