Osfoora HD: Twitter Clients Be PWND!

Posted on June 9th, 2010. Written by Jerry.

Since the launch of the iPad, I was on edge trying to find the perfect Twitter client.  The offerings at first were somewhat scarce but they are starting to come out of the woodwork.  There were ones that looked pretty and were easy on the eyes, but lacked far too many key features for serious twitheads. 

Others, were just plain ugly with a plethora of features that they used to distill the poor UI.  Even still, there just wasn’t a balanced app available… until Osfoora HD landed.

The mobile application landscape is in full bloom with Twitter clients, and while the competition is a great propellant for innovation, it’s forcing most of us to clutter up our home screens with several clients.  All dedicated to one service.  This was one of my biggest concerns when getting my iPad.  On my iPhone, I have two pages of Twitter clients.  Most aren’t used often but I like having my options there.  However, the one I have depended on since its launch, Osfoora, has earned a dedicated spot on my dock.  When I got word that the developer was prepping an HD version, I was elated.  I have had it with Twitteriffic and its lack of features in the name of UI simplicity, and I was getting annoyed with Twittelator’s layout oddly enough (seeing as it was what sold me on the app initially).

Enough with the personal backlog, let’s launch this puppy!

Let me start out with how sleek and stylish the entire app looks!  My first and main concern was “how easy is the timeline on my eyes?” so after setting up my accounts – which was a very quick process – I hurried to the main view.  Finally!  There was room to breath and the font fit really well.  Along the top bar, you have a quick switch for multiple accounts, a setting icon, a quick view of your profile (which you can edit!), a mark all read toggle, a drafts icon, and a compose icon!  That’s what I call great use of space.  Along the bottom, you have tabs for Timeline, Mentions, Messages, Search, Lists, Favorites, and Nearby.  There is no “More” or “…” tab for auxiliary features.  I like this approach because don’t want to hunt for my tools.

The iPad’s timeline is much like the one on the iPhone client where you simply drag down to refresh, saving precious space on the toolbar for other uses.  You can tap a users avatar to call up their profile which will detail their stats as you’d expect.  This is pretty useful to me since I like to see if a person is following me or not because having multiple accounts can become mentally straining to manage.  On that note, I would love to see Osfoora HD add the ability to follow a user to multiple accounts regardless which account I’m logged into.  This would be great if you happen to find a new user you’d like to follow on more than one of your Twitter accounts.  It would save time by not forcing you out of one account and into another, searching, then following.  A simple pop-over listing your configured accounts would be ideal and space saving.

Now there were some surprises that popped up (pun totally intended, did it work?) that I wasn’t expecting.  First, when I touched a tweet in the timeline or my mentions tab, a tray drops down from the top which offered some more features specific to that tweet.  Features like Reply/Reply All, Favorite, Retweet, Quote, Translate, DM, Email tweet, delete tweet (active only on your own tweets) and Conversation.  While I like the tray concept, I feel that perhaps it could become frustrating.  It’s easily dismissed by tapping the upward arrow on the right near the other function icons, but it comes up almost constantly since a single tap on a tweet launches it.  One idea I had was to suggest the implementation of a double tap gesture or even a tap long hold that would call up the tray view, which would be more of a conscious decision to call up.  One ancillary note worth mentioning is that Osfoora truly appreciates and listens to their user base, so I strongly suggest to you who have ideas and requests, get in touch with then on Twitter and through their website.  Your ideas will be heard.

Another thing I miss here is clickable links in the timeline tweets and the pop-over windows like in Twitteriffic.  Again, this points back to the tray view functionality which is valid.  I just think some separation wouldn’t hurt.  Similarly, if you re-tweet someone, there is no notification to show you did so.  Meaning, it would be nice to have something similar to @Twitteriffic’s added text on the tweet “RT’d by (username).”

All of these critiques are pretty small and certainly nothing that will prevent a serious or power user from using Osfoora as their one and only Twitter client on the iPad.  Compared to the rest, these are small potatoes.  The bar has been set In terms of design and feature integration with Osfoora.  With their track record of constant improvement and refinement only reinforces my stance; Osfoora will become one of the apps we look back on at the end of 2010 and add to our lists as one of the indispensable iPad and iPhone apps available.

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