The Real-Time Web at your fingertips

Thursday, 15 October 2009

We love getting your feedback. The ideas which you give us and the requests for changes or new features in TweetDeck really give us a buzz. Especially when we think we can really make ideas work and start to implement them. So imagine the excitement in the TweetDeck office just recently while we have been working on three of the most-requested features over recent months: improved notifications, keyboard navigation and Twitter follower management.

To see what we have come up with, head over to http://www.tweetdeck.com now to download version 0.31.

See who’s new without leaving TweetDeck

We have introduced a new column type - New Followers. This column will display your most recent new Twitter followers and allow you to perrform all the actions you would expect, including View profile, Follow, Unfollow, Block, Report spam and Add to Group…all without having to leave the comfort of your TweetDeck screen!

Cut out the noise with configurable notifications

TweetDeck has always been the best way to organise your social networking updates through the use of groups and searches, giving you unlimited columns in which to view your Twitter, Facebook & MySpace updates and more. But we know that there are some updates that are more important to you than others. You might read every tweet in your “All-Star Tweeters” group column without fail, but maybe your “Old School Friends” Facebook column is just one you peruse when you’re feeling like laughing at photos of you wearing a school cap and short trousers.

Previously TweetDeck would notify you in the same manner for each of these columns - the famous “chirp” sound and the pop-up notification window. Well, from v0.31 this notification system has been dramatically overhauled, so that it is now highly configurable and features a slick new design.

Some of the new features are:

• New “detail” window shows the full text of an update

• Inline reply, retweet & DM from notification box - no need to open full TweetDeck window

• Position the popup notifications in any corner of the screen

• Define notification options on a per-column basis

This allows you to really take control of your streams and ensure that you get to see your most important updates instantly, without having to filter through the “noise”.

The Real-Time Web at your fingertips

For many users, navigating TweetDeck with a mouse is not their preferred option, though until now it has been the only method available. In v0.31 however we have introduced a series of keyboard navigation options that we hope will help you manage your TweetDeck interactions without having to take your fingers off the keyboard.

For example, the cursor keys now allow scrolling up and down, left and right. C will open the compose window. Escape will close any menu.

The most exciting part of this new feature is what we are calling the Heads-Up Display (HUD). Instead of requiring lots of complicated key combinations and CTRL-ALT finger gymnastics, pressing SPACE on an update will display the HUD, which presents the most common actions for each type of update. Each action is associated with the keys A,S,D or F. Simply press the key for the action you want to perform, or move to it using the arrow keys and press ENTER.

We hope you’ll agree that this gives you keyboard fans out there a great new way to interact with your social networking friends with zero mouse clicks required.

And there’s more!

Thanks to some optimisation work, TweetDeck should now use up to 15% less memory than before. We have also been very busy fixing some outstanding issues that have been reported to our TweetDeck Support site. For full details of what is included in this release, please see the changelog.

You will also find lots of helpful FAQs which will explain the new features in a lot more detail.

Richard Barley, TweetDeck Community Manager