My Twitter Widget (previously Twitterlex) v1.2

This app is DISCONTINUED due to API changes at Twitter. It also broke the Twitter trademark policy.

My Twitter Widget was a simple Mac OS X Dashboard Widget that showed you the last 30 twitters by you and your Twitter friends, updating every 60 seconds when visible. When hidden, it updates every 5 minutes and sending Growl notifications if anyone has updated their status.

Twitterlex 1.2 Screenshot FrontTwitterlex 1.2 Screenshot Back

How to use

Mac OS X 10.4.3 Tiger or above is required.

If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

On your first install, the widget will flip over so you can provide it your Twitter username and password. Click Done and the widget will fetch the latest 30 status updates by you and your friends.

You can also update your own status right from within the widget by typing your new status into the box and clicking the button. At this point Twitter will also update the list to reflect your update.

FAQ – Frequently Assumed Questions

How do I disable the Growl notifications from the widget?

Open System Preferences, click on Growl, click on the Applications tab, then find the widget’s entry and change any notification options you want there. Check Growl’s documentation if you need more advice on Growl.

Change History

1.2 – 2007/02/07 – download

  • Twitter is standardising on 140 character length tweets, so changed to reflect that
  • Tweet button now says ‘Tweet’
  • Status update text box now marginally bigger… marginally.
  • Tweaked the background colour, just a little…

1.1 – 2007/01/28 – download

  • Now only updates every 5 minutes in the background.
  • Growl notification when a new statuses are detected while the widget is in the background.
  • Now includes update notification for future releases.
  • A little balloon appears warning the user when their status is getting close to or exceeding maximum allowed character.
  • Animations are now turned off when the dashboard is hidden.

1.0beta – 2007/01/21 – announcement, old download

  • Initial release

Known Bugs in 1.2

  • Growl notifications with quotes could come through inaccurately.

Todo

  • Support for public timeline feed?
  • Support for latest updates from friends feed?
  • Colour choices?

83 thoughts on “My Twitter Widget (previously Twitterlex) v1.2

  1. marrrq

    Great Widget! Works brilliantly. Thanks for this!

  2. Renata Rocha

    Hi, I’ve noticed a problem with quotes. Every time I type “quotes” into twitterlex, it shows the HTML entity "e; (although twitter displays correctly). Can you please check?

  3. Davey

    Nice widget, Brett. Been using it a few weeks now! I just thought I’d point out a potential security issue with the widget (and a few other widgets out there!) regarding the passwords and how they’re stored. I noticed that the password gets stored as plain text and can be exposed quite easily on the command line by typing in

    defaults find password

    May I suggest some password encryption in the next version?

  4. Guillaume Laforge

    I downloaded and installed the widget, however, it doesn’t seem to work for me. I entered my account / password, tried synchronizing (nothing appears) and twittering does nothing (the button sparkles, but nothing shows up). Is the widget still supposed to be working?

  5. Juan Manuel Acuña

    In response to: Guillaume Laforge , try pressing the “enter” key after de password. It works for my.

  6. D. Cootey

    I have two Twitter accounts. I mostly use Twitterrific, but do like to use Safari for account management. For my MacBook I have @TheLaughingImp logged into Safari. For my desktop I have @DouglasCootey logged into Safari. When on my MacBook, Twitterlex was setup to use @DouglasCootey. Oddly, even though Twitterlex posts my tweets properly to @DouglasCootey, it displays @TheLaughingImp’s stream. The only information I gave Twitterlex was @DouglasCootey’s. Are you using Safari’s cookies for the stream display? It’s very confusing and shouldn’t work that way. Perhaps you have a suggestion? Thanks.

  7. Peter Moricz | Liquid Media

    I started to use the widget, and it works fine – even the timestamp. BUT I can’t see the scrollbar and all the posts, but only the LAST one. Is it because my friends haven’t sent any posts, and the widget only shows the last one from mines?
    Thanks

  8. Druadan | Dude Wait What

    Nice widget, been using it for a while now but I’ve got two major problems.

    First up, it will stop working sometimes. It will display “Twitter: Druadan” and then the loading icon will just turn and turn and turn, without loading anything. The only way to fix it is to remove the widget and re-add it to the Dashboard.

    Second, URLs really need to be clickable, and HTML codes like &quot, &lt, and &gt need to be processed properly.

    Other than that, great app. I’m still using it as there are no other widgets whose screenshots indicate that they do anything other than submit my twitterations to the web.

  9. oriste

    Thank you, Juan Manuel Acuña, I was struggling with the same problem. You saved my day!

  10. Luc Dubois

    I am using version 1.2 and still see no timestamp (Mac OS X 10.5.2). The solution offered by Stephen Mitchell 4 months, 2 weeks ago would install version 1.0. Is that the recommended approach for this problem?

    Thanks for the widget.

  11. xurizaemon

    thx stephen for fixing those issues – great – hey brett – how about updating the d/l file pls, and flagging it >1.2?

    i downloaded a few days ago, not till i came back and read the error reports and found stephen’s post did i realise it wasn’t the most recent version 🙂

    cheers both of ya!

  12. Habbie

    Here’s a simple patch to make URLs clickable: http://www.paste-it.net/public/z1c87d4/

  13. Bill McGonigle

    Hey, this is great. I came here to request clickable URL’s, and found Stephen’s already done it. Fantastic guys – I hope the community changes can be taken upstream, it would save others the round-trip.

  14. Matt Hamel

    Hey, thanks for all your hard work on this widget! I think it’s the best Twitter one out there.
    Feature request: Is there a way to add support for links? Maybe it’s just me but I can’t click on links that are posted on twitter without actually clicking on their name to go to the post then clicking on the link. Thanks again for such a wonderful widget!

  15. Brent S.

    I have downloaded this widget, but it isn’t working. I typed in my username and password correctly but the tweets won’t show up and I am unable to post any new tweets. Can you help me out?

    My E-mail is [email protected], I would appreciate it if you could assist me so that I can make it work. 😀

  16. Austin

    Getting the “undefined” string where the time stamp should be. Leopard 10.5.4

  17. reagan

    Heya. I hear your Twitter app is the best out there. Unfortunately, I’ve installed it and no twitters are showing up. I tried posting one, then checked on twitter.com, and it did go through. I just can see any tweets on the dashboard app. (mine or friends)

    Any thoughts?

    Thanks!

  18. lindsay

    growl isn’t picking up twitterlex on the applications tab (so I’m getting no growl updates), has anyone has this problem before or know how to fix it?

  19. debbie

    hi i’ve a problem. whenever i type the symbol & the part after it will disappear, including & itself. but it’s ok when i update from web. it’s annoying somehow as i love using the symbol, and your widget really helps a lot so that i don’t need to login every time i want to make an update.
    and i also have the problem as Austin – “undefined” instead of time stamp is shown.
    thanks!

  20. Scott

    I also get the ‘undefined’ thing instead of ‘x [mins|hours|days| ago’.

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  22. Kathleen

    This is great! For some reason though, all the times are coming up as undefined… 🙂

  23. tman

    All of my tweets have “undefined” at the end too. 🙁

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  32. Frank

    Not sure if I understand this right…: Twitterlex is discontinued due to an API change since 2007? Why do I still find this on apple.com/downloads/dashboard, then? Wouldn’t it be time to take it down if it doesn’t work any more?

  33. I just spend 30 minutes trying to find the place to add or remove widgets from the apple widget directory. I can’t find it. At this rate, I’ll remove it if someone tells me how.

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