Web-Based or Mac OS X Twitter Client with Navigation, Deletion/Hide of Read Tweets, and URL Launch -- All Via Keyboard Shortcuts?

April 21, 2009 3:52 PM

Looking for a Twitter client with very specific certain requirements. Does it exist?

I've recently decided to get more involved in Twitterdom, after a long time of ignoring it. My wishlist:

(1) I'd like to be able to navigate through tweets via the keyboard (think "j" and "k" in Google Reader).

(2) I'd like to be able to hit a key to launch a URL that is WITHIN a tweet in my default browser. As a fallback, the key could open up the tweet on the Twitter website.

(3) I'd like to be able to remove a tweet from my timeline view -- again, by a keystroke (Delete key, Backspace key, etc.).

(Intense keyboard navigation is really preferred here.)

(4) The one thing in this new very-hyped Tweetie I'm liking is the ability to quickly bring up a full thread of a conversation view.

(5) I don't mind if it's on the Web or a Mac OS X native client or a Gmail gadget or what have you -- a Mac OS X native client is most useful but by no means required. I'm not looking for something that is Windows-only or iPhone-only.

Does this exist?

posted by WCityMike to computers & internet (6 comments total)

From Twitterific:

Keyboard Shortcuts
The following list shows keyboard commands that can be used while the Twitterrific window is active (its title is highlighted in yellow.) The most common ones can also be seen in the action menu.

⌘⌫ - Delete the selected tweet
→ - Open the links in the currently selected tweet
⌥↑ - Go to the newest tweet
⌥↓ - Go to the oldest tweet
Spacebar - Select next unread tweet
posted by davebug at 4:57 PM on April 21

Right, but the deletion only works for direct messages. I'm saying that if I've read something and hit a hide or deletion key, I don't want to see it anymore ... like an e-mail.
posted by WCityMike at 5:54 PM on April 21

I don't know if it has ALL the keyboard shortcuts, but I've been digging Nambu a lot.
posted by cdmwebs at 6:25 PM on April 21

I don't know of any Twitter client that works like that and I've tried most of them.

As a longtime Twitter user I think that part of the reason is that Twitter itself isn't really designed like that. Twitter isn't really about managing individual messages as much as it is about establishing and managing streams of messages. So most (or maybe all) Twitter apps (including their own web interface) don't really do much about the display of individual messages. The only real exception to this the favourites function, and as you say, direct messages.

Note that I'm not suggesting you should LIKE it that way, just trying help you to understand better why what you're looking for doesn't exist (if in fact it doesn't, I haven't seen everything!).
posted by mikel at 6:27 PM on April 21 [1 favorite has favorites]

I have also used just about every Twitter client out there for Mac, and I can't recall one that lets you "delete" tweets in the sense that you would an email in your inbox. That's really not how Twitter was intended to work. I can understand why you would want to have a view like this, but I don't think you'll get exactly what you want. The closest you can get is having all the read tweets go dark or faded. Twitterrific and many other clients do this.
posted by joshrholloway at 9:11 PM on April 21

Thanks, everyone. I looked at what was out there and picked Nambu.
posted by WCityMike at 10:31 PM on April 21