Troys: One Twitter Script to Rule Them All
Over the past year, all the major tech blogs have done round-up articles of great Greasemonkey scripts to use with Twitter (including us). What this says about Twitter's native functionality we aren't sure, but we know we've had upwards of 10 separate scripts installed and active at different times.
All that is going to end, at least for the next little while, as we have just found the GM script that does everything (and we mean everything). It's the innocently named, Troy's Twitter Script (created by Troy Thompson) that we first noticed written up over on TechRaga.
After installing the script and visiting Twitter, we found so many useful tweaks to almost every Twitter view that it was almost overwhelming. Here's what it does broken down into three main functionalities:
- Enhancement: Links in tweets are automatically expanded and replaced with the target page title if available. Media like YouTube videos and Twitpic images are included in-line. Hashtags are converted to Twitter search links. Auto-pagination is enabled as you get to the bottom of the current page. The 'definitions' area is hidden. Last but not least, replies are included underneath the latest tweet, indented and smaller (great for those of you still using the default "include all @replies" in your settings!)
- Functionality: Hovering over a tweet shows default actions like star (save), reply, and retweet. Long URLs are automatically shortened if the tweet you are typing in exceeds the length limit. Twitter names get autocomplete launched by typing an @ in a tweet. Twitter bio text gets inserted into following/followers list.
New Hotness: A new search field added to Twitter sidebar. Any searches performed from sidebar get saved and added to the sidebar (removable). A tiny smilie face is added to the Twitter icon of those people who are following you. When viewing a specific Twitter user, their social graph is inserted in the bio area. Notes can be added to any user's Twitter page. Local time is added if the user's time zone is in their profile. Map to user's location is inserted if location or geo coordinates are in their profile. Finally, the most awesome addition: Groups support in your followers/following tabs, you can add people to groups that show up in the Twitter sidebar.
Troy's Twitter script, in our opinion, is crazy awesome. If you find yourself in a memory crunch and prefer not to use a standalone Twitter application, and use Firefox, this script is a must-have. In fact, it's too bad that Greasemonkey scripts really only work well in Firefox, because it sure would be great to have all these features in every browser out there. To that end, you can try using Greasemetal (covered here) for Chrome, or GreaseKit for Safari on Mac OSX.
Update: There's a modified version of Troy's script that adds a link in the user profile to the Mailana user analysis app, Top Twitter Friends. This feature should be rolled into the main script in the next version.
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.
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Love this script! When I'm hit with API limits, I always turn to it. Not to mention it's great to see the bios of followers next to their names on pages. Lets you easily root out spammers.
Hmmm. Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome.
Thanks much for this! Looks good so far....
Yeah - you can customize twitter and facebook now with user scripts as well. It's incredible. I use Outlook though, at least for emailing. Grab Outlook Track-It and you basically have another social media program. Track-It reminds you to follow up to certain e-mails. Twitter/Facebook can't do that (yet).
"...it's too bad that Greasemonkey scripts really only work well in Firefox, because it sure would be great to have all these features in every browser out there. To that end, you can try using Greasemetal (covered here) for Chrome, or GreaseKit for Safari on Mac OSX."
Not mentioned, "greasemonkey on steroids" for Android;
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using it, testing it, liking it, although it seems slowing down the page load a bit, and making the twitter seems a bit foreign, or maybe even more "insecure". If sluggishness continues I might uninstall.
Nevertheless, this tool will kill bunch of unnecessary twitter apps that take user to their own website.
This script with greasemonkey on flock browser or firefox is totally amazing!!!! The fuctionality for twitter is a gold mine. And it's TOTALLY FREEEEEEEEE. I'm Like a kid in a Candy Store with a $100 Bill. Awesome, Thank you read write web & Troy.
This story is very popular on Twitter right now, with 200+ mentions as I write this already!
While you're trying Troy's script, also pay attention to its Notes feature. You can find it just below the RSS feed icon in the sidebar. With Notes you can quickly annotate the current Twitter profile, for example to remember why you started to follow that person. They are stored in your Firefox profile on your hard drive.
Troy Thompson updates his script several times a week. Check the release notes on the script home page to see what's been added most recently. If you become a member of Userscripts.org, you can favorite the script so that you can easily find it back.
Troy's script blends just perfectly with another favorite Twitter script of mine, called Friends Bio at a Glance. It adds extended bio information to your Followers and Followings pages. Script home page: http://sn.im/friends_bio
Marjolein,
You are right about the notes feature, I overlooked adding that to my summary of features! It is yet another fantastic ability of this script. Thanks!
They are stored in your Firefox profile on your hard drive.
With Notes you can quickly annotate the current Twitter profile, for example to remember why you started to follow that person
Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.
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This is nice, but I'm don't think Twitter is going to like it.
The "show replies" feature generates a lot of requests (use FireBug to see) often 10-20 per page depending on the number of replies. Twitter limits you to 100/requests using the API, but this doesn't use the API and each request is probably heavier than a API request to Twitter.
Browsers only typically do 2 AJAX requests at a time so there is bit of delay while each page takes a second or two to come down, so there is bit of delay on page load.
cool script, thanks for sharing. http://www.cometocapetown.com
@Richard Cunningham
Your right, Twitter wont like it. I don't like it to be honest. However twitter's api costs do not make a whole lot of sense.
e.g.
* an entire timeline of tweets costs 1 api token
* a single tweet, also costs 1 api token
Better solution... give 300 tokens. 1 per tweet requested.
Even better solution, let me request multiple tweets by ID at the same time.
I do however cache whatever tweets the browser grabs, so this only happens once.
Cache is cleared every two days.
@grant
Yes, it will slow down your load times, however how much time to you spend trying to decipher URLs, understanding what tweets were in reply to, etc? ... Also everything is cached so initial load is bad but the next load will not be so bad.
Troy's is great its displaying Twitter how it should be. If Twitter was actually like this, far more users would be impressed by their service regardless of their "fail whale"
Posted by: Nicholas James
|
April 25, 2009 8:21 AM
I see Greasemonkey scripts as workarounds. Don't get me wrong. They can do great things, but it doesn't feel very reliable to add extra features to a website that aren't actually there.
You can use greasemonkey scripts in opera as well, simply save it and then point the javascript preferences to the user script folder!
I really hope Twitter itself implement some of this in the near future; since they're already going to be rolling out search to all users I'm not going to focus on that point but the URL expander should be available for all users now since it's doing the same on Twitter Search.
Posted by: Nicholas James
|
April 25, 2009 8:18 PM
@Troy Yeah I know, I go through this all the time with the Twitter API all the time on http://friendbinder.com. Just try getting a full list of someone's friends when you can only do 100 at a time and they have 10,000+ friends, it busts the limit right away.
This is the bomb!
This is the bomb!
Dear Richard Cunningham,
I'm not trying to be sarky, I genuinely am curious: how does anyone have 10000 friends? I estimate that I would have 500 if I had kept in touch with everyone I was friendly with since 15 (20 years). I suppose you could be 55...Thanks, maia
I just installed the script to my firefox browser and it is CRAZY AWESOME indeed! I love it, especially the feature whereby media like youtube videos and twitpic images are included in-line. Great job, Troy Thompson.
I am glad that you pointed this out to me.
Maybe I can add some of these features to my script.
Great post!
Regards,
Ryan Bessling
http://tweetriches.com
It blows my mind that Twitter still hasn't incorporated these features.
Just what I need. This is a great collection!
Dave, that's true. Probably too True. And Bacarli, I also found Outlook Track-It for Outlook 2007. I'm actually pretty glad it's catching on as a hot add-on. The followup email reminders are pure help.
Nevertheless, this tool will kill bunch of unnecessary twitter apps that take user to their own website.
This is the bomb!
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This is a stupid question, but I am new to using scripts. Can someone tell me how to install this on a Mac?
Thanks, and again, I apologize for not knowing...
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Auto-pagination is enabled as you get to the bottom of the current page