Starting the program and logging into Twitter

After installation, start twhirl either from your desktop or from the start menu (depends on your selection during installation).

Multi-Account Support

twhirl supports handling multiple Twitter accounts. For every user account you set up, exactly one twitter window can be opened, and every twitter window has to be associated with exactly one account.

Accounts are managed in the accounts window, which provides a list of all the usernames you set up in twhirl, and some buttons to work with your accounts. The accounts window will open when you start twhirl and you have not set up any accounts, or none of your accounts is configured to automatically connect.

manage your accounts

The first start

The first time you start twhirl, it will open the accounts window, where you can add your Twitter account(s). To add a new username, enter it into the input field at the bottom and press [Return] or click the button to the right, it will then be added to the list. If you want to use more than one account, repeat this for every username.

Connecting to twitter

After adding your account(s), you can open a twhirl window by selecting a username from the list and clicking on “Connect”. For each username, you can open one window. If you try to open a second window for a username, twhirl will bring the existing window to front.

login: enter your password

If twhirl does not know the password for a username, it will prompt you to enter it when you try to connect to that account. You can also choose if twhirl should remember the password, so you will not be prompted again when you connect to twhirl the next time.

Next starts

By default, when you start twhirl, it will open a window for every account it knows about and connect to Twitter. This can be disabled on a per-account basis. If there is at lease one account it auto-connects to, the accounts window will not show up, but can be reached by clicking the twhirl logo at the top left corner of all twitter windows.

Working With Twitter Windows

twhirl supports a sys tray icon (Windows) / dock icon (Mac), which adds a menu to open the accounts window, open any configured twitter window, resetting window positions and quitting the application.

The default behaviour of twitter windows is to completely hide from the desktop when they are minimized, so they will not show up in the taskbar. To get them back on screen, open the sys tray / dock icon menu and use the “Open” submenu. If you do not like this, you can configure every account to not hide when minimized (see the section on configuration).

If you have more than one account connected to Twitter, you can cycle through the windows using the key shortcut Ctrl-TAB. It will open and activate the next window, no matter if it is minimized or on-screen.

On Windows, the sys tray icons adds a neat little feature to hide and restore all twitter windows with one (or two) clicks: When you have open, non-minimized twitter windows on your desktop, a left mouse click will minimize them all. When all twitter windows are minimized and you left-click on the icon, all connected (and minimized) windows are restored to your desktop. So with at most two clicks, you have all connected windows back on the desktop.

Quit twhirl

There are a few ways to exit twhirl. The first option is to close all of its windows by clicking the close button in their top right corner. Or, you could open the accounts window and click on “Exit twhirl”. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Q will exit twhirl immediately. Lastly, opening the sys tray icon / dock icon menu and selecting “Exit twhirl” will also get you out.

Updating your status

If you want to update your status, reply to another user or a direct message to someone, enter the text into the input area at the bottom and hit [Return] to send it to Twitter.

update status

twhirl allows you to hide the input area to see more tweets in the list. The small speech bubble icon at the bottom left toggles its visibility. If you want twhirl to hide the input area automatically after sending, enable “auto-hide tweet input area” in account’s configuration.

Sending replies and direct messages

twhirl uses the same syntax for sending replies as the Twitter website does, simply prefix your post with “@username “. To send someone a direct message, you have to prefix your post with “d username “, and all following text will be delivered as a direct message (note that you can only send direct messages to users that follow your updates, otherwise an error will occur).

mouse-over a tweet twhirl offers shortcut buttons for replying and direct messaging. If you move your mouse over a tweet, you will see small buttons appear on top of the user’s avatar. Use the “reply” and “direct msg” buttons to insert the appropriate strings into the input area.

Favorites

When moving the mouse over a tweet, you can make it a favorite by simply clicking the “heart” button. On the Favorites view, you can see your 20 latest favorites, and also unset the favor status on a tweet by moving the mouse over the tweet and clicking the “un-favor” button.

Changing between panels

The timeline is the default view in twhirl, but there are a lot of other views, too. You can change the active panel by opening the combo box at the bottom and selecting another entry.

Tweets, replies and direct messages are auto-refreshed by twhirl, unless you configure it not to do so.

Profile lookups

On the Lookup panel, you can look up other users’ profiles. Simply enter a twitter username and hit [Return] or click the search button to the right. If the user exists and you are allowed to access his profile, twhirl loads information about him and his last 20 tweets. By using the message button, you can send a direct message (Twitter will not allow you to send him/her a direct message if the user is not following your updates!).

Following users

You can add users to the list of those you follow from twhirl. To follow a user’s updates, go to the lookup panel and enter his/her screen name, then use the “plus” button at the right. Or go the followers panel, move your mouse over a profile image and click the “plus” button.

You can unfollow someone’s tweets by going to your friends list, mouse over the profile image, and click the minus button.

Unfortunately, Twitter does not expose the following status of a user through its API, so twhirl does not know if you follow a user. It can only “guess” from how you retrieved the user. If Twitter will improve its support for in this area, it will alsow become available in twhirl.

Keyboard shortcuts

twhirl provides keyboard shortcuts for switching panels, updating your status or quitting the application. The following lists the available combinations:

• Ctrl-TAB - cycle through all connected twitter windows
• Ctrl-LEFT - open the previous panel
• Ctrl-RIGHT - open the next panel
• T / F1 - go to timeline panel
• R / F2 - go to replies panel
• A / F3 - go to archive panel
• D / F4 - go to direct messages panel
• S / F5 - go to favorites panel
• F / F6 - go to friends panel
• W / F7 - go to followers panel
• L / F8 - go to profile lookup panel
• Y / F9 - go to profile lookup panel
• U / F12 - begin writing a status update
• M - open accounts window
• O - open configuration
• Ctrl-Q - quit twhirl

For obvious reasons, the single-letter shortcuts will not work while you are editing text!