QuickAdvice: Twitepad Jumps Into The Fray Of iPhone and iPad Twitter Apps
Twitepad ($1.99) by Infoxenter is yet another Twitter app for your iPad and iPhone.
Twitepad is unique in that it even has a full-scale browser in the iPad app that you can use alongside your tweeting.
I had a bit of trouble getting the iPhone version to work properly the first time. After getting my credentials in, I could not view the timeline, any @ mentions, direct messages, nothing.
However, I finally managed to get the iPhone app working. The interface is a bit basic and I found a bit of lag when I go between tabs. You get your lists and search, and Trending Topics is in the menu (but I think a better place for this is the Search).
The orange arrow on each tweet will bring up your options to Reply, Reply All, Send a Direct Message, RT, RT Classic, E-mail Tweet, Favorite, Translate, and Delete. Yes, you can 'delete' other tweets, which is useful if you want to get rid of some annoying tweets from someone.
The iPad app manages to work, but it's also a bit clunky. It's viewable in landscape and portrait mode, and it focuses on use of columns, like in other bigger Twitter apps such as TweetDeck. The default is to automatically add mentions and direct messages.
But there IS a way to get lists, it's just buried in a menu for the column. It would be much more efficient if it would give you this option when adding in a new column instead of adding unnecessary steps. Not to mention that to add a new column it's done at the very bottom, then to change the column content it's done at the very top. Efficiency would be having these options together.
You cannot scroll through the columns with simple finger swipes. No, instead of moving the screen, if you place your finger on the screen and swipe, it simply picks up a column and moves it. You are forced to use the arrow buttons at the very bottom to move through your columns. The only way swiping the screen works is if you're swiping the column to the left of the browser, but that's the only time from what I've noticed. Great if you want to rearrange your columns in a better way though.
Each column has the option for auto refresh from a slider, Quick Select (displays the menubar at the bottom), search, trending topics, lists, account, column delete, and theme.
Pressing the compose button will bring up an option to compose a new tweet or a direct message. Select a tweet and it will give you plenty of room to compose. You can add a picture, geotag the tweet, and shrink URLs.
There's a button that allows you to edit your account settings such as bit.ly account and Instapaper. It glitched on me before, which resulted in a shrunken compose area and no way to send a tweet. Unsure of what the cause is.
There's a character counter and an image preview if you have an image. Also your location on Google Maps if you allowed it. The trash can is there if you need to can it. The Direct Message option gives the same compose menu except a "D" is inserted already.
When you view a person's profile, it's displayed in a smaller little popup area that shows avatar, name, website, location, and bio. You see the number of friends, followers, tweets, and favorites. There's options to follow, unfollow, and add to list. The lists that the person created are viewable in here as well. Finally, the bottom presents the Block, Unblock, and Report as Spam options.
Another feature of the app was that it was supposed to be able to sync among multiple iPads and iPhones, which is great if you decide to get both the iPad and iPhone versions.
Once I got the apps working properly, it's decent. I'm not sure why but the iPhone app just simply did not work for me the first time, and only worked fine after I deleted and reinstalled it. If you want to keep your timeline synced, then this is a good app that will do that for you. The apps feels a bit laggy sometimes even on my iPhone 4, but I'd expect that the developer can improve this in future updates.
