Twitterrific Update Takes Center Stage
Twitterrific, the popular Twitter client developed by The Iconfactory, has just received an update that most notably introduces a new way to view and browse media in the app.
According to The Iconfactory, one of the features most requested by users of Twitterrific has been a media-focused timeline, which is something that has been offered for quite some time by Tweetbot, Twitterrific’s chief competitor in the third-party Twitter app space. And now, Twitterrific has gained such a feature. But while Tweetbot simply filters out the non-media tweets to display a scrollable media-only timeline, Twitterrific offers a markedly different media-focused experience in the form of Center Stage.
Center Stage is a sort of full-screen overlay that lets you see and browse through all tweets that have media attachments, including photos, videos, or animated GIFs.
Enter Center Stage
There are several ways to access Center Stage. The main one is by tapping the Center Stage icon at the top of the timeline, just below the Compose icon. You can also enter Center Stage from the media viewer: After tapping the thumbnail of a photo, video, or GIF to view it, you can tap the Center Stage icon at the lower right corner of the screen. Moreover, you can go to Center Stage from a user profile just by tapping any of the media thumbnails and then tapping the Center Stage icon.
Browse Center Stage
In Center Stage, the tweet to which the currently displayed photo, video, or GIF is attached is displayed at the bottom of the screen, which you can retweet and like. Swipe down on the image or on the tweet to hide the tweet. Tap on the screen to hide the on-screen controls and focus on the current image, and then tap again to bring them back. Swipe left and right to go from one media entry to the next, automatically skipping all tweets that don’t have media attachments. Tap the rewind button to jump back to your original reading position without marking the intervening tweets as read. Tap the close button at the top or the body of the tweet at the bottom to exit Center Stage.
Center Stage is fully compatible with VoiceOver. It can also be fully navigated using an external keyboard, with support for moving between entries using the arrow keys, exiting using CMD+W, and rewinding using the R key, among other keyboard commands (which can be viewed by holding down the CMD key).
Center Stage provides a neat way for browsing media attachments in timelines and keeping track of media-centric searches. I can see myself using it especially during special events such as tech conferences and awards shows.
In addition to Center Stage, the latest update to Twitterrific adds the ability to zoom photos, videos, and GIFs by pinching on them and the ability to pause and play videos and animated GIFs by tapping on them.
Furthermore, the update brings some bug fixes and the following improvements:
- Improved audio ducking performance when viewing a video
- Tweets that quote your own tweets are now color-coded as mentions
- Reduced popup background blur opacity
- Photo zoom levels no longer reset when higher resolution versions finish loading
- Visual tweaks to the timeline search bar for a cleaner, less cluttered look
- Phrase muffle rules now look for a word boundary on both ends of the phrase
- Muffle phrases can include a prefix and/or suffix of “*” to act as a wildcard match
- Shared conversation threads and reply chains now sorted from oldest to newest
- Eliminated several causes of extraneous requests to Twitter’s API
- Leaving a timeline no longer clears the search field
- Added a sound effect when un-liking a tweet
- Removed img.ly support since it is defunct
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