Documentation for TWBlue - 0.88

Table of contents

Warning!

You are reading documentation produced for a program still in development. The object of this manual is to explain some details of the operation of the program. Bear in mind that as the software is in the process of active development, parts of this user guide may change in the near future, so it is advisable to keep checking from time to time to avoid missing important information.

If you want to see what has changed from the previous version, read the list of updates here.

Introduction

TWBlue is an application to make Twitter simple and fast, while using as few resources as possible. With TWBlue, you can do things like the following:

Usage

Twitter is a social networking or micro-blogging tool which allows you to compose short status updates of your activities in 280 characters or less. Twitter is a way for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. You can restrict delivery of updates to those in your circle of friends or, by default, allow anyone to access them.

You can monitor the status of updates from your friends, family or co-workers (known as following), and they in turn can read any updates you create, (known as followers). The updates are referred to as Tweets. The Tweets are posted to your Twitter profile or Blog and are searchable using Twitter Search.

In order to use TWBlue, you must first have created an account on the Twitter website. The process for signing up for a Twitter account is very accessible. During the account registration, you will need to choose a Twitter username. This serves two purposes. This is the method through which people will comunicate with you, but most importantly, your username and password will be required to connect TWBlue to your Twitter account. We suggest you choose a username which is memorable both to you and the people you hope will follow you.

We'll start from the premise that you have a Twitter account with its corresponding username and password.

Authorising the application

First of all, it's necessary to authorise the program so it can access your Twitter account and act on your behalf. The authorisation process is quite simple, and the program never retains data such as your password. In order to authorise the application, you just need to run the main executable file, called TWBlue.exe (on some computers it may appear simply as TWBlue if Windows Explorer is not set to display file extensions). We suggest you may like to place a Windows shortcut on your Desktop pointing to this executable file for quick and easy location.

You can log into several Twitter accounts simultaneously. The program refers to each Twitter account you have configured as a "Session". If this is the first time you have launched TWBlue, and if no Twitter session exists, you will see the Session Manager. This dialogue box allows you to authorise as many accounts as you wish. If you press the Tab key to reach the "new account" button and activate it by pressing the Space Bar, a dialogue box will advise you that your default internet browser will be opened in order to authorise the application and you will be asked if you would like to continue. Activate the "yes" Button by pressing the letter "Y" so the process may start.

Your default browser will open on the Twitter page to request authorisation. Enter your username and password into the appropriate edit fields if you're not already logged in, select the authorise button, and press it.

Once you've authorised your twitter account, the website will redirect you to a page which will notify you that TWBlue has been authorised successfully. Now you are able to close the page by pressing ALT+F4 which will return you to the Session Manager. On the session list, you will see a new item temporarily called "Authorised account x" -where x is a number. The session name will change once you open that session.

To start running TWBlue, press the Ok button in the Session Manager dialogue. By default, the program starts all the configured sessions automatically, however, you can change this behavior.

If all went well, the application will start playing sounds, indicating your data is being updated.

When the process is finished, by default the program will play another sound, and the screen reader will say "ready" (this behaviour can be configured).

General concepts

Before starting to describe TWBlue's usage, we'll explain some concepts that will be used extensively throughout this manual.

Buffer

A buffer is a list of items to manage the data which arrives from Twitter, after being processed by the application. When you configure a new session on TWBlue and start it, many buffers are created. Each of them may contain some of the items which this program works with: Tweets, direct messages, users, trends or events. According to the buffer you are focusing, you will be able to do different actions with these items.

The following is a description for every one of TWBlue's buffers and the kind of items they work with.

If a tweet contains a URL, you can press enter in the GUI or Control + Windows + Enter in the invisible interface to open it. If it contains audio, you can press Control + Enter or Control + Windows + Alt + Enter to play it, respectively. TWBlue will play a sound if the tweet contains the #audio hashtag, but there may be tweets which contain audio without this. Finally, if a tweet contains geographical information, you can press Control + Windows + G in the invisible interface to retrieve it.

Username fields

These fields accept a Twitter username (without the at sign) as the input. They are present in the send direct message and the user actions dialogue boxes. Those dialogues will be discussed later. The initial value of these fields depends on where they were opened from. They are prepopulated with the username of the sender of the focused tweet (if they were opened from the home and sent timelines, from users' timelines or from lists), the sender of the focused direct message (if from the received or sent direct message buffers) or in the focused user (if from the followers' or friends' buffer). If one of those dialogue boxes is opened from a tweet, and if there are more users mentioned in it, you can use the arrow keys to switch between them. Alternatively, you can also type a username.

The program's interfaces

The graphical user interface (GUI)

The graphical user interface of TWBlue consists of a window containing:

The actions that are available for every item will be described later.

In summary, the GUI contains two core components. These are the controls you will find while pressing the Tab key within the program's interface, and the different elements present on the menu bar.

Buttons in the application

Bear in mind that buttons will appear according to which actions are possible on the list you are browsing. For example, on the home timeline, mentions, sent, likes and user timelines you will see the four buttons, while on the direct messages list you'll only get the direct message and tweet buttons, and on friends and followers lists the direct message, tweet, and mention buttons will be available.

Visually, Towards the top of the main application window, can be found a menu bar which contains many of the same functions as listed in the previous section, together with some additional items. To access the menu bar, press the alt key. You will find six menus listed: application, tweet, user, buffer, audio and help. This section describes the items on each one of them.

Application menu
Tweet menu
User menu
Buffer menu
Audio menu
Help menu

The invisible user interface

The invisible interface, as its name suggests, has no graphical window and works directly with screen readers such as JAWS for Windows, NVDA and System Access. This interface is disabled by default, but you can enable it by pressing Control + M. It works similarly to TheQube and Chicken Nugget. Its shortcuts are similar to those found in these two clients. In addition, the program has builtin support for the keymaps for these applications, configurable through the global settings dialogue. By default, you cannot use this interface's shortcuts in the GUI, but you can configure this in the global settings dialogue.

The next section contains a list of keyboard shortcuts for both interfaces. Bear in mind that we will only describe the default keymap.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts of the graphical user interface (GUI)

Shortcuts of the invisible interface (default keymap)

The invisible interface of TWBlue can be customised by using a keymap. Every keymap defines a set of keystrokes to be used along with the invisible interface. You can change the keymap in the global settings dialogue, under the application menu in the menu bar, and check or edit keystrokes for the selected keymap in the keystroke editor, also available in the application menu.

Configuration

As described above, this application has two configuration dialogues, the global settings dialogue and the account settings dialogue.

The account settings dialogue

General tab

buffers tab

This tab displays a list for each buffer you have available in TWBlue, except for searches, timelines, likes' timelines and lists. You can show, hide and move them.

The ignored clients tab

In this tab, you can add and remove clients to be ignored by the program.

Sound tab

In this tab, you can adjust the sound volume, select the input and output device and set the soundpack used by the program.

Audio service tab

In this tab, you can enter your SndUp API key (if you have one) to upload audio to SndUp with your account. Note that if account credentials are not specified you will upload anonimously.

Global settings

This dialogue allows you to configure some settings which will affect the entire application.

General tab {#general-tab_1}

Proxi tab

In this tab you can configure TWBlue to use a Proxy server by completing the fields displayed (type, server, port, user and password).

License, source code and donations

Tw Blue is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL license, either version 2 or, at your option, any later version. You can view the license in the file named license.txt, or online at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html.

The source code of the program is available on GitHub at https://www.github.com/manuelcortez/twblue.

If you want to donate to the project, you can do so at https://twblue.es/donate. Thank you for your support!

Contact

If you still have questions after reading this document, if you wish to collaborate to the project in some other way, or if you simply want to get in touch with the application developer, follow the Twitter account @tw_blue2 or @manuelcortez00. You can also visit our website

Credits

TWBlue is developed and maintained by Manuel Cortéz and José Manuel Delicado.

We would also like to thank the translators of TWBlue, who have allowed the spreading of the application.

Many thanks also to the people who worked on the documentation. Initially, Manuel Cortez did the documentation in Spanish, and translated to English by Bryner Villalobos, Robert Spangler, Sussan Rey, Anibal Hernandez, and Holly Scott-Gardner. It was updated by Sukil Etxenike, with some valuable corrections by Brian Hartgen and Bill Dengler.


Copyright © 2013-2017. Manuel Cortéz