08.08.08
Update to All Tweets Considered
I made two big changes and a few minor tweaks to the all tweets app.
The first thing I did was switch from using the search.twitter.com atom API to using their JSON API. The big difference was that the JSON output includes the correct date and time for each tweet. I think the app is much more usable if you know when something was said, and not just what. It’s especially useful for those search terms that don’t get updated too often and the conversations were months ago.
I’m not super happy with the style on the date. It’s pushed over to the right like I wanted, but it tends to be at different vertical alignments in the result box, depending on the length of the tweet. Maybe I should move it to the top right instead of the bottom right. It might be easier to position that way.
While updating the HTML for the switch to JSON, I added links back to the original poster.
The second change I made was to add more calls to the NPR API. I added a javascript call to get the top three stories from the NPR News topic. It was very easy to do using the Query Generator. I thought that if someone was using the all tweets app, then they’re probably the right audience for seeing actual NPR content. There seemed to be enough space there.
I also added a mouse over event to every link in the navigation. This opens up a popup div next to the menu showing the top story for whichever program, topic, or person the user is hovering over. I do this with an iframe that uses the HTML widget as it’s source, and a little CSS styling to make it look seamless.
I put this one in just for fun, and to see if it would work. I’m torn. I think it’s a neat effect, and definitely a blast to go down the list and see a wide range of NPR content. However, it’s very busy and doesn’t go with the Twitter theme. It’s just extraneous. It may be something that’s a better fit with a different type of app.
That said, I’m going to keep it in for now. My justification is the Rule of Cool.
The original search.twitter.com has a very slick way of calling back to the server and displaying that there are new results for the query. I’m thinking of doing something similar. I don’t think it would be too hard using AJAX.