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So could someone please explain to me what is so great about Hahlo3 for the iPhone and Twitter? I have been trying to use this "web app" and it drives me crazy! In fact there have been literally hundreds of Tweets talking about how great this web app is.
So let me list off all the things I don't like about Hahlo3:
- No paging: I can only see about 20 of the latest Tweets that come my way. With m.twitter.com, I see all the Tweets I want since it has a way of paging back and forward.
Update: I should have stated that this is not Hahlo's fault but a limitation with the Twitter API that has not been corrected. All Twitter clients will have this problem in fact. Current desktop as well as native iPhone clients. - Taking a look at a link in a Tweet loses the place I was at when I return. Now, this may not be a fault of Hahlo3 since even m.twitter.com needs to reload thanks to Safari on the iPhone loosing the page almost all the time when looking at a new web page. However, m.twitter.com has less Tweets on a page so I can find the one I was at before leaving.
Update: As Dean (a representative of Hahlo) has pointed out to me in the comments, this is a limitation of Mobile Safari. Apparently if a new webpage takes up too much memory, previous web pages caches are lost to make room for the currently displayed page. This is something Apple should fix for Mobile Safari so that more than one web page can be kept in memory (within reason). It seems a bit unreasonable right now. - Hahlo3 has options for putting replies and your tweets inline with the friends timeline. However, the options don't currently work. Dean has straightened me out on this gripe. I misread some text under the options in Hahlo's settings to basically read that they wouldn't work if the options were turned on. In fact, they work fine. I just don't have any recent replies that would appear in the list of recent tweets and my personal tweets did, in fact, appear inline with the rest of the tweets.
- When I discover a new Twitter user I might want to follow, I can go to their profile and follow them, but I can't adjust the Device Updates for that user.
Update: I get the impression from Dean that this is a bug in the way I was bringing up the profile of a Twitter user I was not following. If I am correct and it is a bug, I suspect it will get corrected quickly. Apparently, if you look at a profile of someone you are following, you will see two buttons, one to stop following them and another to change the status of Device Notifications.
These are just the four top things that turn me off to the web app. There are so many other Twitter web apps out there and a couple that I like way more than Hahlo3.
I just can't understand all the positive comments being spit out to Twitter.
Now, don't get me wrong, I see all the good things about it too. Knowing how many characters are in the text fields is very important, the interface is well designed, getting around in the web app is great.
But to say that a web app is better than a soon to be written native iPhone app? No, I don't buy it, not at all.
So, honestly, what am I missing here that makes Hahlo3 so fantastic? I'm listening...
Update: I must say, I have received a lot of traffic from this post. I obviously hit a nerve when I posted it. This was my goal really. I really wanted to find out what was so special about Hahlo 3 and from the responses I got including one from a representative of Hahlo, Dean, I was able to clear up some of my gripes.
Plus, by looking up the info for replies to the comments, I found way more features in Hahlo3 that I even knew were there. I suggested to Dean that a webpage be setup to act as documentation for the web app so that us "slower" users (or at least myself) would have a clearer picture of what all Hahlo 3 can do.
Thank you one and all for your help. I am really beginning to see why there is such a buzz for the Hahlo 3.
Twitter
Jaiku
Pownce
May 5th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Have you tried the other iPhone clients available? Hahlo 3 fixes most of the problems reported with all of them. Sure, it has some glitches but some of those are due to the Twitter API flaws.
The biggest plus for Hahlo is the clean layout and access to almost all of Twitter’s features.
I’ll probably still buy a real iPhone Twitter app when it appears.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
@Kevin Hoctor: Yes, actually I have. I use PocketTweets along side of m.twitter.com. It’s pretty rare when I use PocketTweets since it has the same “non-paging” limitation that Hahlo3 has. However, if there is a reply to a recent tweet I want to send, then I’ll use PocketTweets, but if I am just posting an update, I use m.twitter.com.
m.twitter.com also gives me access to “most” of Twitter’s features and when I need the other features, I can simply tap the link to switch to the standard Twitter page and do what I need, then tap back to mobile.
I don’t watch Twitter constantly, so when I do look at it, I want to be able to see more than 20 tweets and the mobile Twitter page is apparently the only way to do this. I have gone as far back as 20 mobile Twitter pages (that’s about 10 of the other web apps).
Hopefully the native iPhone app’s that come out will allow me to access all the back pages I want to see. Otherwise I’ll be using Twitter’s mobile page forever. Or at least until the API is fixed so that the web apps can indeed page like Twitter’s mobile page.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
1. You can’t blame Hahlo, or any other third party client for that matter, about the lack of paging. IT IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE API, I thought the message at the bottom of the timeline made that fairly clear. For sure its most peoples biggest gripe, but there not much I can do about it with out capturing everyones tweets myself (and no I’m not going to do that.)
2. Thats a mobile safari thing, it can only store so much info in its memory, if opening a second (or third etc) page requires more memory it appears to unload the original page. Again not much I can do about it, which is why I made the ‘home’ page customisable, so that when it does reload you will go straight to your friends timeline (or what ever else you set it to)
3. Are you sure they don’t work…. I’m using them right now, as are many other people.
4. You can turn notifications (aka “device updates”) on or off via their profile, perhaps I should make this look more like a button.
@Dave M: native apps will use the same API, so I wouldn’t expect them to “fix” the paging issue either.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
@Dean: I have absolutely nothing against your web app. It’s as good as my personal favorite Twitter web app PocketTweets. As I stated in my reply to Kevin, it’s a limitation of the API that will hopefully get fixed sometime. It’s a complaint that keeps me away from all the web app versions of Twitter clients.
Thank you for clearing that up for me. I have always wondered why mobile Safari did that. It’s extremely frustrating when it happens. Apple apparently needs to give it’s iPhone users the ability to increase the size of the storage that mobile Safari uses so that this won’t happen when two “tabs” are open.
OK, I’ll have to fix this part of the post. I misunderstood the text under the options to read that if either of the options were set, they wouldn’t work correctly. Don’t ask me why I misread it that way. My mind is not what it used to be.
OK, I can see where the confusion is here. I guess I found a bug here. What I did was tap on an @reply link of someone I am not currently following. I then clicked the very large follow button to start following. After the page refreshed showing a much smaller follow button, the space for the device notification button was blank. I see the correct notification button if I look at the profile of someone I am currently following.
See, this is why I posted this in my blog. I wasn’t reviewing the software. I was looking for an explanation of why so many people were going gaga over the web app. The more I use it to check the responces I get here like yours, the more I am beginning to see what all the praise is for.
It is very nice. Actually, much better than PocketTweets. I can certainly see that a very large amount of time has gone into the web app to make it work as good as it does. Maybe what is needed is a webpage that doesn’t look like the iPhone app for desktop Safari to work as documentation for the app, since it clearly has features that may not be all that intuitive to some users like myself.
Thanks for your response here. It’s really what I was looking for and I will update the post now to reflect the new information.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Something like this perhaps:
http://deanjrobinson.com/projects/hahlo/
If you have any other questions, I’m more than happy to help you out.