New version with lots of new stuff

I know it took an age but I’ve finally got the new version finished. Download it from the link over on the right.

Yatca now recognises the ‘@username’ pattern and turns it into an active link wherever it occurs in a tweet, email, SMS, etc. Simply click on the link and you’ll be offered a command that enables you to view the current status for the user.

From there you can follow or unfollow the user if you choose. You’ll probably think it strange that both follow and unfollow are offered at the same time. This is necessary because Twitter deprecated the ability for applications to efficiently determine if a user is being followed or not.

Profile images are now displayed next to the user’s name when you’re reading a tweet. This is something that people have been asking for since version 1.0.1. The profile image for a user is retrieved the first time you read a tweet from that user and cached thereafter.

In addition to TwitPic, Yatca now supports five other image storage services: img.ly, Pikchur, TweetPhoto, Twitgoo, and yfrog. They all have something unique to offer so you might want to try them all out. You’ll find that some are more feature-rich while others run lean and mean and offer better performance. I decided that the fairest thing to do was default to the first entry in the alphabetically sorted list (so if you are developing a new image storage service and you would like it to be the Yatca default I suggest you call it ‘aa.ae’). This really is the only reason that img.ly is the default – it does not indicate a personal preference, recommendation or endorsement.

In the Messages application, the icons shown next to tweets you have read are now grayed out. This change was necessary because in some BlackBerry themes the Messages application does not use bold type to highlight unread items. This was making it difficult for users to tell read tweets from unread tweets. 

Previously when composing an update or a reply, pressing the ‘Photo’ button and uploading a photo would cause any text you had already typed to be blown away and replaced with the link to the uploaded image. This has been fixed and the link is now just inserted before any existing text. It’s the little things eh?

When Yatca truncates text now for any reason, it uses the proper ellipsis chatacter ‘…’ instead of a sequence of three dots ‘…’, thereby giving you two whole extra characters with which to tweet!

There is a new ‘Delete Read Yatca Items’ command which does exactly what it says.

Photos with portrait orientation can now be up to 640 pixels high vs the previous maximum of 480 pixels.

The ‘Replies for others’ filter setting has been removed from the ‘Incoming Item Options’ section. As a result of Twitter’s now infamous change, you’ll no longer receive any such replies anyway so there was no reason for Yatca to filter them.

Tags: blackberry, blackberry bold, blackberry storm, identica, laconica, twitter, yatca