v4 Feedback thread

📣

I’m very close to shipping Better TweetDeck 4 and I need folks to test it to see if everything works fine.

If you’re interested in testing, please grab the appropriate version for your browser, run it, and comment in this thread if you find anything broken!

better-tweetdeck-4.0.0.chrome.zip better-tweetdeck-4.0.0.firefox.zip better-tweetdeck-4.0.0.safari.zip

A few notes:

• The Chrome version can and will run on Opera/New Edge just fine.
• You will need to load the extension as unpacked in Chrome/Edge/Opera/Firefox
  • Instructions for Firefox
  • Instructions for Edge
  • Instructions for Chrome (see second part of “Create the manifest” step)
  • Instructions for Opera (step 4)
• As far as I can tell the Safari version should be properly signed, let me know if it is not.
• If you’re interested in translating the extension into your language, please ping me! I’ll tackle the French translation before/shortly after release but I know I’ll need help for locales that were previously supported.
• I’m considering v4.0.0 to be feature frozen. Meaning that I won’t add any features to it. Anything new will come in subsequent versions. I need feedbacks about bugs/things broken.
• If you agree with a specific comment, use the emoji reactions to keep the thread clean.

Changelog

This work was done over the span of 2 years so I’m probably forgetting some details, but I truly believe it is for the best and Better TweetDeck will be made even better (eh) for it.

Misc

Better TweetDeck was completely rewritten from scratch using modern tooling:

• The codebase is using fully using TypeScript.
• The UI elements injected into TweetDeck use dom-chef or React
• The settings page is fully built using React
• The tooling uses Webpack 5 and the TypeScript compiler for JS transpiling
• Most if not all features have been rewritten, fixing a lot of small bugs I never had time to tackle or just improve them in some ways

All of those changes were made for a couple of reasons:

• Makes the codebase easier to maintain
• Makes BTD lighter/faster (I haven’t made actual measurements but less code is always faster to run 😛)

New things/features

• Completely new UI for the settings
  • There’s an import/export feature (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/467)
• Possibility to change the accent color
• A new “Super Black” theme
• A “new” “Old Gray” theme (which replaces the related setting in v3)
• Can choose to switch between a dark theme and the light theme automatically following your OS’ settings (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/497)
• Single images can be shown with their original aspect ratio (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/525)
• Tweet “cards” (link previews) can be shown in the columns (sorta fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/515)
• You can choose to display the “like from accounts…” dialog when clicking the like button (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/486)
• You can add a “Delete” button on top of columns (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/241)
• Quote tweets with images are displayed like on Twitter Web (semi-fix for https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/531)
• You can display fullscreen images like on Twitter Web (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/488)
• BTD updates the regex used for Twemoji (= TweetDeck can properly display newer emojis)
• You can add a “Remove” button to each column (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/482)
• Make Trending column collapsable (partly fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/382)
• Fix thinner scrollbars on Trending column (fixes https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck/issues/527)

Improvements on existing features

• The emoji picker now uses emoji-mart instead of being 100% custom
  • The emoji auto-completion also uses emoji-mart for its data
  • The emoji list aren’t completely up-to-date. emoji-mart hasn’t updated and I don’t know yet if I can update the data independently so this will be done later one
• The “verified badge” setting now can show both verified AND translator badges
• The “Old Gray” theme was made from the ground up. It’s not a 100% reproduction anymore but it will be much easier for me to maintain.
• The Custom CSS setting now uses the Monaco editor, which should provide a better experience when editing code in there.

Removed (because obsolete/not used a lot)

If you somehow really depend on a given removed feature, comment about it and I can try to squeeze it in a future v4 release.

Applied by default

• Removed the “When you collapse a column, it will pause the feed it so that it can light up when its contents change while collapsed and it stays where you last saw it” (applied by default)
• Removed the “When you uncollapse a column, it will unpause the feed it so that it automatically scrolls back to the top instead of staying where you left it” (applied by default)
• BTD’s logo is always applied in the bottom left corner

Made obsolete by TweetDeck

• Removed the “Hide in reply to label on mentions” feature
• Removed the “use the system font in the UI” setting since TweetDeck does it natively

Removed for other reasons

• Image/video/audio thumbnails. See reasoning in https://twitter.com/BetterTDeck/status/1366974655077097473. They’re made obsolete by the link preview feature IMO.
• Removed the “make tweets flash” feature
• Removed the “Holding Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) while clicking: favorite / retweet / download will allow you to follow from the” feature

Not present right now but will be brought back

• The “share on TweetDeck” contextual menu item isn’t enabled yet. I’ll re-add settings for it at a later time (I barely use it so I didn’t notice it until yesterday…)

[NitroxydeX]

I’m using Chrome Version 89.0.4389.90

• “Style of scrollbars” under Settings -> Theme doesn’t do anything. It stays on it’s default size.
• Emoji-picker closes most of the time when clicking on the emoji category.

[eramdam]

@NitroxydeX @jaxidian @klec29 @raulcraveiro I fixed the issues you folks reported. Check the main comment for updated builds 🙇‍♂️