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Tweetro: A Slick Twitter Client for Windows 8

Sean Toole on September 19th 2012

Tweet

• client,
• tweetro,
• twitter,
• windows 8

So how does it look, and what can I do with it?

We’ll get to that. Now, to get started with the app is as simple as any other service or app that integrates with Twitter: The lovely third-party login screen. Stuff in your Twitter details and we can get started.

Your Home Screen

Here you’ll find your base of operations, including your own personal message time-line, your regular Twitter time-line, any recent photos posted (shown in a lovely tiled format) as well the opportunity to add more hashtag feeds and lists (as simple as hitting the Add More button and putting in your search term or list).

This is where you’ll find your first example of the quality of the interface: solid and uncluttered. It’s clean, dark, yet still informative. It gives you all the info you need, whilst keeping the other features (we’ll get to those) out of the way.

One thing this app has going above all else? It’s smooth and quick, even on a low-end PC like my own. It’s wonderfully smooth and does not let up in any way whilst navigating through the app.

Another great feature, and no doubt paramount to its ideal, is the multi-user function. Switching between users is as simple as clicking on the profile picture. It’s snappy and also pretty handy.

Posting to Twitter

Posting to your timeline’s as easy as pie. Though there’s no bells and whistles to the tune of auto-link shortening or hast-tag searching, it’s nevertheless simple and to the point.

A nifty little feature when adding a post is the photo option: You can either upload a picture or take one from the camera.

What you see on the side there are some quick links to your @ mentions, messages and favourites.

Twitter Timeline

One of the more remarkable features of Tweetro, and one that I’ll find myself make great use of in those early morning coffee-fueled browsing sessions is the article view tool.

Whenever you click on someone’s tweet and it contains an article link, a new section slips in from the left of the screen, which automatically loads the web page linked. from there it’s a simple case of clicking on the section and you’re able to read the article linked without ever leaving the app.

If any tweets contain images, a small snippet of them is shown within the tweet, whilst any hash-tags and links are automatically click-able, but only once you’ve clicked on the tweet itself, not inherently in the timeline.

All the usual bits and bobs are there when you click on the tweet: the option to retweet, favourite, reply, etc.

Some Caveats

Much like Windows’ own new interface, it’s occasionally not apparent how you return to certain screens, or simply to just go back a page. Whilst in the article view, having the escape key as a catch-all for getting out of an area of the interface is surely the most commonly used shortcut? It looks like this is not the case, and instead relies on clicking away or hitting the back icon in the top-left in a way that makes it seem apparent that this is primarily intended toward a touch-screen interface.

Secondly, though before I say this I’d like to add that this app is of course in constant development, but the lack of options or configuration can be seen as a curse more than a blessing. In keeping with its simplistic vision, Tweetro may be shooting themselves in the foot, and paving the way for the more advanced and feature-laden likes of MetroTwit.

Conclusion

For a bare-bones Twitter app with great features, Tweetro is fantastic. It’s just the kind of Twitter app for the casual Twitter user, with the right balance of tools that give you all you need. The base app is solid, and the vision is secure: Tweetro will be going places, and is surely an app to watch.