Nambu and my Twitter Client Design

A few months back I wrote a post about how I really couldn't find a Twitter client that I loved.  At the time I was using a solution that involved the Site-Specific-Browser Fluid and the Twitter web page and more recently had moved to Twhirl as my primary client.  In recent days I've been doing some testing on a new Mac native client known as Nambu and giving quite a bit of thought to the different philosophies of Twitter client UI design.  When it comes to the UI of desktop clients what you essentially end up with are three primary philosophies or styles.  The single column or "heads-up" as an example of this think of Twitterific or Twhirl.  Next you have the "outline view" a good example of this is the primary window of Eventbox on the Mac.  Last but by no means least, in fact it could be the most prevalent, is the "multi-column" examples of multi-column abound in Tweetdeck, the new Seesmic Desktop, and Nambu as well.  You also of course end up with varying combinations of these and interestingly enough Nambu implements them all. 

I've always kind of despised the mutli-column approach because it takes up so much desktop real estate but I decided to just face the facts of my all out addiction and dedicate a virtual desktop to Twitter (point: OSX). As I mentioned I've been using a new client, Nambu, for the last few days but it is certainly a rising start on the Mac.  By far Nambu's best feature for a Mac user is that it is a 100% native application AIR need not apply here. This in turn means that it can also take advantage of Growl for notifications, which AIR currently can't. There are a bunch of small tweaks I wouldn't mind seeing but for the most part they are all planned features so I look forward to seeing what's in store for future versions.  Another feature worth noting is groups.  Groups allow you to create your own groups of those you follow so for example I have a group called "Friends" with everyone I know in real life and I can quickly see just their updates.  This feature is one I've been feeling an increasing need for lately as my following count seems to always be creeping up.  Also while not a huge thing Nambu will also do @reply username completion which is a little thing but it always makes me happy and can be pretty useful. In addition with Nambu I've also started using the multi-column layout and I have to say it is growing on me it's nice to be able to see multiple streams quickly at a glance without having to click around between them, which is particularly nice when you just want to check in on a search quickly. It's also worth noting that Nambu also has an iPhone client in the works as well and while I wouldn't say it has complete feature parity with Nambu on the desktop or approaches Tweetie it is a good start.  Perhaps the biggest feature I'd LOVE to see is syncing between Nambu desktop and Nambu on the iPhone particularly friend groups and saved search terms...here's hoping. 

I'll continue to follow Nambu and now I am seeing indications that a Mac version of Tweetie is on the way, if history is any indication look for a blog post on it sometime after I've had a chance to play with it, after all I did say a little while ago that I would really like to see a version of Tweetie for the Mac so.

My Idea for an new approach to an iPhone Twitter UI:

As I started playing around with multi-column I got to wondering about why no one has implemented a similar approach in an iPhone client? How would multi-column work on the iPhone you ask? Well you would have your standard list view of tweets vertically as you do in almost all clients right now but you would also be able to swipe left or right to see additional columns or tabs or whatever.  The key though is that you can just swipe back and forth.  Want to do a new search? Swipe over form the last tab and you'll be presented with a search box.  I'm not entirely sure how the UI for choosing which pages to view would work perhaps some kind of settings UI I don't know. I think it would be able to flick between searches, friend groups, home, replies, etc. This approach seems like it would be a natural fit on the iPhone, well at least to me.