Echofon

(formally known as Twitterfox)

Pros Cons
  • Easy to favourite, reply, retweet
  • Shortcut key for open and paste in current page’s url
  • Automatically shrinks urls
    Uses browser’s dictionary
  • Easy to open selected tweet’s owner’s page in browser
  • Compact user interface
  • Preview destination of short urls before clicking
  • Only loads subset of recent tweets, not all since last runtime
  • Seems to randomly switch between using bit.ly and tinyurl.com
  • Ugly theme since renaming to “Echofon”
  • No marking of posts as read

Tweetdeck

Pros Cons
  • Preview destination of shortened links before opening in browser
  • Can mark posts ‘read’
  • Fixed height for all tweets wastes precious screen space.
  • NO colourcoding of text (eg. links, usernames, etc)
  • Marking post ‘read’ only marks it in current tab
  • No smooth scrolling, scrolls item by item

Seesmic

Pros Cons
  • Different Tweet types are colourcoded (eg. messages, replies, ReTweets)
  • No checklist of current followed accounts, makes it tedious to create a list of friends – have to locate an existing tweet and then click ‘add to userlist’. (compared to how Tweetdeck does it)
  • Adding a user to a list will not bring over their existing tweets (unless you restart the program)
  • No marking of posts as read
  • No smooth scrolling, scrolls item by item

Peoplebrowsr

Pros Cons
  • Has web and desktop versions (thus far appear identical, and settings carry-over between them)
  • Can switch between Lite, Advanced, and Business modes.
  • Can show people’s @replies that are not directed at you
  • Marking a post as ‘read’ markes it in ALL tabs (and changes its colour)
  • Smooth scrolling
  • Preview the destination of short urls
  • Desktop App (Adobe Air) is buggy and slow