It's been just a tad over a month since our last release, and that's why beta 4 is unleashed upon the world - the changes in this version are huge.

This is just a highlight list - far from the complete list of features and bug fixes in this version.

I sine, you sine, we all sine for Haversine

MahTweets now uses the Haversine Forumla to figure out where you are in relation to others. This allows us to tell you exactly how far somebody is away from you, if they're also geotagging their updates.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

MahTweets now has another social account join in on the fun - Tumblr! In this release its read only of your Tumblr Dashboard (you can reblog or like) instead of composing new posts for your Tumblr. If you are an avid Tumblr user, using MahTweets, we'd love to hear your feature suggestion for the next release!

There are a few things to note about this - Tumblr's API isn't what I'd consider all that stable, it often times out, returns null data, error codes that don't make sense or is just plain down. Sadly this means forcing refreshes of Tumblr won't really help.

Minimise to tray is back

Blackhelicopters might be real, but HoverWindows do exist

Leave your mouse hovering over a contact or a Mosaic - and up will pop a HoverWindow. This will remain on screen, showing updates from that contact until you mouse-out.

Clicking on the pin icon at the top of the window, the HoverWindow remains hovering. Click on the megaphone icon, and the HoverWindow will disappear: until there is an update from that contact - then it pops up. This is sort of like contextual notifications.

Scripting. If MahTweets can't do it, Script it.

MahTweets has integrated scripting since the previous beta. In this beta, we've added documentation and more hidden nice things.

Using IronPython and IronRuby, you can now open up your text editor and script new features into your social media application. For more indepth details, start reading from here: MahTweets 3.0 Scripting: Introduction

The Curious Case of Favourites, FourSquare and other Buttons

While sending messages and non-network-specific actions for each network has been a strong point of MahTweets, specific features of individual networks has never really presented itself - sure, we've got List support for Twitter, but where are favourites? Saved Searches? What if we introduced FourSquare and wanted a Checkin option?

Well, we've now introduced a means for plugins to provide buttons on the sidebar! For Twitter we've got both favourites and saved searches

Oh, and we added FourSquare too, with its own checkin button (this requires a Windows 7 Location sensor such as Geosense installed)

I see you

Search columns now persist between opening/closing MahTweets, and you can load up Saved Searches from Twitter. We don't have saving to twitter saved searches yet, as for MahTweets, it can be a bit more complicated.

Progress report

How far are we along to a 'final' release? Well, beta 4 makes huge strides to catch up to all we had in 2.7, certainly surpassing it in many areas.

Don't worry, we're not just aiming on all green for the final release, but to shame 2.7 by making it have a huge number of 'red' features.

What's new/fixed highlights

• New Icon
  The icon was always meant as a placeholder, but somehow (read: due to laziness) it managed to sneak into Beta 2.
  
  The new icon comes in a variety of sizes, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64 and 128x128. If there is demand, we can probably add higher resolutions as well down the track.
  
  
  
  The other fix involving icons is that the same icon will appear in the system tray, when you pin the app and when the app is running - previously some silly mistakes on my behalf meant that you were presented with an ugly "MT" when pinning.
  
  
• Global Exclusion Filter
  Don't you hate it when your social network fills up with updates about certain events you aren't at because you don't care about the event? With the global exclusion filter, add those terms or hashtags and they'll be removed from all columns.
  
  
  
• Search
  Either click a hashtag or the magnifying glass to bring up a new search column. It may look a little strange that you have to select 'Twitter Search' to be able to search, but in future updates this will include more search services like Twitter User Search, Facebook search, Flickr image search and more.
  
  Twitter Saved Searches and Twitter Streaming Search will appear soon!
  
  
  
• Scripting changes
  I can't do the list of scripting changes justice, but scripting filters are awesome - Two example filters are included, add/edit a column -> select show updates that have geocoding, and you'll get a column of updates that contain geodata. As this is could easily be changed to add extra data requirements like a certain number of hashtags or terms mentioned in the Tweet as well.
  
  
• Column Counters
  While we're not finalised on the UI for these yet, you'll notice the individual column counters have returned and are far more accurate than before.
  
  
• Clearing individual columns
  
  
  
• Drag and drop
  Like in MahTweets 2, you can drag contacts from column to column to quickly add them to your filters. Unlike MahTweets 2, however, you don't need to click a button first.

As usual, there are a fair few bug fixes and other hidden gems, but there are far too many to list or explain. If you're so inclined, check out the commit logs from Subversion from around 752 -> 799.

MahTweets 3 Beta 1 was released as a relatively low key event, however with beta 2 we're making a bit more noise, starting with our brand spanking new website powered by Umbraco.

New features

The first big change from previous versions is the overhauled user interface. There are several reasons we changed away from the Aero interface introduced with 2.6 - performance on several video card models were subpar, experience was inconsistent between Windows XP (or Vista/7 with Aero Basic enabled) and Vista/7, and led to some confusion when dialogs would popup.

MahTweets 3 takes a modal approach to dialogs so there won't be any popups hiding behind the main application or other windows.

Here are three new features - discovering the rest of the new features is half the fun! (or you can just head over to the features page)

Customisation
Although not perfect at the moment, we're now introducing some fantastic customisation options - from the basic level of just colours and fonts to more advanced compiled themes which let you change the layout as well.

This beta comes with two themes - "default" (white/blue) and "soft orange", as well as a "minimal" variations of both of those themes.

Mosaics

Scripting
In an early version of MahTweets we had scripting via IronPython and IronRuby. Unfortunately the scripting components were a little unstable in the manner we were using them. We've reintroduced scripting (IronPython only for now), which lets us translate, search, define or manipulate addresses - and this is just the beginning.

Right click on an update or select some text and right click to bring up the scripting menu.

Missing features

To do the massive amount of changes, we've had to pull some features until they're "good enough" to make it back in. We plan to reintegrate all of these by the "final" version of MahTweets 3.

• Plurk
• Ping.fm
• 12Seconds.tv
• Yammer
• Twitgoo
• Twitrpix
• Bit.ly
• Read/Unread tracking
• Streaming search
• Search (if you click on hashtags, search will fire up and work)
• Ignore
• Webcam
• Facebook Photos, Videos and Uploading

Removed features

We've not just been adding features, but we've also been cleaning up a lot of code and general user experience. As such, we've deemed some features inconsistent with what we're aiming for, and they're "gone for good".

• Uploading to multiple services at once
• Media window
• Disabling hardware rendering or virualisation
• Tweet saver
• Auto translation (translation is available on a word-by-word or update - ie, tweet - basis by right clicking on it)

Future features

Along with the missing features and plugins, we've got a lot more work planned. Here are two we're hoping to have relatively soon, but as always with an open source project we're unable to give any firm timelines:

Sync
Sync your MahTweets settings and accounts across multiple machines - and in the future, multiple devices.

Downloadable Plugins, Themes, Scripts
While it's "easyish" to drop your own plugin into the MahTweets folder, having a central repository for distribution is going to make it easier for developers. For those who just want to customise and share MahTweets in your own styling, the same mechanism will let you one-click upload themes/palettes to share with the world.

Likewise, since dynamic scripting has returned to MahTweets, you'll be able to upload IronRuby and IronPython scripts!