If you don’t already know, you can help me test the Twitterfall Beta right now by visiting beta.twitterfall.com. You will almost certainly lose all of your settings on the normal Twitterfall, so don’t do this on a computer that has important searches saved that you don’t have a list of!

As I approach releasing this new version, I thought it best to post updates of what’s changed or fixed in each release. Today there’s a new release:

• It now uses the Twitter Text library to count how many characters your tweet has used, which makes it a lot more accurate.
• I’ve removed the meta viewport definition for now, until I have a chance to test it on multiple devices.
• The code for auto-adding a hashtag in the sticky ‘New Tweet’ box was terrible, I’ve improved it.
• Removed some terrible legacy code that originates from when browser performance was terrible.
• Some other minor bug fixes and code cleanup.

As a reminder, here are some of the changes to the Beta version over the old version:

• ‘New style’ retweets; no one really shows the old ‘RT’ syntax any more and I figured it was time for Twitterfall to let that one go.
• Display expanded links automatically and correctly.
• Expand short URLs again (this had stopped working).
• Show photos on hover again (this had stopped working).
• Removed Qrait from the tweet menu.
• Improved the timestamp calculation.
• Proper search interval fallback so quiet searches don’t take all your API calls.
• A more stable backend.
• Many many bug fixes.

Known issues:

• Pretty much everything to do with geolocation is broken.
• Searches setup from URL parameters seem to lack auth data, so don’t work.
• The viewport definition needs sorting so it’s useable on non-desktop devices.
• It probably doesn’t work on IE.

Please report any bugs to me using the links under ‘About’ on Twitterfall itself.

I plan to launch the updated Twitterfall in the next month or two.