Bluebird 1.0 Beta 3 Now Available
It is with great pleasure that we announce the immediate availability of Bluebird 1.0 Beta 3. What's new? Well, not a whole lot, but what is new is pretty handy.
Note: due to a bug in previous builds of Bluebird, you will have to download the build directly from the website. Sparkle updates will resume with the 1.0 release.
Bug Fixes
A handful of bugs that have cropped up have been fixed. Most notably, the "reply to" bug (also known as Twitpocalypse/Twitpocalypse 2) has been (once again) repaired, and the display of less-than (<) and greater-than (>) signs has been fixed.
UI Improvements
The new build of Bluebird brings it closer to {13bold}'s end-game vision for Bluebird's user interface. It's relatively similar to previous builds, but more streamlined in a "minimalist" vein.
Not only that, but Bluebird now features two extra input "helpers" to make entering tweets more convenient: username autocompletion, and smiley/Emoji translation. The first automatically suggests Twitter usernames when you type an "@" character (it suggests from the set of people you follow). The second automatically translates smiley sequences (":)" for example) and pasted-in Emoji characters into their graphical representations. Both of them are demonstrated in this video (requires Safari or Google Chrome):
What's Coming in Bluebird 1.0?
All of the major improvements we want to make to Bluebird — big speed and memory usage improvements, an easier-to-use theme format, native retweets, an easy tool to input Emoji, an even more simplistic UI, and a few other odds and ends — will all make their appearances in Bluebird 1.0, which I'm aiming to have out within the next two months. Trust me, it's going to be an exciting app!
Go Get It!
You can download Bluebird 1.0 Beta 3 from the Bluebird website now. Enjoy!