Help and Feature Explanation

JournoTwit is lovingly developed for ease of use - but it doesn't hurt to glance over the help page to see if you've missed something. Many options can be adjusted from the Settings page. You'll also notice handy hints pop-up each time your columns update.

The menu bar has actions that control your entire grid. If you ever forget what does what - simply hover over the icon and a description will come up.

Reading tweets and replying to those people is what Twitter is all about. To do this, click the "+" on any tweet and options are revealed as a menu bar. If you see an "in reply to" link, click this and the offending tweet will be automatically added into the column.

If you see any underlined reference to a name, such as @spode, clicking this will load up a new column with information about the user as well as their last 20 tweets - from here you can follow them, or for example, view their website. Similarly, clicking a #hashtag will load up a new column searching for this hashtag.

Understanding Columns

Every column can be dragged and repositioned on the grid where you want it. JournoTwit remembers these positions for next time you login. Any minimised columns "dock" at the top of the page and simply clicking the title will undock them. By default, when new tweets populate a column, it will automatically undock to let you know.

Just like e-mail, JournoTwit keeps track of what is read and what is not. When you've read the tweets in a column, click the arrow to mark it as read - by default this will then minimise. If you've read every column - simply click the larger arrow in the menu bar to mark every column as read.

You can delete any column. If it's a preset, you can easily add this back in - but if you create a custom column, you'll lose it - which is why the default action is to warn you before every deletion. With the exception of mentions/messages column, you can edit any column too by clicking the pencil.

When you first login to JournoTwit, you will be setup with our recommended set of columns. We break down the standard feed into categories to make digesting your twitter feed a little easier. Not everybody likes this - but we do encourage you to try it. We have also created a "traditional" set of columns using a single feed - read the next section for how to access this.

Mobile or Desktop?

JournoTwit comes in two flavours - JournoTwit for desktop use and JTwit for mobile use. Our focus has been on the desktop version and the optimal platform for this is either FireFox, or using the version available for download. However, we do test in Chrome, Chromium, Safari, Opera and IE6.

The mobile version needs more work, but is better optimised for low bandwidth connections by updating less frequently and showing less of your previously read tweets. It is space optimised for smaller screens and animations are turned off. The Symbian60 platform is currently the best supported.

Standalone Desktop Application

Some of you prefer having your twitter clients running as a separate application - this is entirely possible on Linux, Mac or Windows - check out the Download page for details.

Multiple Logins

JournoTwit has the ability to login to multiple accounts - handy for Journalists who tweet for their publications as well as personally. Simply click the "Login++" button to bring up the login page. There is currently no limit to how many accounts you can add.

Move between accounts by clicking the name of the account under the logo. If you want to monitor more than one account at once - simply open a second instance of JournoTwit. You'll notice your profile picture is on the top-left, and the name is in the page title - it all helps to make sure you don't accidentally tweet from the wrong account! JournoTwit has several colour schemes available offering another way to quickly identify which account you are using.

Configuring Columns

Many people use JournoTwit without ever creating a custom column and using only the defaults. However, you can really harness the power of Twitter if you make your own columns. To access this functionality, you simply need to click the big "+" in the menu bar.

You'll notice it follows a wizard-like interface and user journey for adding your new columns. There are four main options available to you - adding a set of preset columns, adding a single preset column, adding a custom column and clearing your grid entirely.

The "grid" is how we refer to where the columns end up, so if you clear the grid it will remove all of your columns. This can be handy if you want to move from one set of columns to another.

Creating a Custom Column is incredibly powerful, but for 90% of scenarios using the simple search bar is all that is necessary - remember you can customize this later if it doesn't do what you want it to do.

Creating a column follows a flow, starting with the most obvious question - the scope. Are you searching within your friends (local), or the entirety of Twitter (global)? JournoTwit mimics the same search terminology as the Twitter search operators - so it's worth reading these.

You can do some pretty complex searches in one line but Twitter doesn't support brackets - so advanced AND/OR searches aren't possible. You are also limited to only 140 characters per search. To get around this, we can do multiple searches and amalgamate the results into a single column.

A search query could be something simple like a #hashtag, someone's name, a brand, an exact phrase - or even tweets from or excluding specific people. For example:

Search Row 1: iPod OR iTunes AND Linux AND -Palm
Search Row 2: from:applenews AND from:onlyapplenews

First of all, you'll notice that "OR" is in capitals, which is necessary or you will be searching for the word "or". This query will give you any tweets where people have mentioned iPod or iTunes, AND mentioned Linux, but never mentioned Palm. The AND is actually superfluous but is useful for beginners. It will then perform another search, for any tweet made by the users "applenews" and "onlyapplenews". Once it has both searches, it will amalgamate the results and sort them by date. Remember - each search will use an API call, so try and avoid multiple search amalgamation if you can.

Once you have your search query, you then want to decide what tweet types you want to find their way through. Perhaps you only want to see links? Or Pictures? Or you want to exclude the chatter or retweets?

How you display this information is up to you - perhaps as a standard column - or maybe as a tag cloud? Finally, give it a title and you're ready to go :)

TroubleShooting

Our system is dependent on the Twitter API - so if it's down or running very slowly, you'll likely notice problems.

In most cases, simply hard refreshing the page will solve most issues. If that doesn't work, try the "Clear Twitter Cache" option found in the Settings page.

Be aware that sound notification requires flash installed - so if you are using FireFox plugins such as FlashBlock, be sure to white list this domain.

If you are having trouble, please do report the issue. We can't fix an issue if we don't know it exists!