What can it do?
...and what it can not and why...
Hahlo is capable of doing just about anything that twitter.com can do, so long as its supported in their API. Version 3 also adds 'search' support powered by Summize.com. Let's go through each feature one at time.
All these great features don't code themselves (it would be awesome if they did though). Huge amounts of time go into designing, building and supporting Hahlo.
Do your bit to help keep Hahlo the best mobile twitter client out there. Every little bit helps, and will be recognised publicly.
Update your Twitter status
The most important feature of any twitter client is the ability to update you twitter status. Hahlo makes it dead simple, the 'Tweet' button at the top will pop open the update box.
Hahlo has a character counter so you know just how close you are to the 140 character limit, but it now doesn't prevent you from entering longer messages, which can still be sent to Twitter, but won't be displayed in full.
This is the same box that will popup if you tap on the '@' icons to reply to a tweet.
Recent
This is the timeline of tweets from all the people that you follow. Two simple little icons allow you to quickly and easily add a tweet as a 'favorite', or reply to the tweet in question.
By tapping on a users avatar or name you'lll see a small popup submenu which gives you quick access to their 'tweets', their 'profile' and to send them a 'direct message'.
Like most timelines, any links, @ replies or #hashtags will be automatically linked up for your convenience.
The recent timeline also has an 'auto refresh' feature that checks for, and displays, new tweets every minute. The most recent tweets are displayed with a light orange background as shown in the screenshot on the left.
When an @reply is sent to you is will be highlighted with a light green background in the timeline making it easy to find.
The only thing the recent timeline doesn't have is paging. Unfortunately paging is currently disabled in the Twitter API, hopefully it will return soon.
Replies
One of the most used (and occasionally over-used) features of Twitter is the @ reply. Its a quick and easy way of replying to someone.
This timeline will show you any recent @replies that have been made to you. Like the 'recent' timeline you can easily reply to or favorite a tweet, and the same popup submenu is available too.
Archive
These are your tweets. Useful for going back through previous updates to find that cool youtube link that you recommended to someone.
New in Hahlo 3 is the added ability to delete past tweets, just tap on the red 'delete' tab and a small delete button will appear next to each tweet.
You can also access other users 'archives' from their user profile or by tapping on their avatar or username on most timelines and selecting 'tweets'.
Everyone
More commonly referred to as the public timeline, this is simply a list of the last twenty tweets from around the globe. You never know, you might stumble across something really interesting.
Direct Messages Inbox
Not everything you send through twitter has to be public, you can also send and receive direct messages. You inbox contains your most recently received messages
A quick tap on the 'M' next to each message and your can send a message back to the user. You can also write a new direct message to send to any of your followers.
New in Hahlo 3 is the added ability to delete past messages, just tap on the red 'delete' tab and a small delete button will appear next to each message.
Direct Messages Outbox
Want to check a message that you sent to someone? Then the outbox is the place to go, it provides quick access to the last messages that you sent.
Send Direct Messages
You can send a direct message in a couple of ways using Hahlo.
First is via the popup submenu when tapping on a users name or avatar (or the little 'M' icon that appears next to tweets on some timelines), this will open up the message box with the username already entered ready to go.
The second way is via the blue 'New Message' tab on the Message Inbox and Outbox. Then just enter the username you want to send to and your message and send away.
Favorites
Have you seen a tweet that had an awesome link in it, or maybe something that was interesting or humorous. Then you may very well have added it to your favorites.
Many timelines, like the 'Recent' timeline, have 'favorite' (the little star) buttons next to each tweet.
You can also un-favorite a tweet by tapping on the star icon again.
Following
Displays a full list of all the twitter users that you follow. You can send a message or reply directly form this list, just tap the relevant button.
New is version 3, if you tap on a user's name or avatar a little submenu will popup. From here you can go to that users Tweets (their individual archive), or to their user profile. If you no longer want to follow a user you can also "un-follow" them from here too.
Another new addition is the inclusion of the 'Add friend' field at the top of the list. Simply enter the username of the user you would like to follow and tap 'add friend', easy as that.
The 'grid' view is also still available for both following and followers lists, giving you a nice quilt of avatars that link of to users individual timelines
Followers
Much like the 'following' list, this is a list of all the users that are following you.
The same popup submenu is available, and if you find someone interesting in your followers list you can easily start following them by tapping 'follow' in this menu.
Profile
All new in version 3 are user profiles. Much like the sidebar on twitter.com you'll get information about the specified user including their url, location and brief description.
You can also see their most recent tweet, along with links off to a list of who they are following, their favorite tweets and their archive.
You can also use the profile to follow/un-follow people, or to turn on/off notifications.
The user profile also displays the colors that the user has specified for twitter.com to add that little bit of uniqueness to each one.
Settings
Quite possibly the biggest addition to Hahlo 3 is the inclusion of "settings". Users can now set their own 'home page' preference, so that they are taken directly to which ever page (most choose 'Recent/Friends Timline') they want.
But thats not all, you can also turn on 'inline replies' which will combine your recent and replies timelines for easy viewing. The same for 'inline messages', this will include you direct message inbox in with your recent timeline.
There are also a couple of other options including 'Full Names' which allows you to display a users 'real' name instead of the twitter username, and you can also choose what size avatar to display.
Search
Another new addition to Hahlo in version 3 is tweet searching. When you open the menu, you'll notice a search box at the bottom of it, just enter what ever it is you wish to look for and hit search.
You can search for pretty much anything, @replies to a certain user, a keyword of even #hashtags. The search functionality is provided by the Summize.com API.
Hashtags
Hashtags are a way of inline tagging your tweets with keywords. Now in Hahlo 3, when ever one of these hashtags appears in a timeline it will be auto-linked up to a search that ill return all tweets matching that hashtag.
Wow, thats a lot, is there anything else?
Sure theres plenty more bits and bobs that I haven't mentioned, a couple of those are:
- Improved support for Japanese and Chinese character sets.
- Character counter, so you know how close you are to the 140 character limit.
- 'Home' button that takes you straight back to you chosen homepage.
- A refresh button on almost every screen to quickly reload what you're currently viewing.
- A set of tabs linking to related pages on specific timelines.
- Oh, and the awesome new menu, see the screenshot ont he left.
What can't it do...yet
These are either features that haven't been implemented yet or they were implemented before my ability to use them was stripped like Superman's powers in the presence of Kryptonite...
Something else that you wish Hahlo could do? Jump on over to the support forum and leave a message.
Paging
While paging is still available in some parts, its not available on the Friends Timeline/Recent where people really want it. Twitter temporarily disabled the paging on there a while back due to the load it was putting on their server. I'm hopeful that it will return soon. You'll be the first to know.
In reply to..
You'll have to check out the screenshot on the left to see what you're missing out on.
Mentioned briefly above, this was one of the most popular additions (and my personal favourite) but like paging Twitter has removed it from the api... will return, who knows, but I've left all the necessary code in there so if it returns it will automatically return to Hahlo too. is one of the most popular additions to the new version. When ever an @reply appears in a tweet, the tweet its responding to will be shown directly below for your reference.
This definitely helps to give context to some of the seemingly random replies that appear.
Threaded Tweets
See above... In addition the 'in reply to' feature, you'll find a 'more...' link as well. This will take you to the 'full conversation'. so if replies have been going back and forward you should be able to catch up on the whole thing without trawling through a bunch of different lists.