Hello, my name is Wendy and I’m a Twitter addict…but I wasn’t always like this. Twitter is really useful if you have a Twitter client that helps you to easily send and receive your Tweets. The web site interface that Twitter provides is cumbersome, and if you’ve only used it over SMS or IM, you’re missing out on the beautiful Twitter experience. Plus twhirl handles Seesmic, FriendFeed, identi.ca, laconi.ca, Ping.fm and Jaiku messages as well.

At first I started out using Digsby and really liked it, but there are a few features it lacked (like the window will not stay open, you can only see a small amount of Tweets, etc.) that I really wanted, so I tried twhirl. It’s pretty cool and VERY user friendly. Let’s start with a few on of the defaults to really get the most out of twhirl. Here’s what you need to do to get the most from twhirl:

• You can turn off the prefixing of tweets with the sender’s name. Click the little WRENCH icon (configuration) in the upper right of the twhirl window, click the “VISUAL” tab and uncheck the “prefix tweets with sender’s name.” The sender’s name already appears in some smaller meta-text below each post, so prefixing the tweets with the sender’s name just eats up screen space.
• Turn off all new tweets being marked. This is also in the same CONFIGURATION/VISUAL window as the previous tweak. Unless you are following less than 10 people or you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, you’re probably not going to be reading Twitter the same as you read email. Twitter is like standing at the water cooler at work where everyone is sharing some type of juicy tidbit. You might miss some tweets, you might hear bits and pieces of a conversation, and that’s OK. Turning this option off will stop you from seeing an annoying little “” on each tweet you haven’t read.
• Set the opacity of twhirl to 100% when inactive. Once again, in the CONFIGURATION/VISUAL, on the “Visual” tab. I, personally, find it a little frustrating to have a 65% opaque window scrolling tweets while I’m working on other things. It’s kind of like what my vision is like when I don’t have my contacts in..you just can’t quite get into focus what those windows say. Fix this by turning this feature up to 100% so you can see you lovely twhirl with full spectacled vision when you glance over to it.
• Have some fun by customizing twhirl with a new color scheme. This can be very easily done or as complicated as you would like to make it. The default color scheme is just terrible on the eyes and lacks a little imagination. You can very easily select a new color scheme from the CONFIGURATION/OPEN ACCOUNTS window on the “COLORS” tab. I recommend one of the black schemes, but check it out and see what tickles your fancy. For each preview you can see a little preview image of each one and then choose your own.

Okay, now how to easily create a customized twhirl color scheme. The other option you have is to create your own color scheme with your favorite colors or color branding. As of version 0.7.5, this isn’t an “officially supported option,” but it’s still very simple.

To create your own scheme:

1. Go into the twhirl “colorschemes” folder (C:Program Filestwhirlcolorschemes) and you’ll see a couple of .XML files. The names of these files roughly correspond to the names of the available twhirl color schemes you were viewing in the last step.
2. Find one that is reasonably similar to what you want yours to new color scheme to look like, right click it. hover over “open with” and choose Notepad.
3. Click on “FILE” then “SAVE AS” then name the copy to a short/small version of the name of your new color scheme – for example, if your color scheme is “Navy Blue” you might call the file “navyblue.xml” or maybe you would like it named after your brand, blog, domain or something (make sure the keep the .XML at the end of the name). Click on “SAVE.”
4. Now that you are in the text editor. The .XML is pretty self explanatory. Read through it to familiarize yourself with it, let the fun begin…
5. Update the “title”, “version”, “author”, and “date” information. The title is what will appear in twhirl when people are selecting your color scheme.
6. In the “colors” section, you’ll see all sorts of available options. The value in each tag is a hex color number. Use a hex color picker or your favorite paint tool to update the colors. My favorite color tool is Color Cop…you can pick it up for free at http://colorcop.net/.
7. When you think you have it right, save your changes and exit twhirl. Make sure it’s not running by clicking CONFIGURATION/OPEN ACCOUNTS/EXIT TWHIRL from the accounts window.
8. Start twhirl again and switch to your new color scheme. If you need to make adjustments, switch to a different color scheme before exiting twhirl. (I have hear of some that had trouble where it seemed to cache the previous color scheme values if they didn’t do it this way.)

When I created my custom scheme, I wanted to address the following issues:

• Easy readability – I love the dark backgrounds and light texts, so I picked a black background with a light gray text.
• Standard” link color – The web has sort of conditioned people to think link = blue. Not creative, but you don’t have to think about what’s clickable and what’s not. Just something to think about while your designing you color scheme.
• Ability to locate relevant tweets – I want to easily be able to scroll through and find tweets from me and tweets to me (both replies and direct messages).
• Nothing too ridiculously garish - You are limited a bit by the inflexibility of the scheme options, but try for something that isn’t, like, “high contrast” or something overtly offensive to your viewers rods and cones.
• Branded to match my blog – why not? Plus it gave me something new to learn and blog about

My custom scheme looks like this:

And you can download it by clicking here if you like. The Moxie Mom Blog Twhirl Color Scheme. (Unzip the file into your twhirl colorschemes directory. The .XML file inside is the color scheme.)

Twhirl is my favorite windows based Twitter platform. Digsby still remains my favorite IM client but until they tweak it a little for Twitter I’ll be staying with twhirl. The ideal solution for me would be to get an iPhone and not even use a desktop client…but alas that is a dream for another day

Have fun customizing your twhirl color scheme. Put a link to your color scheme in your comments. I can’t wait to see what happens when your creative juices get flowing!

Join me on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/WendyMerritt

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