Jawter: Twitter from Jaws with no software in the middle.
1. The New Jawter2. Jawter 0.5
Jawter is a twitter client with a minimum of windows and fuss. You simply install it, set it up, and read your twitter updates with hotkeys that work anywhere in windows, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. The existing version on this website is a JAWS Script version, quite complex to install and yet amazingly popular. The new version, in progress, will be similarly powerful but less constrained and is coming out soon.
Before I start, I’d like to note that as of time of writing there are no downloads of the new Jawter on this page. The old one is still available and will continue to be for anyone to use, but as of now it is no longer supported in favour of the new one, to be released “soon”.
OK, so it’s time I answered a few questions.
First, what is the new Jawter? Well, put simply, it’s a rewrite of Jawter. To those of you who aren’t programmers, a rewrite means rather than updating what I’ve already done, I’ve started again, from scratch. The next question is of course why? Let me see if I can explain that.
I wrote Jawter as a “proof of concept”, which is ” evidence which demonstrates that a model or innovative approach is viable, feasible and capable.” This means that it was never intended to be as full-featured a program as it perhaps could have been, because the idea was to prove what could be done, rather than produce a commercial product. The “could be” in this instance refers to writing something as “different” as Jawter in the JAWS scripting language. JAWS script, as you may know, is designed to make windows applications and JAWS more accessible. It was never intended to be able to do things online (like get at your tweets), and so at the time, Jawter was cracking open new territory.
Things never go to plan, though, do they? What I, and my hundreds of brave testers found, was that Jawter’s ubiquity gave it a great strength over other twitter clients. By ubiquity, I mean being accessible wherever you happen to be on your computer. Other Twitter software had windows and dialog boxes for you to navigate, and if you wanted to read your tweets you had to go to the program in question. Some people have taken this concept a step further - the program OutTwit, for instance, gives you tweets as if they were e-mail messages. The theory behind it is that busy online folk live in their inboxes, so why not integrate the inbox and the tweet?
Jawter uses a similar concept, but the theory is that screen reader users rely on their screen readers for almost every computer-based task. If the tweets can be navigated from within the screen reader, then there’s no need to go launching separate programs just to see what your friends are saying.
That was Jawter’s strength, anyway. On the weakness side of things, it was tremendously difficult to install, and with all the ingenuity in the world there were certain things that, due to the constraints of JAWS’ scripting language, would simply not be possible to do. Jawter’s big thing was “no software in the middle”, meaning that everything Jawter did was directly integrated right into JAWS.
This integration gave Jawter speed and ease-of-use. You hear a little sound and you press a key and your newer tweet is read. They are read to you one at a time, and you can choose to reply, post one of your own or whatever. People loved it, it really meant something to a lot of folks and the response from the community was brilliant.
But as I said, there were certain things that were just not possible with the language limitations of JAWS, and certain things that were problematic. For example, when getting a large number of tweets, JAWS would become quite slow and unresponsive - to the point where you couldn’t really do much at all. Getting anything other than your “friends” timeline was impossible, and if JAWS happened to crash you’d lose all your tweets.
It was for these reasons that I decided that a complete, from the ground up rewrite was in order. I’d learned a lot from Jawter’s first incarnation and am hoping to keep the good whilst fixing some of the bad.
A question I’ve been asked time and time again is what will be different? Well, the biggest difference (from a programming point of view) is that Jawter version 2 won’t be written in JAWS script. Rather, a separate language will be used. This means that if Jawter gets all slow because it’s downloading your tweets, it won’t slow down your JAWS or your computer. You may still not be able to read your tweets for the few seconds it takes to grab the newest updates, but that’s a very small price to pay and a great improvement over not being able to use your screen reader at all.
The next major change is timeline integration. Twitter provides three types of timeline - your friends (which is the people you follow), your mentions (which are tweets mentioning you, even from those you don’t follow), and direct messages (which are messages sent privately to you). Originally, Jawter only handled your friends, but the new one will use all three. It will in fact have four “timeline views”, one for each of the above and a “combined” view, which will let you read all your tweets. And finally, if you use a proxy server the new Jawter will play nice with that as well.
More changes will be forthcoming, but those are the biggest ones for the moment. I do want to touch on the weaknesses, though, because it’s important to understand both sides of any coin. The biggest thing that “might” be a problem is the fact that the old Jawter didn’t need any sort of special permission to work with JAWS. Because it was written “in” JAWS it wasn’t considered a separate program, and worked seamlessly wherever JAWS did - school, work, flash drive, public libraries and so forth. This means that in certain situations the new Jawter won’t run. The only other huge hurdle I can see at the moment is the speed factor. Jawter was traditionally lightning fast - when not being very slow, that is. By this I mean that when it had your tweets it read them at the touch of a button without hesitation. We’ve sacrificed a little of that blazing speed with the new version - a few milliseconds here and there at most, though. The fact that Jawter no longer completely kills JAWS every so often more than makes up for this fact, in my opinion.
To answer a few other questions - yes, Jawter will still be called Jawter. No, I’m not taking the old version away - I probably won’t be updating it much if at all, and I’ll soon put up the source code for those interested to see. The new version should be very much simpler to install, and if you want to move to using it in place of the old I’ll provide instructions on removing the old one at a point in the near future.
The only thing left for me to say here is that the new one will be here “soon”. I know that sounds like a bit of an empty promise but I don’t want to commit to a date, only to have it fall apart. At this very moment, I’m using the new Jawter to read my tweets and it’s pulling in all the timelines rather than just one. I can’t view links in my tweets yet, nor can I post new ones. It’s not announcing times properly and it’s very, very rough around the edges - but I am making progress.
I can only ask that you have patience and hopefully look forward to the time when you can try this out as much as I do. Twitter has introduced me to a community of wonderful people, and I admire everyone writing their own twitter clients and web interfaces and all that. My small contribution to the field thus far was met with prays, thanks and congratulations, and the smooth easy-to-use nature of Jawter seems to have made it an overnight success. If you use it and are happy with it, by all means keep on doing so.
The next page of this blog is the old Jawter page, where you’ll find everything just as it was. When the new one comes out I’ll modify the page you’re reading with a download link etc.
Once again, my thanks to you all. Happy tweeting!
Jump to:
February 8th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I would like to test your approach. My twitter name is tuukkao.
February 8th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
When it’s ready, it will involve modification of your default JAWS script file and updating of the default Keymap. If you’re OK with that, please keep the comments coming in.
I’m also going to apologise - if your comment doesn’t appear here be assured that I’ll get to approving it at some point. if you want to test but don’t want your comment to be public, say so in the comment - I do read them before approving them.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Yeah, I’m bored and want something to play with. @BorrisInABox
February 8th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Would love to test this thing. My twitter name is serrebi. Modifying it default script is fine with me, this sounds like an interesting aproach for a twitter client.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Would ilke to help test your jawter client am kevinrj on twitter
February 9th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Hi I would love to test. My twitter username is elliott94
February 10th, 2009 at 2:51 am
Page updated with keystrkes, current bugs and beta schedule for those of you following the comment feed.
Bed time (nearly 3:00 AM here), by this time tomorrow all you private testers will have nice scripts to install.reuests
February 10th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
This thing is amazing.
February 10th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I would also like to try this. KVP2008 on twitter. Running JAWS 10.0, Windows XP SP3, Internet explorer is installed and this machine is newly formatted if that helps.
February 10th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Those of you on OS X, who want to have a similar (yet different) experience, should check:
http://drikin.com/twitterpod/
The accessible OSX mailing lists get this question daily. Twitterpod is accessible, and reads out all new tweats with growl. command shortcuts allow for visiting a twitter page, visiting the link in a tweat, replying to a tweat, etc. All tweats are saved locally, and can be searched with spotlight. Direct messages are supported.
February 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Keep up the great work with Jawter. Installing it was simple, and I believe a beginner could even follow the extremely detailed instructions in the readme file. It’s so cool to be able to update twitter without going to the web site. The best part of Jawter in my opinion, is I can check my twitter updates at any time, with just a few keystrokes.
February 13th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Jawter is a good thing, I love it.
February 13th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Yo! Jawter is cool!!! I found one problem though, when I post a new tweet it says posting failed, but it worked. Thanks!
February 13th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
At Chris’s insistance, I checked it out. While I’d initially not really understood why one would even want a client, I’ve already come to rather like this one. Nice work, and look forward to seeing what you do with it.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Very cool client you have cooked up. I’ve been playing for about 5 minutes and think the utility of it is fantastic. Been watching and hoping for an accessible client.
Couple of thoughts.
1) With regard to the Replies function I submit that most people (as in fact the Twitter site itself does not, do not use a colon after the username being replied to. Also, a suggestion for handling the overtype issue. Extract the “@username” into a variable, get the length of the variable plus a space, change the “overflow” length of the tweet to 140 less the calculated length, and set the input box prompt to “Reply to username”. Just a thought
2) curious if you’re extracting real name instead of username on purpose?
Again, this is very cool and I’m quite impressed. Keep it up. Thanks for the great tool.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Tony, Thanks for your feedback.
Firstly, you can remove the colon if you’d like by editing the template in the INI file. Whilst this doesn’t take care of anything really, it does give you an extra character to play with in your reply.
I’m re-writing the reply function as I type to do exactly as you suggest, which will stop the overflow issue.
I don’t quite understand what you mean by extracting the real name? I always assumed the use of a full name was preferable to a screen name - unless I’ve screwed up somewhere, the replies should always go to the screenname, and the use of a full name is what other clients I’ve used do (mobiel web doesn’t to save space, for instance).
I’m sincerely grateful for all comments and thoughts though, please keep them coming.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:23 am
I’d also like to see the screen name, at least when vurtualized, but it’s not a deal breaker for me either.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:26 am
The Jawter configuration file contains templates for how tweets are displayed. At time of writing (0.4) you can use $screenname, $user (which is the full name if given), $time, $text and $userURL in these variables. So it’s quite easy to add the screenname to the virtual template. Be wary of getting 0.4 if you haven’t already, it’s a bit problematic - I’ll release a patch for it in the next few hours.
February 16th, 2009 at 4:16 am
Wow. Jawter is really cool. I hardly ever used to post with some dumb client I used to use, because it kept minimizing to the systray or something, I dunno it would just like disappear but still be in the processes list. In a nutshell it was an absolute pain. What I like about Jawter is that it’s there, there’s no applications that need launching. What’s really cool is the sounds it makes, and I think you can even make your own if you don’t like the defaults, because they’re standard wave files. (I think.). Sorry for the long comment but I had a lot to say.
From Andy
February 17th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Set aside time this morning to give this a go. Friends have tried it and say it is a must have. Wish me luck.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Jawter is friggin amazing. For anyone who is apprehensive about trying it due to the somewhat technical nature of installation, don’t worry. If you do exactly what the ReadMe says, you’ll have no problems. I’ve never modified a script file in my life and I just got it up and running a few minutes ago. it friggin rocks, man. Thanks Sean for an awesome set of scripts, and thanks to Earle for reviewing it on BlindCoolTech, which is where I heard of Jawter in the first place. GO JAWTER!! WOOOO!
February 17th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Oh, I apologize for posting two comments in a row but if any of you want to follow me on twitter, my twitter ID is cary5871. at the moment I’m pretty boring but with jawter I’ll probably be posting all the time. wooo!!!!
February 18th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Think I’ll give this a try. I’m using twitterlicious now. My username on twitter is blindndangerous.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:16 am
this is the most amazing thing ever!awesome job and very clear, easy to understand readme
February 19th, 2009 at 12:17 am
I love jawter only had it 12 hours or so. for me install was simple i just wish window-eyes users could have somethin like this. hmmm nice to suggest on script central out there. only thing is sometimes it doesnt say if a tweet was sent and my windows key gets stuck but i think thats just psycho thats what i call my computer. 256 megs of ram also jaws sometimes forgets it needs to actually talk, but i give it a sec and she works fine. but yeah, i love the thing all the same psycho works worse on the twitter website. heck any site at that.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:42 am
This sounds amazing. I’m holding off on it until the time zone thing is address, but then I’m all over it. I tried twitter out for a bit but didn’t really care for it. But now, this just might win me over. The reason? Twitter can automatically set your facebook status. Facebook is something I do a lot more often, but I hardly set my status since when I get on facebook there is so much to do I forget to do that. Now it will be quick and easy, and I don’t have to worry about falling into a huge time drain if I’m in a hurry.
When this is released, how hard would it be to modify to be able to work with the facebook API? They do have one I suppose? Assume someone who has never done any scripting. That’s a project I’d like to tackle.
Thanks for the good work!
February 20th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Just grabbed the scripts today and posted. You can follow me as diannaamarich on Twitter. I like the approach; it’s now built-in to JAWS; easy to use. The instructions were very clear and I had no problems.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Not sure how to leave you some feed-back about jawter. Great little program first of all! Just a couple of suggestions: 1.) It would be nice to be able to append individual tweets to the clipboard. 2.) I’m in the US, and we of course divide our days into 2 halfs. It’d be nice to hear 1:30 PM in stead of 13:30. Hope these aren’t too overwhelming, but I figure you’d appreciate knowing what users are thinking. Many thanks once again.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
This is really some cool stuff. Well done. I’m very impressed.
I posted about it on my blog. HOpefully anyone who uses Twitter will hear about it.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 pm
To help any users with the installation of this, I have posted two audio walk thorughs to http://www.lalrecordings.com
………………………………………….
The first recording will guide users through the installation of these scripts.
The second recording is a review / introduction of the Jawter client.
Please Email me with any questions.
http://www.lalrecordings.com/audio/jawter-review.mp3
http://www.lalrecordings.com/audio/jawter-installation.mp3
February 24th, 2009 at 11:48 am
[...] Jawter: Twitter from Jaws with no software in the middle [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I’m working on a main menu review for jawter! Once it airs I’ll tweet about it!
February 24th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
[...] L’autore l’ha testata con Jaws 7.0 e sembra funzionare adeguatamente. Che dire se non provatelo ed inviate eventuali commenti [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
It looks like Jawter is not reading the entire 140 characters of each message. Is this possible? / known about?
Also, control + backspace does not work. this is very likely a limitation of Jaws though as your using a standard jaws input box.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Hello. I absolutely love Jawter! I was rather skeptical when I first heard about it, and daunted by the install process. However, I had a friend help me with the install, and now find that I’m using Twitter even more frequently than I did before. (That’s a scary thought.) Thank you for coming up with this software: it’s brilliant. I look forward to more updates as you go along.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:55 am
it would be so cool if we could use control plus windows plus page up and down to jump by a set number of tweets
jawter rocks!
February 25th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Needs to be listed here: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps
(perhaps under beta software)
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Just downloaded 0.5 Beta. Two interesting phenomena to report: after downloading my initial 20 tweats, it downloaded them again after three minutes. Also, when I hit ctrl-windows-F5 to check for tweats, Jawter told me it wasn’t active, though when I hit ctrl-windows-j the first time it told me Jawter off, and I had to hit it a second time to turn Jawter back on.
I am pleased with the fixes and improvements though, and am looking forward to continued development on this program.
I know you told me once, but whom do I follow on Twitter to follow you?
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:04 am
One more question: if I want to issue Twitter commands, what is the actual sequence? I tried issuing the follow command in my tweat, and it just showed up as a tweat, rather than following my intended recipient. Would I have to do follow @username or d @username to follow or DM someone?
March 6th, 2009 at 8:21 am
frases clave…
Es cierto, gracias por compartirlo. Una herramienta a tener en cuenta es Key sentences, te permite ver no solo que palabras son las más interesantes, sino las frases que más venden….
March 10th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Jawter appears to not be dealing with Daylight Savings time, as tweet time stamps are an hour off.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
[...] a free script written for Jaws to work with twitter, written by Sean Randall. It’s called Jawter. Let me tell you, it makes tweeting fun! Once this script is installed, I don’t even have to [...]
March 28th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Have just installed Jawter and am im pressed. It’ll take me a little time to get used to not having Tweets in a separate window, but i do like the function to put them in the virtual viewer if necessary. I find keystrokes such as control, windows key, F5 a little difficult as I don’t have a right windows key on this laptop.
I would say though that the instructions are extremely clear and anyone should be able to follow them they are so well written. Just read them through carefully and follow each step at a time and you’ll be fine.
now just need to find out how to follow you on twitter and also to increase thenumber of tweets from 20.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:07 pm
For a *fully accessible Twitter web site*, try me, http://AccessibleTwitter.com.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
This looks really interesting. I’m really looking forward to using it. As I use Jawter more and more, I’m convinced that because of it’s incredibly simple interface it’s the best option for users of jaws but I’m also regularly inconveenienced by the pauses it causes with jaws when retreaving new messages.
Keep up the very good work.
May 12th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Just downloaded the jawter beta. heard many good things about it.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm
[...] Jawter website [...]
May 25th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Well, I have just started using Jawter, and I find it to be very easy, even fun to use. My only issue with it is the anouncement of the time. That is, it will say that something arrived an hour ago, when I know full well that it just arrived. But that is not a major issue with me, and it is probably just something I am doing wrong, or something that I did wrong while installing it. Otherwise, it works beautifully. Also, a kind of advantage that I have using Jawter is that when I am posting from the web, my keys lag, and when I say lag, I mean maybe one and a half second lag. This can be quite frustrating as I am quite a fast typer, and when I make mistakes, it takes a few seconds to correct my many typing errors . But the second I started using Jawter, I found that there was no lag, and I could type as fast as I could. But above all things, I would like to thank you for creating this. This is the only program of its kind that I have seen. It is programs like this that make me not so hesitant to go on social networking sites, in fear that it will not be accessible to us blind users. Well, then there is the fact that I am usually not a social networking type of person. Now if only someone could make something like this for myspace! Grin. And if you or anyone would like to follow me, my user name is ali8923.