Halfwit 2 is now available, in what I’m calling a “public beta”. I’m calling it a beta because I know there are one or two little glitches, and still a few features I’d like to add.

The Halfwit 2 user experience is essentially identical to Halfwit. There are a few minor additions and changes:

  • A new “Retweets” button on the toolbar that takes you to a “Your Tweets, Retweeted” timeline
  • A more comprehensive username autocomplete that looks for users mentioned in tweets as well as those who authored them
  • A “conversation history” view (shift+click on an “in reply to” link to view the full history of a conversation)

Other than that, the memory usage is right down and the performance is right up.

Also, Halfwit 2 has the beginnings of a plug-in architecture, so you can be notified of new tweets. I’ve been working on a Windows 7 Taskbar Icon Overlay plug-in, and Brian from Growl for Windows has his own plug-in in the works. Look for announcements regarding their availability soon. I’ve also included a “Safe Mode” feature to run Halfwit 2 with no plug-ins loaded (hold left-shift down when you launch) in case anything goes awry with a plug-in.

 

You can install Halfwit 2 side-by-side with Halfwit without any issues. Be aware that they share the same icon, so it may be a little hard to tell which is which! I’d advise uninstalling v1 before you try v2. Have fun!