How To: Turn Twitter into a Dashboard
Although there are a number of desktop applications available for you to manage your Twitter account, there is something which is quite simpler and quicker. Have a look at this picture:
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Surprised..?? Yes, it’s a twitter page. “MonkeyFly”, a free Firefox/Chrome add-on is what we are talking about. It has been developed by http://egoing.net and has salient features to turn your Twitter page into a Dashboard Style app as every desktop app does.
It’s a tiny add-on with some very elegant features such as:
- Add Columns such as Lists, Mentions
- Add Search columns
- Collapse and expand number of columns with a single click
- Collapse the Sidebar
- Draft your Tweet.
- Shorten URLs
- Share Photos
- View Profile without leaving your page
- Follow / Un follow
- View tweets you made as a ‘reply’ by single click.
- And much more…
It has all those features which you could find in a desktop app such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite and others. The difference is that it is available online with no installation requirements.
It aggregates all your data at one place so that it is easy to manage your tweets, profile, DMs etc. Instead of Desktop Apps which require Adobe AIR, to use this plugin you only need to have a Firefox / Chrome.
Firefox users:
1. Go to the add-on library and install monkeyfly.
2. Restart browser, go to Tools – Add-ons and enable monkeyfly if it’s not enabled already
3. Go to Twitter and use the plus sign to customize your page
Chrome users:
1. Go to Google Chrome extensions and install monkeyfly
2. Go to Windows – Extensions and check that monkeyfly is enabled
3. Go to Twitter and use the plus sign to customize your page
If you do not use one of these browsers, you can download theme from here:
[How to] Use Features: A tutorial for using MonkeyFly in your Browser
The best of all features which makes it useful is that it is Javascript, Jquery based and hence your page is not to be refreshed frequently.
1. Auto Suggest:
While typing a username in your tweet, it auto suggests the names.
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2. Photo:
To add a picture, click the “Photo” button, use your twitter id and password for a temporary access to “TwitPic”. Select picture from your computer and upload it. A link to picture will be added automatically to your tweet.
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3. URL Shortener:
To shorten a URL simply paste it in your tweet box, select the URL and click “URL Shortener” button.
4. Draft:
To save your tweet for later use, click this button.
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5. Tweet:
Click this button to send a tweet.
6. View Profile:
To view a user’s profile, click on the display picture of the user. A pop up box opens with the twitter page of the user you have clicked.
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It also saves the recent profile views to its history so that you can view them back from the profile page you are viewing. Check out the picture below:
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7. View Conversations:
To have a look at the tweets you made as a ‘reply’ to someone else’s tweet, click ‘in reply to username’ link below the tweet you have replied to.
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8. Collapse/Expand Sidebar:
With this feature, you can collapse / expand the twitter sidebar. When collapsed the menu appears at the bottom of the page.
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To add a new column click on the “Plus” sign next to “Home”. It includes the following options:
9. Metions (@username):
With this feature enabled a column appears to the right of the existing “Tweets” column listing all the tweets mentioning your username. To close the column click on the ‘-‘ sign in red.
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10. Direct Messages:
This feature adds another column to the right. It displays all your sent and received Direct Messages.
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11. Favorites:
It displays the tweets which you have marked as “favorites”.
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12. My Tweets:
This column displays the tweets you made.
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13. Re-Tweets:
This is a very interesting feature; it adds a “Re-Tweets by other” Column with three tabs viz. “By Others”, “By You”, “Your”.
The first tab displays the tweets which others have re-tweeted. Second column shows the tweets re-tweeted by you and the last one lists your tweets which were re-tweeted by others.
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14. Lists:
It displays the tweets of your friends whom you have added to your lists.
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15. Settings:
You can configure MonkeyFly by clicking “MonkeyFly” link in the top navigation. It also supports spell check for Korean Language.
The above features make it a very useful tool eliminating the need of downloading and installing the Desktop Apps for managing your Twitter Account.
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You can also have a look at this 3 minute video tutorial:
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