As every self-respect Twitter user, you simply can’t use only Twitter’s website to upload your tweets. That’s why I’ll review three Firefox Twitter addons. Why Firefox addons and not stand-alone apps? Because I am working a lot more with Firefox than with the desktop itself and I think you do that way too. I mean Firefox is almost anytime running. Another reason is that Twitter Addons are cross-platfrom rather than standalone desktop apps which some are for Windows, some for Mac and few for Linux

Twitbin

Twitbin is something like a sidebar of Firefox. It’s like when you open your browsing history, except from displaying your visited URLs it displays your and your friends tweets. It is very easy to use though. But the GUI and the logging in/preferences are not well designed. First of all supposing you run this addon for first time you can’t easily understand where to login with your Twitter account or to change the addon’s preferences. You can’t understand them with ease in your first time. One more negative is that it “eats” your browsing window making each site you visit a bit smaller. Finally, Twitbin makes too many API requests to Twitter within an hour. That causes sometimes that you can’t see any more tweets from all of your Twitter apps (they all use the same API) and you must visit the twitter website to keep up-to-date with future tweets.

Twitterbar

Our second addon is Twitterbar. Twitterbar is sitting in your location bar without to be noisy with new tweets, replies, direct messages etc. The only thing you can do with Twitterbar is to upload tweets. You can write your text in the location bar and then hit the button next to it and your tweet will meet the Twitterland. Twitterbar is also very ideal for posting and sharing website links quickly, as the button which uploads your tweet is still noticable. Also it supports character counting to know what you write.

Twitterfox

The last addon and the best IMHO. It’s the only Firefox Twitter Addon that supports Replies and Direct Messages and of course your timeline of the people you follow. The layout is well-made – each tweet has it’s user’s pic without consuming too many available space. There is a reply button and three tabs under the tweets; Recent, Replies, Direct. Another feature of Twitterfox is the ability to write down the URL you currently visit. Lastly, it supports multiple accounts on the same app.

Conclusion

I’ve been using all three of them. I can say that Twitterbar is really very cool, although I don’t use it for sharing links (I use urlBorg for this) but it’s funny to post from your location bar. Twitbin on the other hand, is the worst of these three addons. Too many API requests, sometimes other languages except English (i.e. Greek) have wrong rendering and makes the websites you visit smaller. Twitterfox -the best- is my favorite as you can see. Easy to use, supports direct messages, replies, links posting, multiple accounts and the GUI is pretty nice designed.