Seth's dashboard

- Safari open, iTunes open (or any app, it doesn't matter), Tweetie open
- bring iTunes to the front
- bring Tweetie to the front
- click a link in Tweetie
- Safari comes to the front but only the window Tweetie has just opened, not the whole app
- click the Tweetie menubar icon to hide Tweetie
- iTunes comes to the front (which covers the Safari window)

It looks like what's happening when you hide Tweetie by clicking the menubar icon is that the OS is bringing the previously frontmost app back to the front. This is not the desired behavior however. If I click a link in a tweet and then hide Tweetie, what I want to happen is for Tweetie to hide itself and to have my newly opened Safari window still frontmost.

I can't decide if I want all of Safari brought to the front or if I only want the new window(s) to remain in front (where I put them, so to speak), but I certainly don't want iTunes to jump back in front of what I was doing. It's oddly disconcerting, especially if I open several Safari windows by clicking links in Tweetie, to have them all suddenly "disappear" when I click the menubar icon.

It's like there's two different behaviors. Normally when I click the menubar icon Tweetie gets hidden and I get taken to my last used app. But in this specific case, it feels like my last used app is misidentified as not being Safari. As a user, it feels like clicking the menubar icon is hiding both Tweetie *and* Safari (even though that's not really what's happening).

When you hover over a link, the browser's status bar tells you you'd go to that page in a new window. When you click the link, this is what happens (correct behavior). When you hover over a Twitter user name it says the same thing. However, when you click the Twitter user name you end up replacing the Brizzly page with that user's page (incorrect behavior). This is almost never what I want but is also completely unexpected because the browser is telling you in advance it's going to do something different (which also happens to be the proper behavior).

What's also weird is that if I command-click the Twitter user name I (correctly) get a new tab in my browser window with the user's actual Twitter page (which is what I generally want) rather than the Brizzly page.

The reason I would click a Twitter user's name is usually to get to their Twitter page so I can see who they're following and to see who's following them. Unfortunately, I can't get this information from the Brizzly page (yet?) so I have to go to the actual Twitter page.

I'm using Safari 4.0.3 on Mac OS X 10.6.1 as my main browser. However, I tried Firefox 3.5.3 and the behavior is different (but still incorrect). In Firefox, the status bar does *not* say it will open in a new window. However, a link *does* open in a new window (correct, even though Firefox doesn't tell you that's what it's going to do) while Twitter user names still open in the Brizzly window (odd behavior), unless you command-click them, which makes them open in a new tab (correctly).

So Firefox basically behaves the same way except that it doesn't tell you in advance that it's expecting to open a new window (even if it will). Note that Firefox not telling you is not a Brizzly problem as it seems that Firefox works that way on all sites.

This is getting complicated, so let me give you my executive summary:

Correct behavior:
- click link, opens in new window
- command-click link, opens in new tab
- command-click user name, opens in new tab


Incorrect behavior:
- click user name, opens in same window
- status bar says all links of all types will open in new window (Safari)

(Note that the screenshot says "in a new tab" but that's due to the fact that it's a screenshot. In real life it says "new window.")

It's possible to get all the way through the entire DM process all the way up until it fails because the recipient is not also following you. This is a total bummer because by then it's too late and what you typed is gone. I like that there's a Message button under each person's icon, but when I click that button, *that's* the appropriate time for you to look up behind the scenes to see if that person is following me.

I should not be able to get all the way through preparing a DM only to have it fail with no warning or explanation. All that happens is that the little status area under the Brizzly logo says something like "failure sending message," which is not much help at all. I happen to be following someone on both their personal and business account, but they're only following me on their personal one. If this had happened with someone I didn't know I would probably not have been able to figure out what had happened.

The best behavior (from a user's perspective) is to click the Message button and right away get either a "this person is following you so go ahead and type a message to them" box (the way it works now, more or less) or I should get a "this person is *not* following you so do you want to @them instead or do you want to cancel" type of notice. At the very least put what I typed in as a draft and give me a notice that that's what you did. The current "couldn't send" behavior is just not enough information. Heck, I would have been happy to have you put what I typed in the clipboard for me.