
Show HN: I built a minimal Twitter web app with few rules - ramkarthikk
https://plaintweet.com/
======
jlelse
There's also Nitter, which doesn't require sign-in:
[https://github.com/zedeus/nitter](https://github.com/zedeus/nitter)

~~~
elorm
This is pretty sweet. Only fault is I can’t seem to find lists.

~~~
zedeus
Nitter supports lists the same way Twitter does. Example:
[https://nitter.net/NASA/lists/Astronauts](https://nitter.net/NASA/lists/Astronauts)

You can sort of create your own too (currently limited to ~25 profiles due to
Twitter limitations), like this:
[https://nitter.net/SpaceX,elonmusk,ID_AA_Carmack](https://nitter.net/SpaceX,elonmusk,ID_AA_Carmack)

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playpause
Great work! FYI there’s a layout bug: if the timeline contains a very long
unbreakable string such as a long URL, it busts out of the container and
causes the page to extend horizontally well beyond the viewport.

~~~
ramkarthikk
Thank you. Not sure how I didn't hit that scenario the last two days when I
built it (maybe long weekend and not many people tweeting?). That can be
really annoying, especially in mobile. I will fix it soon.

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OctopusSandwich
You can get similar results if you mute these words in your settings here:
[https://twitter.com/settings/muted_keywords](https://twitter.com/settings/muted_keywords)

ActivityTweet , generic_activity_highlights , generic_activity_MomentsBreaking
, RankedOrganicTweet , suggest_activity , suggest_activity_feed ,
suggest_activity_Highlights , suggest_activity_tweet ,
suggest_grouped_tweet_hashtag , suggest_pyle_tweet ,
suggest_ranked_organic_tweet , suggest_ranked_timeline_tweet , suggest_recap ,
suggest_recycled_tweet , suggest_recycled_tweet_inline , suggest_sc_tweet ,
suggest_timeline_tweet , suggest_who_to_follow , suggestactivitytweet ,
suggestpyletweet , suggestrecycledtweet_inline

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mrzool
Just FYI, I would pay for a native iOS app that is polished enough and looks
exactly like this.

~~~
g_p
I'd second this. Although from memory (and I didn't re-check this so I might
be wrong) Twitter's API has quite strict user limits, in order to prevent
third party clients from gaining significant marketshare (and thus spoiling
their carefully planned curated feed to raise user engagement, with ads
injected throughout).

I think that has proved an issue for "alternative" Twitter apps in the past,
or at least did for quite a long time.

~~~
ramkarthikk
Yes, this is a problem, especially if the app becomes huge. They also have
some strict rate limits. For ex: The endpoint to get mentions is restricted to
100,000 requests per day, which is very less for a popular app. There are ways
to get mentions using their search endpoint which has a more lenient rate
limit but it is an inconvenience and a bit hacky.

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WillYouFinish
Pretty neat! I switch between light and dark mode on all of my devices through
the day depending on the lightning situation. I'd love to see the web app to
switch automatically, too.

~~~
ramkarthikk
This would be interesting to add. I don't use any JavaScript, so I would have
to get the user to set their time zone and the time after which they want to
switch.

~~~
xwx
The prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature could be a way of doing this
without requiring any additional action from the user. The spec is still a
draft but it has decent browser support.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)

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karolisram
Nice job, thanks for bringing it to the world! Was looking for something
exactly like that a few weeks back.

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caseyw
Too bad this isn’t the default setup for Twitter! I’d actually use the silly
thing in that case

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ramkarthikk
The frustrating part is that even when you change your settings in Twitter to
show most recent tweets, it goes back to top tweets in a day or two.

~~~
jasonv
Is there a TweetDelete like service that resets this setting regularly?

I realize it shouldn’t be necessary. I’ve mostly stopped using Twitter, but I
ask out of curiosity.

~~~
ramkarthikk
I'm not aware of one. As @eyelidlessness pointed out in the comment above, it
seems to change back randomly, so I think it would be hard to detect when it
changes.

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bpodgursky
The lack of replies seems like it would break tweet-threads entirely?

Honestly I like reading normal-person replies, but at a bare minimum, I would
think you need to include self-replies to get most meaningful content through
(at least on clickthrough).

~~~
ramkarthikk
I'm planning to add this as a setting in the next increment.

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keeptrying
I do see retweets. Anyway if getting rid of them?

Don’t see anything in settings.

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ramkarthikk
Retweets are always off and cannot be changed, so it should not show retweets
in home timeline. It could be a bug I missed. I will take a look. Thank you
for the heads up.

~~~
keeptrying
Example:

David Chapman (@Meaningness):

RT @michael_nielsen: I mention all this mostly because of the relative lack of
attention the media in many countries have paid to successes… reply | retweet
| favorite | original

~~~
ramkarthikk
Ah, thanks. That helps. Checking David's profile, it is the newer style
retweet, which shouldn't have showed up.

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janwillemb
Didn't Twitter shut down apps like this in the past? I wonder how long this
will last.

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mraza007
Does it support markdown when tweeting

~~~
ramkarthikk
I did not want to request permission to post on behalf of users. With that out
of the way, the most minimal way to reply and create new tweets (and even
like/retweet) without write permissions is using Twitter's intent feature
which opens a (surprisingly) minimal UI for those actions.

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sidshere
Love it.

