Filed under: Internet, Macintosh, Browsers
Thurly: Twitter Add-on for Safari
by Christina Warren Jul 15th 2009 at 1:30PM
As a browser, Safari is pretty sparse when it comes to behavior add-ons and extensions. This is primarily because while officially supported plugins for media-types DO exist, there isn't an official plugin architecture for behavior based extensions. Developers have managed to work around this inconvenience using Input Manager hacks, but purists like to make it very clear: Input Managers are not plugins! (check out the link -- you can see me get reprimanded and totally schooled over my second TUAW blog post!)
Semantics aside, tools like Saft and Inquisitor totally make Safari more fun to use. Now a new "not a plugin" plugin has joined the fray: Thurly. Thurly, by Elixir Graphics, is a really neat tool that not only acts as a URL shortener, but also lets you share the URL on Twitter, all within the web browser.
This is how it works, you install Thurly (and unlike most Input Manager "hacks," Thurly is very easy to install or uninstall) and then, once you press Control-Command-T in Safari, a window overlay appears and you can shorten the current URL and then tweet it, along with a message, directly from that pane. You can even avoid the URL shortening aspect and just use it as a quick way to tweet from Safari.
Semantics aside, tools like Saft and Inquisitor totally make Safari more fun to use. Now a new "not a plugin" plugin has joined the fray: Thurly. Thurly, by Elixir Graphics, is a really neat tool that not only acts as a URL shortener, but also lets you share the URL on Twitter, all within the web browser.
This is how it works, you install Thurly (and unlike most Input Manager "hacks," Thurly is very easy to install or uninstall) and then, once you press Control-Command-T in Safari, a window overlay appears and you can shorten the current URL and then tweet it, along with a message, directly from that pane. You can even avoid the URL shortening aspect and just use it as a quick way to tweet from Safari.
If you're like me and you use Tweetie as your desktop Twitter client, you may need to change your keyboard shortcuts for quick tweeting. I previously used Control-Command-T in tweetie, but I changed it to something else so I could use both Tweetie and Thurly at the same time.
Thurly is free to use with one Twitter account. If you want to be able to use multiple Twitter accounts and also use or create Thurly Templates (so that you have a default message/syntax each time you invoke Thurly), registration is just $4.95. You can get a multi-user (5) license for just $11.95.
I was a Thurly beta tester and I'm really impressed with the integration of the product with Safari and the ease of use. You can choose between a transparent black or transparent gray theme and the tweet templates are really handy.
If you frequently like to share links on Twitter, but hate having to either use an external program or go to the Twitter site each time, Thurly is definitely worth checking out. The URL shortening feature is just the icing on the cake!
Thurly is for Mac OS X and requires Safari 4.0 or higher.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jash Sayani said 2:49PM on 7-15-2009
Nice! Anything similar that lets you take screenshots by selecting an area inside the browser and using TwitPic to tweet it ??
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Christina Warren said 2:56PM on 7-15-2009
It's not free (but if you did the MacHeist bundle you already have it), but LittleSnapper will let you take quick snaps and then tweet them from QuickSnapper. Not quite as fast, but it's the closest comparison I can think of.
Jash Sayani said 3:08PM on 7-15-2009
Hmm... I use LittleSnapper already, have 3 licenses! But its not that quick. Something more like this Safari plugin could have been really cool. Maybe, I'll develop it someday, when I learn Objective C++ :)
For just shortening URLs, I think I'll go with Shrinker (The one Kris tweeted you).
Eric said 11:11PM on 7-16-2009
Whats the difference between this and Bit.ly? Bit.ly has a Browser Bookmarklet.
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Christina Warren said 7:26AM on 7-17-2009
If you just use thurly.net, nothing -- but if you use the Input Manager for Safari, you can not only shorten the URL, but tweet directly from the page. You can even use it to just send a Twitter message if you don't want to switch apps or browser screens.