TweetDeck have updated their desktop version to version 0.31. There are a fair few improvements. The main one is updated alerts interface which looks much nicer (shiny glass-like semi transparent look) and is more customisable,  including the ability to only show alerts for certain columns.  You can also cycle through the new tweets in the alert box, similar the way Digsby’s alert box works.  You can also pick which quarter of the screen the notification box shows on and whether to see the full alert box or just the new items summary (see below).

It would be nice if you could muck with the opacity on the alerts, but no biggie.

Steven Hodson over on The Inquisitr has done a good rundown of TweeDeck’s features and what he does & doesn’t like.  He still isn’t going to use it for a few reasons, especially because of its lack of spam & keyword filtering and the inability to change the font sizes and a few other UI irritations.  I agree with his points, but these aren’t deal breakers for me.  For the way I use twitter, it’s still the best client.

However there is still one issue that really frustrates me, and I don’t know if it’s just a limitation of Adobe Air (the software TweetDeck runs on) or whether it’s just an oversight but it is really annoying that it doesn’t cache the user profile images.  Every time I scroll up & down the page it has to reload everyone’s profile picks from Twitter as they scroll into view.

Using Fiddler (a HTTP request watching program) I grabbed what happens when I scroll down, this is the result:

That’s 63 requests in one scroll of the mouse wheel, 270Kb every time I scroll. The data isn’t really the issue, it’s the fact that making those requests causes the program to slow down.  I must confess this new version seems to scroll smoother than the last version, but it’s still making all these redundant requests.  I know there are a few different storage options in Adobe Air, but I really haven’t looked into it enough to say whether this is event feasible.

I know this seems like a petty complaint, but it gets irritating, especially when I’m on a flaky wireless connection & I’m trying to read tweets that have already been loaded, but the connection has dropped out.  Really it’s a great piece of software, especially with the iPhone app that syncs with the desktop version.  I’m only complaining because I use it so much