UPDATE 2008-06-04: The below is currently working on iPhone now.
Twitter used to work really easily on the iPhone. If you wanted the “Mobile” page you went to and if you wanted the “Standard” version, you went to .
Twitter then added the ability to easily switch between the “Mobile” and “Standard” by clicking a link at the bottom of the page.
Which then broke the usefulness of being able to bookmark the m.twitter.com or twitter.com sites separately.
This annoyed me and others, but like so much else about Twitter, it seemed like a case of “We changed it, we think it’s better, and we’re so busy trying to keep the whole thing online that we aren’t going to worry about something extra like that.”
I found a way to work around it.
Bookmark for mobile site:
m.twitter.com shows 10 posts per page, but Hahlo and other clients can access 20. Twitter “temporarily” cut off access to the paging part of their API months ago (and has recently slashes the number of API calls-per-hour in half, which is hopefully less-temporary than the disabling of the paging part of the API which has been off for 6+ months.
I had been using this shortcut:
to get to the 21st-30th posts in my Twitter history, i.e. the first posts that Hahlo and other clients can’t access.
(Ideally I’d like something that looks very much like “Hahlo with Paging” and would then never, ever, ever use m.twitter.com again, but since Twitter is reducing the usefulness of its API to 3rd party clients, the need to use m.twitter.com appears to be sticking around like an unwanted relative/roommate/ex.)
Let me also go on the record as saying that I’d gladly subscribe to Twitter for more API calls and to increase stability, but every “explanation” I hear for why Twitter is broken/down again/etc seems to indicate that it isn’t just a money problem. Whatever it is, I hope they get the bugs worked out sooner rather than later.
Really Lame Workaround
“What if you bookmarked the links that toggle Twitter from Standard to Mobile?” I thought to myself.
The URLs are right there are the bottom of each page: will set your Twitter page to the Standard/Full version, and will set it to the mobile page.
But, you’d have to have pretty damn quick reflexes to hit the link, then the + to bookmark it.
Or you could do what I did:
1) Turn Airplane mode ON (and refuse to enable data whenever iPhone asks)
2) Launch Mobile/Touch Me Safari
3) Open a blank tab
4) Type in http://twitter.com/sessions/change_ui?ui_type=s (or use if you prefer something easier to type)
5) Click the +
6) Choose “Add to Home Screen” (NOTE: you will be left with a white icon because it can’t fetch the site icon. A minor annoyance IMO).
7) Save it as “TwitStd” or whatever you prefer
8) Repeat the above process, using http://twitter.com/sessions/change_ui?ui_type=m or http://xrl.us/TwitterMobile for step #4 and a different name for Step #7.
Is it elegant? Hell no. But it works.