ChoqoK/Using ChoqoK/da

Choqok er en mikroblogging-klient til KDE's skrivebord.

Its features include:

• Twitter and Status.net integration including Identi.ca
• Twitpic integration
• Multiple simultaneous accounts
• Message search
• KWallet integration

Please see this site for a full feature list.

The Main Screen

The main screen of Choqok provides easy access to your accounts and messages. Each account, denoted by its alias, has a tab. When new messages are received, the unread count appears in the account tab.

Each account contains the following tabs: Home, Reply, Inbox and Outbox.

Home

The Home tab contains all of the messages to which you are subscribed. Each message in the timeline includes the message, avatar, time sent (relative to now), and information on the micro-blogging client used.

Reply

The Reply tab shows messages that were direct to you or in which you were mentioned.

Inbox

The Inbox shows messages in the timeline to which you have subscribed. They are in reverse chronological order with the newest first.

When reading a message you can click on tags, denoted by #, groups, denoted by !, or users, denoted by @. If you select a group or tag, the search window will open with tweets or dents for this group or about this topic. If you select a user, you can choose for what to search. The exact options depend on the capabilities of the network. Twitter supports one additional for tweets including this user.

Outbox

The Outbox is arranged in reverse chronological and shows the private messages that you have sent. Private messages are sent directly to a specific user. See Direct Messages for details on creating a private message.

Configuring Choqok

Creating an Account

Choqok supports connecting to Twitter, Identi.ca, and all sites that are based on Status.net.

Each account, in addition to login credentials, includes an alias. The alias defines the resulting tabs in the main window.

Note

At the time of this writing (February 2010), Status.net is defined by it's previous name Laconi.ca.

General Settings

The general settings provides access to common settings. Key settings include the update interval, default 10 minutes, and the number of new messages retrieved per account, default 20.

Notifications

Choqok integrates well with desktops supporting both knotify (KDE) and libnotify (Gnome, XFCE). You can also group new notifications. Please note that when starting Choqok, you may receive more than 20 notifications if you have more than 1 account or your configuration allows for more messages. This may fill your screen depending on your resolution.

Creating your First Message

Begin typing your message in the message area. As you type a message the remaining characters will countdown toward 0 from 140. When you have completed your message, press Enter. If the message is successfully posted, it appears in your inbox.

Replying to Messages

When reading a message in the timeline, you can click on the Reply button. This button appears as you hover over the avatar for the creator of that message.

Once you choose Reply, the recipient is pre-populated in the message section. Type your message and press Enter to send it.

Direct Messages

When creating a message select the Direct message to checkbox to make the message private.

Details of a conversation

Each conversation contains an avatar at the far left and information about the user in the bottom right. This information includes the author's handle, how long ago the message was sent, and the client the author used to create the message.

If you hover your cursor over a message, the author's bio appears in the tooltip.

For Identi.ca, you can see the full conversation by clicking on the <menuchoie>Show Conversation</menuchoice> button located in the bottom right of the conversation.

Information about a User

When you click on the author's handle in a conversation or a user mentioned in the message, you can retrieve information about the user from the popup menu.

Who is this user?

This option is only available when clicking on the author's handle. It will show a popup containing the user's avatar, full name, location web site, and bio. You may subscribe to this user as well by clicking the add icon in the upper right.

From this user

This option launches the search window showing tweets or dents created by this user.

Replies to this user

This option launches the search window showing tweets or dents that were directed at this user. For Identi.ca, this will also emulate the including this user feature of the Twitter network.

Including this user

This option is only available with users on the Twitter network. It launches the search window showing any tweet that contains this user, but is not from this user.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Quick Message

To create a quick message, you can use Ctrl + T. This will launch a small window in which you can type your message.

Tip

If the window does not appear, you can use the KDE global shortcut Ctrl + Alt + A to bring the Choqok window to the foreground and display the message window.

If Choqok is not in the foreground, i.e. minimized to the system tray, you can use Meta + Ctrl + T. On most computers, the Meta key has the Windows logo. On computers manufactured by Apple, this is the Option key.

Mark All Read

When Choqok is active, you can use Ctrl + R to mark all of the messages as read. You can also close the Choqok window via the Close button. This will not actually exit Choqok: instead it will minimize it to the tray.

Update Timelines

When Choqok is active, pressing F5 will refresh the timelines for all of your accounts.

Insert Now Listening

Choqok provides integration with Amarok. Pressing Ctrl + L when Choqok is active will insert information about the current track playing in Amarok. The exact information posted is configured in the general settings.

The default now listening message is

Currently listening to %title% by %artist% on %album% [Amarok].

The words surround by "%" represent fields taken from the currently playing track. Possible fields include %title%, %album%, %artist%, %year%, %genre%, and ;%track%.

Other keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl + F - Launch the find window, Ctrl + N - Toggle notifications, Ctrl + U - Toggle auto-updating of timelines.