Twitter For iPad Offers Touchscreen Gestures, Panes

Twitter fanatics will now be able to tweet about their latest haircut or their dog's trip to the vet from yet another mobile device after the micro-blogging site said Thursday that it launched a new app for the Apple iPad.

Twitter, a micro-blogging site that gained rapid momentum by limiting users' posts to 140 characters, already has a slew of its own mobile apps, including one for the Apple iPhone. And until Thursday, Twitter relied on third-party developers to create iPad apps.

The new Twitter iPad app, Twitter 3.1, which users can download for free, helps streamline and simplify Twitter's functionality with the introduction of "panes" -- fly-out panels that expand the viewing pane and offer the user a more spacious reading experience.

"Exploring Tweets is a great way to discover new and interesting information. And with devices of all shapes and sizes connecting to the Internet, we're constantly looking for new ways to make this easier," Twitter staff said in a company blog post Wednesday.

The Twitter for iPad app allows users to tap a tweet to open it in a pane to the right. Users can also tap a tweet that incorporates embedded Web links in order to see a full display of that Web page, image or video, in addition to friends' profiles and hashtag searches. If users tap a video link, the panes enable them to look through their timeline while the video is loading, and then swipe back to the video when it's ready to play. Users can jump between the opened links by tapping on the arrow buttons on the bottom of the screen.

Also, when users tap a tweet, another panel slides in from the right side of the screen, which automatically pulls up a user's comprehensive profile info, including bio, Web site link, number of followers, the number of people that a person follows, most recent status update and other relevant Twitter information, as well as a few suggestions for who the user could follow next.

Of course, as with other iPad apps, the Twitter app relies upon touchscreen gestures. Users can "pinch" the tweet to pull up related information on the author and actions, such as replying to a tweet. A "pinch" will also allow users to watch a video full screen.

Two fingers can drag a tweet down to view other responses in the conversation thread. Spreading apart two fingers on the screen opens a window that exhibits a shortened user profile.

iPad users are required to have iOS 3.1 or later in order to download the app. However, users don't even need to sign up to use the new Twitter for iPad app, the company said in a blog post.

The new Twitter app is immediately available from the Apple App Store.