QtDemo is no longer my Twitter client

On the off-chance that anyone other than me uses QtDemo as their twitter client (because I know that some people have a well-developed sense of humor), it should be known that the QML Twitter client demo is being scaled back from a proper client to a read-only search application. This is due to Twitter's planned switch to requiring OAuth authentication, and for further discussion of this you can read the paragraph below. The key point is that a full Twitter client is now more involved than a QML demo should be, and to cut out a swath of OAuth code we had to cut some functionality too. Those who are undaunted by additional complexity can checkout the OAuth enabled demo, which was dumped at http://gitorious.org/qt-qml-demo-playground/qt-qml-demo-playground in the twitter-oauth directory.

The problem with OAuth is that it's meant for web applications. For native applications, it just doesn't work. The problem is that you need to either A) Launch a web browser (ruining your experience, especially on small devices) or B) fake it all in a WebView behind the scenes (which is doing extra implementation work just to keep the same UI, password entry and all). On top of this, native applications can't really hide their secret key, especially open source ones. I can see why Twitter is allowing native application developers to ask for special treatment (xAuth), but don't understand why they want to dole it out on a case by case basis - as I figure that all good native clients will shun OAuth.


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