The IconFactory has released a new public beta of Twitterific, their popular Twitter client.

For anyone not familiar with Twitter, it’s a web service that’s somewhere between blogging and IMs. Twitter lets you post quick updates & receive notifications via IM or text messaging as well as from their website and clients such as Twitterific.

Twitterific 2.0 adds some major new features:

  • Tweets can be displayed inline. Use the “Expand all tweets in list” option in the configuration panel to set this display mode.
  • The text entry area can be resized. Just grab the knob between the text field and the tweet list and drag it.
  • Added a scrollbar to the list of tweets.
  • Tweets now maintain true read/unread states.
  • The main window snaps to the edge of the screen.
  • Tweets can be marked as a favorite by clicking on the tweet’s heart icon.
  • Twitterrific can now be configured to behave as a standard Dock application. After placing a checkmark for “Show an icon”, restart and you’ll have a Dock icon.
  • Updated to use a quicker Twitter API when refreshing the tweets. This new API places less load on the Twitter servers when there are no new tweets from your friends.
  • Spelling misteaks are highlighted as tweets are entered.
  • Added Cmd-2 to send a response to the author of the selected tweet.
  • Added Cmd-D to send a direct message to the author of the selected tweet.
  • Added new notification sounds and the ability to select them randomly.
  • Holding down the Option key while clicking on the “t” icon loads the “with friends” page at Twitter. You can also get this page by double-clicking on the tweet.
  • New menubar icon.
  • Added a new progress indicator. The new indicator is easier to see and will display a yellow triangle when there have been connection problems.
  • Twitterrific can now update your iChat/Adium/Skype status using your last tweet. Select the “Update chat status” preference in the configuration panel and the status in all running chat applications will be updated.
Bug Fixes:
  • The text of the tweet is no longer truncated. The size of the tweet view adapts to the length of the tweet.
  • The text insertion point and text field selection color are more readable.
  • URL connections will no longer overlap causing refresh and posting problems.
  • Improved checks and importing of XML data that is returned by Twitter.
  • Fixed a memory allocation bug that could cause random crashes while sending or receiving tweets.

You can download Twitteriffic 2.0 here.