Firefox does Twitter: Twitbin

Twitbin is a small Firefox extension that puts a Twitter sidebar inside your browser. Once you've logged in with your Twitter credentials, it keeps tabs on your friends or public Tweets. You can also write new posts right from the sidebar.

To toggle the Twitbin sidebar on and off, there's a bird logo that shows up on your browser next to the home button. The sidebar has its own links, for switching back and forth between friends and public feeds, and a refresh button to update posts. If you're not interested in manually hitting the refresh button, Twitbin can be set to automatically refresh all the posts every 1, 5, or 10 minutes.

Twitbin is not without its snags. For example, when typing there's no character limit warning to let you know how much room is left; instead, it just cuts off once you've hit 140 characters. Likewise, the typing interface only gives you a single line, so you can't see what you've written about without scrolling back and forth.

Twitbin is free and maintains that no-cost aspect with advertisements; you'll see a small ad on the bottom of the sidebar. It's fairly unobtrusive, and in place to pay for the development team's server costs.

Compared to some of the other Twittering solutions out there, Twitbin is very similar to Tweetbar in its use and integration with Firefox. Tweetbar also works with the Flock browser. For other ways to use Twitter, check out our Newbie's guide or our post on six ways to improve Twitter.

[Found on TechCrunch.]