list is randomly showing different amounts of tweets sometimes none at all

[webtechmike]

On the site www.thedirtyscience.com I'm displaying a list of tweets. Sometimes it will display only 1 tweet. Other times it will display 2 or 3 tweets, although the count option is set to display 4. Sometimes it wont display any tweets at all.

Can someone please help me understand this behavior?

Thanks,
Mike

[purcell]

I'd have to dig through your web site's resources to find the code you're using to initialize the widget. If you post the code here, I'll be happy to provide feedback. :-)

[webtechmike]

Oh wow this comment section translated some things kinda weird. Is there a way to attach the files as text? If you firebug it you can see everything I did.

// 1. google jquery
// 2. seaofclouds js
// 3. function for list... with count set to 4
// 4. div with id #list

[purcell]

Cool, it was only the <script> snippet I really needed to see. I fixed up the formatting above, so don't sweat it. :-)

So, for whatever reason, the Twitter API call (to the following URL) is only returning 3 tweets right now:

http://api.twitter.com/1/dirtyscience/lists/dirtyscience-records/statuses.json?page=1&per_page=4&include_entities=1

Therefore the fault doesn't lie with the tweet widget, but rather with what Twitter is returning to the widget.

It's not unusual for the unauthenticated (ie. public) API calls like this to return stale or partial results -- I've seen this behaviour with the favorites API, the search API, and the lists API. :-(

[purcell]

Note also that the newer Twitter API will require authentication for all requests, so it's possible that it will spell the end of unofficial twitter widgets like jquery.tweet.js... see #264 for related discussion.

[webtechmike]

Oh ok great.. So there's not much I can do about it? I'm glad at least it's not something I was causing.

[webtechmike]

thank you!

[purcell]

No, there's nothing you've done wrong -- the best policy is to just make sure your design doesn't depend on the widget being filled, and then trust that most of the time, things will work just fine. :-)