Back when I wrote Startup 101: Tools for the Job, I had briefly mentioned Campfire by 37signals but had not gotten around to using it for Skribit. In the last month or two, things have changed completely as we have not only begun using Campfire but made it our primary form of communication and how we work. I’m not alone either. Telecommuting web professionals such as those involved with ENTP use Campfire daily.
However, I found two issues with making Campfire an integral part of my workflow. I always have Campfire open but if it’s just another tab in Safari or Firefox it takes a bit more work when using it actively many times per day. That’s why I use Fluid to create a “Site Specific Browser” for Campfire. SSBs have been around for some time and you might even use one like Mailplane for Gmail. Fluid lets users split web applications, or any site for that matter, out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.
The second issue is that Campfire does not allow users to disable user login/logout notifications. In a small team, this generally means that those notifications will often take up more space than real conversation. Fortunately for this issue, Fluid.app supports userscripts. My first resource when searching for Fluid and Campfire was this blog post, which showed two helpful scripts. I still use the “campfireFluid.user.js” script from there to notify me of new Campfire messages, similar to Mail.app’s red icon with the number of new messages.
Too many notifications within the chat.
As for the remaining notifications issue, I ended up creating a userscript to place display:none; in the CSS responsible for the login/logout notifications in Campfire. Unfortunately my simple method would leave timestamps throughout the chat area as they were not part of the login/logout notifications. Calvin Yu rewrote the script and got it working intelligently. The result can be seen below – a much cleaner chat area without notifications.
Campfire, now with less clutter.
Here is the script, ready for public consumption, if you have run into this annoying Campfire issue: RemoveNotifications.user.js. Installation: After creating a Fluid SSB for Campfire, click on the script icon in the menu bar, click Open Userscripts Folder, and drag in RemoveNotifications.user.js. Then go back to the script menu and select reload all scripts and ensure that Remove Notifications has a checkmark by it. Closing and restarting the Fluid app might be necessary.
Thoughts on SSBs
Do you run any site specific browsers? After linking to Mailplane in this article, I revisited it since I first used it a long time ago. I think it will be here to stay for me. I don’t have to constantly change tabs to get back to the email I was working on. Instead, Gmail now has its own playground.
Tweet This
Stumble This
{ 1 trackback }
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
I use Fluid.app for my google reader. I haven’t got around using it for campfire.
I came across this when i read about it in TheBigNoob , the guys behind Virb and Purevolume. This app simply rocks!
More from author
I use Fluid.app for a lot more than what I probably should :)
Gmail, Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter, Google Docs, Google Reader and my blogs’ admin-areas are the ones I have created now. What I really like about Fluid.app is the ability to let it take up the whole screen, so when I read feeds, it’s the only thing i do. When I go to Facebook and it stalls, it’s not influencing my open Safari windows and so on…
Furthermore, with Gmail in its own window, I don’t have to pay for Mailplane!
More from author
I tried Mozilla’s Prism, which is similar to this. I found it more of a hassle than just running everything in one browser, maybe that will change as the product develops and adds more value.
Paul, does this seriously rock your world? Maybe now is the time to get a girlfriend? ;-)
More from author
Whoa, I just realized you changed your fonts to Arial, never thought I’d see the day. I based a lot of my initial site design on yours a long time ago, and I always like the Verdana font you used, oh well, still looks fine.
More from author
I use fluid for Lighthouse. It makes it a lot easier to do web development when you can look at the web page and the bug tracker at the same time.
More from author
Does anything similar exist for….windows.. users?
More from author
Is Fluid (a general-purpose SSB, right?) better than Pyro (http://www.karppinen.fi/pyro/), which was built specifically for Campfire?
More from author
I use Fluid for GMail. Definitely appreciate that it shows my message count on the OS X dock icon.
More from author
I LOVE Maileplane. Got in on it during the beta program and was a little hesitant at first, but now I absolutely love it.
Anyway, I made an SSB for my WordPress admin section since I don’t like any of the Blogging apps for the Mac.
I’m including an SSB for our Faculty attendance/grading website at work in next year’s image.
We also have a Mac mini running a 42″ Samsung LCD in our student commons room. Our web developer coded an internal website to display current weather, news ticker, school events and athletics games for the day, etc. We created an SSB for this e-board site with Fluid.app and run it in fullscreen on the Samsung.
More from author
@Nick: sometimes it helps to read other comments, see Mozilla Prism.
More from author
Using Fluid with Todoist and my own home-brewed TimeTracker app for tracking billable time. Fluid is super slick, and in my opinion better than Prism at this point in time.
Fluid is an awesome app… use it all the time!
More from author
@AndrewSwihart: Sometimes it helps to read the whole comment. According to the comment, Prizm is not currently a worthy alternative.
Keep the sarcastic comments for your ego-driven blog.
Fluid is awesome and Todd is a great guy. Looking forward to some of the interesting things to come from Fluid in the future.
More from author
I did a tutorial on how to use Twitter with hahlo in a fluid Menu Extra window. It is so beautiful and really neat. Check it out: http://philsblogging.com/2008/twitter-is-not-invincible/#how-to
FLUID.app is one of the most powerful things I’ve seen on Leopard so far that doesn’t come from Apple directly (Todd worked for Apple though)… :) Figures.
More from author
I guess I don’t get it. What’s the big advantage of clicking your taskbar / dashboard instead of switching tabs in the browser that’s already in front of you? One post I read gushed over the security benefits of using separate browsers for things like bank websites, set up with different firewall settings and such. Also, there is a potential benefit in performance for RAM hogging web apps like Gmail. As far as convenience though, I see these things as a step backwards from using tabs for multitasking.
More from author
Oh thanks Nick for the complement on my site, at least I’m doing something right! I don’t think I’ve come across a blog that was driven by an “id” before. Let’s break out the wikipedia, see here. Realize that by pointing you to that article, I obviously knew everything in it before looking at it, hehe.
More from author
Hi Paul,
Have you checked out Pyro for use with Campfire on the mac?
I like it because it has drag-n-drop file support in addition to other features.
http://www.karppinen.fi/pyro/
More from author
Fluid is very nice – didn’t think about using it with Wordpress admin, thanks for that tip, Thanasi.
I use it for gmail, my google calendar (prefer it to syncing with iCal), twitter, and different freshbooks pages for time tracking, invoicing, etc.
Google Calendar in full screen in one Space on my 24″ iMac is very nice.
Bonus with the gmail inbox count in the dock. Really though, this thing is one of those super simple, but super useful apps. Alt-Tabbing through Fluid apps with icons is also much nicer than navigating tabs in Safari.
More from author
Wow, fluid.app sounds very cool. I’ll check it out. I tend to have so many apps and windows open, then I’ve always got about a dozen tabs open in Firefox or Flock… it gets to be too much. I make use of Spaces… a lot, to give me a new uncluttered screen with just one thing to focus on. I sounds like fluid.app might work really well for me with different logins to my various Wordpress blogs, and dev blog in different spaces, then I can just control+arrow between them.
More from author
Donna – you can create separate Fluid apps for each of your blogs, too, allowing you to Alt-Tab between them as apps. I like doing that, and using the favicons for quick launching and switching.
More from author