PatientsLikeMe Tech Blog

Using Campfire with Fluid.app and Growl

• 4 Comments
• Posted July 28th, 2010 by Adam Darowski
• Filed Under: getting it done
• Tags: campfire, fluid, growl

At PatientsLikeMe, we use Campfire by 37signals for our internal communication. We have a flexible schedule that allows us to work remotely part of the time, so it certainly comes in handy for keeping up with the rest of the team.

Campfire is a web app, so you can access it from any web browser. But it also has an API that allows third party developers to build Campfire clients. A couple popular ones I’ve seen are Propane and Pyro. I was drawn to the appeal of bringing Campfire outside of the browser, but I didn’t feel the need to get a third party app. Instead, I turned to my old friend Fluid.

Fluid is a Mac app allows you to create “site specific browsers” (SSBs). Why is that useful? Taking frequently used web apps (like your email, project management software, oft-used social networking tool, etc.) lets you quickly switch to that site as if it were an application running on your Mac. So, it’s in your Dock. The Dock icon notifies you of unread messages. You can command+tab to it. No sifting through tabs to find it. No losing it in a browser crash.

There are a couple extras you can add to your Fluid Campfire app, like Growl notifications and a nice application icon. But first, let’s get into how you set it up.

Setting up your Fluid app

1. Download Fluid.app.
2. Download a nice high resolution icon for Campfire from 37signals.
3. Launch Fluid. Enter the URL of your Campfire account and the name of the app you’re creating. Here you can also turn the Campfire icon you just downloaded into the application icon.
4. Create your app.

And that’s really it.

Setting up Growl notifications

Sometimes you just can’t read everything that goes by on Campfire. Campfire does allow you to search the archives for important terms like, say, your name. But if someone’s talking to or about you, you can easily monitor that real-time. Enter Growl.

Growl is a Mac service that will pop up little messages on your screen to notify you of certain events. There’s a script that allows you to set this up for your new Campfire Fluid app. Let’s do that.

1. Install Growl.
2. Install the script. Instructions are on the script’s page.

Now you can decide what should trigger Growl notifications. There are two options:

1. Always, but stick on trigger: This will pop up every message in the chatroom, but they will close after a couple seconds (giving you just enough time to read it). When your term is used (like “Adam” in the example above), the message will stay on your screen until you manually dismiss it. This is the setting I use.
2. Only on trigger: Will only pop up images when they contain the term you entered (again, “Adam” in the example above).

And that’s all there is to it. As the leading image in this post so perfectly demonstrates, Campfire is an indispensable communication tool for the Product & Technology team. This Fluid+Growl combination helps me keep a handle on things quite nicely.