Campfire: Flare joins Pyro 21 Sep 2006
8 comments Latest by Matt
Aside from my email app, Pyro is the only other app I have open all day. Pyro is the specialized Mac OS X web browser for Campfire. Windows people haven’t had an equivalent. Until now.
Today Matt Brindley offers up Flare. Among other specializations, Flare changes the tray icon color to show new messages have arrived, let’s you switch between open rooms using Ctrl + the room number, and notifies you of new messages with a preview.
Flare is only at version 0.4 so if you dig Flare be sure to let Matt know. Your support will encourage further development. Thanks for developing this Matt!
8 comments so far (Jump to latest)
riki 21 Sep 06
Thanks for the link, it looks like a great addition to my toolset.
Tom 22 Sep 06
Congratulations, you’ve just invented IRC and instant messaging
Eoghan McCabe 22 Sep 06
I always thought the great thing about web apps is that you don’t need specialised software. Sure, you don’t *need* this, but if your browser does the job, why clutter your machine with more apps?
James Head 22 Sep 06
It’s not as unwarranted as you would think.
If you are using one web site ALL DAY, - and are jumping in and out of 100 other web sites, - it can be annoying to keep that one web page open while opening and closing all the others. It’s more because window management is not as good as it might be.
Multiple clients are a good thing for power users, - they give the users choice.
Eoghan McCabe 22 Sep 06
I’m not trying to be difficult, but to be perfectly honest, I see no difference between running a dedicated browser and having a new window of my current browser open.
Matt Brindley 22 Sep 06
Flare is certainly something I never expected everyone to love.
There a 3 reasons why I use Flare instead of a browser window:
1. Flare keeps me logged in. If I restart, log off or whatever I know as soon as I’m back I’ll be in the room again. Therefore using Campfire as a support room or chat room is effortless because I don’t have to remember to do anything. Just chat when Flare tells me someone has entered.
2. The message preview allows me to follow entire conversations collegues are having in a room without actually opening the window once. Just by glancing down each time I get a good idea of what’s going on - but don’t have to stop working. If I see something and I want to contribute - I click what I saw and Flare pops up to let me type a response.
But if none of these appeal, then it probably isn’t designed for you - which is fair enough!
I removed the ability to use Flare over a guest login very early on, this was because I think it confused the purpose of Flare.
I think some excellent points (both for and against) were rasied when 37 first linked to Pyro (the mac version of Flare): http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/pyro_chat_around_the_campfire.php
Thanks for everyone who has come and said hello and offered feedback etc! I’ve got some great new ideas for this app and other SSBs.
J Linczak 22 Sep 06
I don’t know if anyone has ever mentioned this before, but I think it would be kinda cool to have an app on your desktop that acted like an IM tool (AIM, Trillian, etc.) so whenever I used it to chat with other people in the project, it automatically saves itself as transcripts in Campfire.
Better yet, find a way to integrate it into my IM tool of choice and suddenly chats about projects are easily saved without any additional work on the part of the project contributors. That way, the same IM we use everyday to chat amongst ourselves at work is now a tool for collaborating on a project and saving that info to Campfire automatically, so no collaboration is lost.
Matt 22 Sep 06
There a 3 reasons why I use Flare instead of a browser window:
Missed the 3rd reason off!
The 3rd reason was agreeing with James, it’s all too easy to accidently close a window when you have plenty of the same app open.
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