Today we launch Basecamp Classic Mobile for phones and devices with WebKit browsers. This includes the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, Motorola Droid X, Motorola Droid 2, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Incredible, HTC Evo, Palm Pre 2, BlackBerry Torch, or any other device running iOS 4+, Android 2.1+, webOS 2, or BlackBerry 6.
Basecamp Classic Mobile is not an native app, it’s a web app. All you have to do is visit http://basecamphq.com on your mobile phone. No apps and nothing to install – it just works.
A mobile version of Basecamp Classic has been a top customer request for some time now. We’re thrilled to finally be able to deliver. We put a ton of work into it. We hope you love it as much as we do.
Why a web app and not a native app?
Back in July we put up a job ad for an iOS developer. We had decided to dive into native apps for the iPhone. We contracted out the back-end development of our iPhone app for Highrise. The project went well, but we felt like we had to have someone in-house to continue the development of the Highrise app and future apps we wanted to build.
And then Android really began to make a run. Android market share increased and more and more customers were asking for Android apps for our web apps. So we stopped and thought about it for a bit. Do we want to have to hire an iOS developer and an Android developer? That’s a lot of specialization, and we’re usually anti-specialization when it comes to development.
Eventually we came to the conclusion that we should stick with what we’re good at: web apps. We know the technologies well, we have a great development environment and workflow, we can control the release cycle, and everyone at 37signals can do the work. It’s what we already do, just on a smaller screen. We all loved our smaller screens so we were eager to dive in. Plus, since WebKit-based browsers were making their way to the webOS and Blackberry platforms too, our single web-app would eventually run on just about every popular smartphone platform.
Comfortable and confident in our decision, we set out to build the best possible mobile web app for our Basecamp Classic customers.
This is version 1.0
A big part of this initial release was nailing the basics that mattered the most. We had to make a bunch of hard calls about what was important enough to make version 1. That meant leaving some things out and not bringing full functionality to other things. For example, you can view Milestones but you can’t add new ones. But you can view, add, change, and assign to-dos. We plan on rounding out the functionality as time goes on.
More to share soon
We have a lot of material and lessons to share regarding the design and development of Basecamp Classic Mobile. Technical decisions, design decisions, explorations, stuff on the cutting room floor. Lots to share. Stay tuned.
Credit
Basecamp Classic Mobile is here today because of the hard work and extraordinary creativity of Jason Zimdars, Sam Stephenson, and Josh Peek. These guys worked their asses off on this project. They made it happen. We couldn’t be happier with the results.
Thanks to our customers
To all our customers: Thanks for being patient while we developed Basecamp Classic Mobile. It took a while, but we wanted to get it right. We now have a completely modern, fantastic foundation upon which we can continue to make the mobile experience better and better. Plus, we’ll be able to reuse some of the new technology in the desktop versions of our web apps. We’re already working on something big right now that’s only possible because of our work on mobile.
We leave you with a fun little video starring some of the hands of 37signals:
Music by Sudara. Listen to more from him and other independent artists
in Issue #02 of Ramen Music, the online music magazine he curates.
Jason Fried wrote this on Feb 01 2011 There are 129 comments.
Drew Melton 01 Feb 11
yes yes yes!!
Des Traynor 01 Feb 11
Excellent work guys. Congratulations.
Ben Knowles 01 Feb 11
This is awesome.
Not everyone will be happy with taking a non-native approach, but I think it’s better for the consumer in the long run to favour mobile web apps as opposed to native ones. The only argument against going the web route is the lack of offline functionality, but perhaps in time HTML5 will help address that.
PS – my cat was a bit taken aback by the music in the video. Not sure why.
Des Traynor 01 Feb 11
The frame 14 seconds into that video is a good reminder of what the web is all about.
Ryan Coughlin 01 Feb 11
Stoked on this! Yet another impressive release. Will be great to get basecamp on my phone. And mobile too.
Great release to read for my Birthday.
Keep it up.
Ryan
John Saddington 01 Feb 11
great stuff! keep it coming.
Jason Terhorst 01 Feb 11
Disappointment. If it’s not native on iOS, it’s not worth using. See this for more: http://al3x.net/2011/01/15/user-hostile-platforms.html
Maybe use this for other phone platforms, but provide a native app for iOS? Web apps don’t have things like push notifications and other native features. Android isn’t as big as the neck-beards would like you to believe.
Satish Kumar 01 Feb 11
Cinco framework? Can you please elaborate?
Jeff Mackey 01 Feb 11
This is great! Congratulations on the launch. Again, you make it look so easy.
Now, if you could do the same thing for Backpack, my life would be complete!
ChrisFizik 01 Feb 11
re: Satish Kumar
yeah, Cinco framework? what’s that about
John Marstall 01 Feb 11
Do we want to have to hire an iOS developer and an Android developer? That’s a lot of specialization, and we’re usually anti-specialization when it comes to development.
JF 01 Feb 11
Disappointment.
Good morning to you as well.
If it’s not native on iOS, it’s not worth using…
There are more than a few native iOS apps for Basecamp. If that’s your preference, you’re covered.
John Marstall 01 Feb 11
(Sorry, seems quotes break the commenting system.)
Isn’t mobile-optimized HTML /CSS/JS also a specialization? I think what you mean is that you’ve already specialized in the direction of web apps, which may or may not always line up with your customers’ needs.
I’m sure the mobile site is solid, but personally I do prefer iOS native apps above the alternatives. Wonder what this will mean for the Campfire app.
Mat 01 Feb 11
Does that mean that you will be discontinuing the iPhone apps for Highrise and Campfire and making them mobile web apps?
Satish Kumar 01 Feb 11
I meant the Cinco Framework mentioned here – http://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/32463797578899456
Daryl Monge 01 Feb 11
Nicely done. Clean, Simple just the way I like it.
Mike 01 Feb 11
Wow. That is amazing. Looks great on Android. I might just have to abandon my Beacon app as well as Kompass. Great work. Really well thought out. Especially love the Writeboard access.
Only recommendations would be: 1) Bookmark Icon, so I have a pretty little icon on my homescreen 2) Access to the to-do’s assigned to me.
Great job. This should be held up high as a great example of what mobile apps can be!
Silumesii Maboshe 01 Feb 11
I’m with Satish, following DHH ’s Tweet. What is Cinco?
Solid move, sticking to your “nothing to install” roots!
Dave Woodward 01 Feb 11
@Jason Terhorst: There are good points in that blog post… but this isn’t an AIR app. WebKit browsers have better use experiences than AIR by far, albeit simpler. Simple is 37s thing. On iOS devices at least, WebKit pages can even have native animations and things can be just as smooth if you’re careful.
JF 01 Feb 11
Isn’t mobile-optimized HTML /CSS/JS also a specialization.
Ultimately everything is a specialization, but we work in HTML /CSS/JS every day and have been for years. Gains we make on the desktop can make it into mobile, and gains we make in mobile can make it back to the desktop. It’s the right circle for us.
Steve 01 Feb 11
This is great, But-
I don’t see a TODO tab. Is there one?
Steve Woods 01 Feb 11
Tying yourself to one or more platforms is the same as tying yourself to one or more browsers – the whole point of the web is that stuff is supposed to work everywhere on every device.
I applaud 37Signals for staying off the iOS bandwagon.
Let’s face it, if WP7 was the market leader people would be criticising Microsoft for being so closed, along the lines of “why wouldn’t you want everything open so it can work on everything else”.
It’s as if the people who campaigned for YEARS for cross browser compatibility have just wasted their time because as soon as something shiny iOS decided to come along, people jumped on it as if it was the greatest thing ever.
iOS is shiny, don’t get me wrong – but it is a huge threat to every step we’ve taken over the last decade. The fact that consumers are happy to embrace and generate a monopoly is, frankly, scary.
Well done again, 37Signals
Nate 01 Feb 11
I’m waiting for David to chime in a little bit about the Cinco framework he mentioned in his tweet.
Tony 01 Feb 11
Right on time! Well done, and looks fantastic on my HTC Incredible.
Dustin 01 Feb 11
Hand models.
Peter 01 Feb 11
37s has planted their flag as the leader in anther web area.
This is one of the best mobile web / non native apps I’ve seen. I look forward to learning from this example.
Christoph 01 Feb 11
Great to see this, and going with a mobile site was the right call. Basecamp would gain features like notifications, sharing and calendar integration from being native, but the development cost would skyrocket. This way you cover the basics for pretty much everybody with a smartphone.
FYI , the slide animation is pretty choppy on my HTC Incredible. I also find that the pages are layered too much, I have to do quite a bit of going back and forth to check out the various projects I’m on. I’d prefer an Activity screen to start out with that shows the latest things that happened across all projects.
Americo Savinon 01 Feb 11
Perfect. Works Great.
seb 01 Feb 11
Oh yeah did you rework on a new framework ?!
We want know more.
BTW , just tested basecamp mobile and it rules. Reallly.
Kent Brewster 01 Feb 11
Nice job, you guys. Don’t listen to anybody who bitches about how the scrolling isn’t quite right; they will never, ever be satisfied. :)
Steven Piper 01 Feb 11
First impressions are that it looks slick, cut back but still has the core functionality you would expect. So well done on V1.0 guys.
Maybe for V1.2 you could consider adding a manual input of times against To Dos – would find this useful as we track time at meetings (for which I create a To Do).
Keep up the good work….
SS 01 Feb 11
Basecamp Mobile is written in CoffeeScript using our in-house Cinco mobile framework, which ties together Backbone.js, Zepto, the Eco templating language, and Stitch.
We’ll be talking more about Cinco and open-sourcing it in the coming months.
Nico Schweinzer 01 Feb 11
It works on iPhone 3G too! (Not only on 3GS) :-) I love the usibility. I kinda feel like, a lot of webapps become even more user-friendly, when they transform into an iphone (web)app. Its the same with facebook actually.
David Ham 01 Feb 11
This looks fantastic. Nice work, Jason, Sam, and Josh!
Agreed that HTML /CSS was the right move. I’m sure people will come back to you with hundreds of new features they want or things they want implemented differently, but they’d do that anyway. With a mobile web app, you can continue to iterate the way you do on your desktop browser versions.
VERY keen to hear more about your framework. Ryan alluded to it in an interview he did recently, and it sounds and looks awesome.
Adam 01 Feb 11
Looks nice. Can we expect a Highrise Mobile in the near future?
Joshua Pinter 01 Feb 11
I love how almost everything you put effort into, you ask “How can we get the most out of this?”
You nix the native app development because you’ll need to rewrite a bunch of the same code for iOS, Android, Windows 7, etc.
You’re open-sourcing the Cinco framework to make it stronger, better, faster and provide even more exposure for 37s, like you did with Rails.
You write two books from all the lessons you’ve jotted down along the way.
Nothing is wasted with you guys and that’s awesome.
...
Back on topic, I’m curious how this will affect sales for mobile apps already available?
I currently switch between Headquarters and Summit, but will add the mobile version in to the mix to see who wins out.
Thomas 01 Feb 11
I love basecamp, but I have no use for a mobile site. It absolutely needs to be an app. Apps are easier to use, faster to respond, work offline and provide additional functionality like push notifications. Luckily there are already real apps that do a great job.
Florian Hanke 01 Feb 11
Suggestion: Make a simple iOS App using a WebView – like that us iPhone users can have a nice App, which just displays the web app :)
Brandon Hays 01 Feb 11
Yeah, I’m with Mike. Having to read through to-dos assigned to others makes using this a huge mess.
Still, since Basecamp was quite literally unusable on my iPhone, this is a sizable step forward. Here’s hoping “assigned to me” is next in line!
Merrick Christensen 01 Feb 11
You know this feels like a bit of a cop out to me. Offering a mobile web version should be pretty standard for the majority of web applications anyways, to claim that it “just works” is obvious if you don’t care about push notifications, etc. I am a fan of the mobile web version but am a little saddened to hear you aren’t going to be pushing your own native iPhone version, sure plenty of them exists but have you ever tried using them? How ridiculous slow they each are? I can only blame the API for this since I’ve purchased 3 applications and they all seem to have the same issue. I am excited to hear about Cinco, and the mobile app looks and feels solid.
Steve Benjamins 01 Feb 11
Stoked for this app.
Would love to see it for Backpack which I use constantly.
joe 01 Feb 11
cinco me!
Matthew Sacks 01 Feb 11
Wow, finally a mobile Web app with an appealing user interface.
Matthew Sacks 01 Feb 11
@JF I definitely agree that native is better, because there is more power in native API ’s than Web, even with HTML5 , but it’s an improvement over other mobile Web apps, and others might want to take notes.
Sid 01 Feb 11
Out of curiosity, what makes this WebKit-only?
Michal Kuklis 01 Feb 11
wow amazing work! Congrats!
Greg 01 Feb 11
Nice work.
A few things I noticed in 2 minutes of use. Needs a home button. After looking at a message on one project I want to jump back to my projects list and see what needs my attention on other projects, this requires hitting the back button 3 times to get back to my list of projects. How about 1 click with a home button?
Where’s my dashboard view. Need to see the hot projects that need my attention without having to click through every single project. (especially with all the back, back, back clicking)
You hijacked my logo! I was used to looking at my company logo to find basecamp on my ios devices. Now it is a green basecamp logo. Why not let me use the same icon I do for the regular web site. You even have a preference for it on the web.
SS 01 Feb 11
Greg, thanks for the feedback. Just wanted to mention that you can jump back to the Projects list at any time by holding down on the Back button for a second.
JZ 01 Feb 11
@Greg,
There is a shortcut for going back. Hold down the back button for an extra second… you’ll jump all the way back to the list of projects.
The project list is in order of activity, with the most recently active project at the top along with when it was updated.
Good point on the icon. The custom icon didn’t make version 1.
Thanks for the feedback!
Jeff Putz 01 Feb 11
+1 for going the browser-based route. -1 for totally breaking even the login on WP7 . Seriously, there’s nothing hard in this day and age about supporting that browser.
Cue the predictable anti-fans…
sam 01 Feb 11
I truly was impressed with the app’s responsiveness, I notice that most webkit apps are “laggy” at best…this one is improved…but of course not as fast as a native, but that’s a given.
With that said, i’m excited that it’s using backbone.js & zepto.js and I’m very eager to see the cinco framework hit the streets!
Great work guys, and thanks for not selling out.
I’m an apple fanboi, but the app-store nazi’s scare me. Today Amazon Kindle and Sony’s eBook software are potentially hosed as Apple introduced a new rule. sucks when they change the rules of the game….once the game has started and many have made substantial investments. to me this is dirty.
Michael Waite 01 Feb 11
I like this very much, the only thing I’m really missing is the ability to pinch to zoom on image files, but I can live with this just fine until I get to a proper computer.
Héctor Ramos 01 Feb 11
This is great! I’m using it already.
Can I add one quick quip? I see 37signals bashing the high valuations of other companies, and saying how bootstrapped is the way to go, who needs funding, etc…
...but then you go for the user-unfriendly, lowest-common-denominator HTML5 approach because hiring an iOS developer and Android developer is too much specialization?
karl 01 Feb 11
What was the motivation for writing proprietary web app, more than a open web app? Or is it in the future plan to make the app really accessible universally on any platforms?
JF 01 Feb 11
Héctor, this decision had nothing at all to do with not being able to afford iOS and Android developers. We’re fortunate to be in a position to be able to afford anything we need. But there’s more to cost than just money. It’s culture, it’s workflow, it’s a lot of things.
Fundamentally the decision came down to working with the web, not with native apps on multiple platforms. It came down to flexibility, efficiency, and allowing customers on four (and hopefully more down the road) different platforms to access Basecamp on their phones without having to download special software. They don’t need special software on their desktop machines and we don’t think they should need special software on their mobile devices either. We consider that to be very customer focused and customer friendly.
Jason Grigsby 01 Feb 11
Looks good. It would be nice to add the iPhone icon format so that someone can add it to their home screen. The touch-icon-iphone.png files.
Details in the developer docs here http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/ConfiguringWebApplications/ConfiguringWebApplications.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002051-CH3-SW3
Anon 01 Feb 11
Does not work on iPhone 2G, all I see is a spinning wheel.
brett 01 Feb 11
Great work! As a user of all your offerings…this is grand…on the greedy side…I hope you will be developing this for BackPack and Highrise.
Thank you for your fine work.
Amanda 01 Feb 11
Kudos on the great app!
Matt Boynes 01 Feb 11
Solid work fellas. I’m very impressed with the layout and general navigability. My only comment is, when you have > 100 projects like my company does, the projects list (a) takes a while to load and (b) is not efficient to navigate. Perhaps paginate and add a search box? And I agree with Jeff, +1 for going browser-based.
sam 01 Feb 11
I truly was impressed with the app’s responsiveness, I notice that most webkit apps are “laggy” at best…this one is improved…but of course not as fast as a native, but that’s a given.
With that said, i’m excited that it’s using backbone.js & zepto.js and I’m very eager to see the cinco framework hit the streets!
Great work guys, and thanks for not selling out.
I’m an apple fanboi, but the app-store nazi’s scare me. Today Amazon Kindle and Sony’s eBook software are potentially hosed as Apple introduced a new rule. sucks when they change the rules of the game….once the game has started and many have made substantial investments. to me this is dirty.
sam 01 Feb 11
@Matt_Boynes Sounds like a perfect “infinite scroll” candidate ala sortfolio.
JZ 01 Feb 11
@Jason Grigsby
The app does have a home screen icon that we’ve tested on iOS and Android.
If you don’t get the icon on the first try, please try again. Or wait a few seconds for the icon to load before you add the bookmark.
We’re looking into ways to speed this up.
JZ 01 Feb 11
@ anon
For now the app only works on Apple devices that are running iOS 4+.
Jason Grigsby 01 Feb 11
Thanks. I see it now. Looks good.
Shawn 01 Feb 11
Nice work. I agree witha couple other comments, that the initial load time takes awhile on my phone. After that it sometimes seems sluggish, but it could be related to a number of things outside of the the actual app. I have confidence you guys will allows improve strive to make it better, and the without appstore approval process the revisions will be that much faster.
When you get to discussing the development of this project, I’d be really be interested in how much you guys relied on simulator/emulators before going to the actual devices.
Thomas 01 Feb 11
Not working on iPad iOS 4.2.1 for me. Just the spinning wheel. Trying to edit the URL so I can access the standard version, but that doesn’t work. Would be nice to be able to choose the regular web version if new mobile site or device doesn’t work (like on iPhone 2G) Now i’m left out all together, taking the day off :)
Federico Soria 01 Feb 11
You guys nailed it, congrats!
sortvatS 01 Feb 11
I’m not seeing the mobile site on my HTC Wildfire running 2.1 while running the default browser.
Works on Miren though.
Max 01 Feb 11
I have an old ipod touch, and it chunks by on the login screen. It also crashed safari trying to view my to-do list.
Looks great though!
Thomas 01 Feb 11
Just the spinning wheel on my iPhone 3GS as well. I’ll drop a line to support. Is there any way to access the old version?
Watch Maker 01 Feb 11
Nice stuff. Please add time entries.
McF 01 Feb 11
Wondering why you chose to roll your own framework? Did you consider Sencha Touch? I’m still straddling the fence about native apps vs. mobile web apps. I see the write once run mostly anywhere mentality, but what about things that truly make iOS apps great, like Core Audio, Gestures, OpenGL, Core Animation, etc..
Adrian 01 Feb 11
It’s reactive to design a brand new app for each new platform. You basically depend on the market share of the mobile market. This is a great alternative.
Thank you! Adrian
Bill Eisenhauer 01 Feb 11
Is the mobile version available for all plans? Using the Free version from my iPhone, my dashboard page invites me to switch to the mobile app.
As someone in the software development industry, I can well understand the technology choice here. Its really hard to convey the business case in a ‘launch’ blog where you don’t want to get off on a tangent. You could probably write 10 blog posts on that, but that’s not what users want to hear.
In the end, the mark of a good app is whether users can get the information they need and get their tasks done in a timely and pleasing way. You can build a native app and not accomplish the above and there are many examples of this.
I can’t help but want to attach this Louis CK link for all the people who are so quick to bag on technology that they so quickly undervalue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
CurtisP 01 Feb 11
I love it. We made the big plunge as a mobile web app as well at AisleFinder. Which has been successful.
I think that native apps shoud be a second thought, as you dont really know what your users are really wanting and needing to do from a mobile standpoint in v1.This also allows you (magic word) “pivot” your mobile features easily.
Good job 01 Feb 11
Very well done. I am amazed at 37signals’ ability to turn out quality products with minimal staff.
gareth 01 Feb 11
This particular combination of implementation technologies is poised to explode because of the simplicity and practicality of each technology. Sinatra on the back end will be another part of the combination.
Mark 01 Feb 11
Nicely done. Even though I have not had a Basecamp account for sometime, the developer I use for projects does, so I log in as a user. This is a perfect solution for logging in and quickly getting project info, as previously, I just used the email reply function on my mobile to avoid going to the standard site.
Good solution. I agree developing an app for this probably would’ve been overkill.
rednevednav 01 Feb 11
So, the ‘web app’ version of Highrise will be release next week?
rednevednav 01 Feb 11
EDIT I should have said… the ‘MOBILE web app’ version of Highrise will be released next week then?
Jason Dittmer 01 Feb 11
I love it! It’s already better then all the Basecamp iPhone apps I’ve used. I can’t wait till you do this for Highrise. To be honest the current Highrise iPhone app blows.
Adam 01 Feb 11
It’s not native app, is not mobile app. It’s just half a job.
Laziness and fear. Lizard brain don’t like changes, right?
But of course – you don’t care. As long money coming to you – you simply don’t care.
Scott Arthur 01 Feb 11
I’m with @Shawn, would love to know how you went as far as testing on actual devices vs emulators.
Seems like there’s still quite a lot of difference between the versions of mobile webkit that run on various models of phone so testing on each one seems unavoidable.
Would love to see a post on how you went about the whole process.
Christopher Beckwith 01 Feb 11
I agree, I would have preferred a native iOS from a user point of view. That being said, practically, as 37Signals noted this is a big undertaking. 37Signals builds Web Apps, excellent web apps. iOS Apps are not there thing.
Building a web app makes sense for 37Signals and let’s other better native app developers build those who can focus exclusively on them.
So a bit let down, but honestly at this stage in the game they made the best choice for them. So thank you for knocking out this web app that I’m confident Blackberry and Palm users will be thrilled about.
Matthew Bafford 01 Feb 11
With the mobile version (on iPad) I can not switch between Basecamp companies (I work with contractors who have Basecamp as well as my own company) without pressing back a bunch of times to get to the initial selection screen. In the desktop version I just have to click the company name drop-down.
TJ 01 Feb 11
Good call in “sticking with what you’re good at”. The value gained in going with web over native is well worth it. Nice long-term thinking, as usual.
Michel 01 Feb 11
Good to hear this, great thing you developed a web application for mobile.
One question; I noticed that there is no homescreen icon for iOS. Also, the web application runs with the address bar open and not fullscreen. Why is this?
Timothy Stiffler-Dean 01 Feb 11
Fantastic job, guys! Really love that you’re doing a web app. We need more companies and developers to follow your lead. Very much looking forward to your other products to be released in this manner.
~Proud HP/Palm webOS Supporter
Aeron 01 Feb 11
HTML5 Audio, Gestures with browser touchevents, WebGL (coming soon), CSS3 transitions/transforms.. The gap is closing every day, the W3 is working towards that goal (http://www.w3.org/TR/#tr_Mobile_Web_Applications)
Aaron 01 Feb 11
You’re just making a mobile web app now? Way to come to the party 3 years late, guys. I’m sure your future innovations will be just as disappointing. I hope all that development doesn’t slow you down, while you’re spending time bashing other companies & products.
Joseph Taylor 01 Feb 11
Glad to see you chose good ol’ HTML . To hell with making OS specific apps. For now.
Berislav 01 Feb 11
I have been waiting for this ever since Ryan talked about the new mobile framework you guys were working on. Basecamp looks great on my desire. Hope you release the framework soon, so the rest of us can enjoy another great framework from you guys :)
Sylvain 01 Feb 11
Once again, you blow my mind! You’re such an inspiring company to follow. Icing on the cake is that you’re working on releasing an open source framework like you did with Rails. I can’t wait to see this! Congrats to the team who build it, you’re rockstars.
Eric 01 Feb 11
The video makes it look like on iPhone the browsers native control bar is made to disapppear (Safari’s back/forward, action, mark and pages buttons). But when I checked it out that bar was there as usual. What gives?
Scott 01 Feb 11
Eric,
To get the safari menu bar out of the way, you have to launch from the iphone home page. Click the ’+’ and then choose ‘Add to Home Screen.’ Then tap on the new icon on your home screen.
Tim 01 Feb 11
Awesome. Loaded it and using basecamp on ios4 3GS in Au on Telstra. Is lightning fast.
Am about to release my first iPhone app based on Getting Real principles. Very, very lite.
V2 a bit heavier (more screens), but this has definitely pushed me over the edge into doing a web app to cover the Android and RIM crowds.
Awesome work
Tim
Eric 02 Feb 11
Awesome, got it now. Thanks.
Jon 02 Feb 11
Brilliant fellas….. platform specific apps have a place. However 37 signals software isn’t that place. With the exception of response time (via local storage) i can’t think of a single compelling reason to download an app vs using a mobile optimized website. Especially one as well done as this one is.
Anthony Ryan-Lorraine 02 Feb 11
I love the idea of BaseCamp on my Android. Unfortunately this turned out an annoying downgrade for me. The project view of todo lists in mobile view doesn’t display like on the website (All incomplete, then a few completed), and when viewing an actual todo list it has all the completed todo items (Which in my case is literally a couple thousand). I can’t just use new todo lists all the time as each time I want one setup I tie into a 3rd party, and that takes manual effort. Solutions anyone? I don’t seem to even be able to bookmark the old pages manually (Unless I change my user agent in my phone’s browser, which is a sub-optimal solution for many reasons)
Scott 02 Feb 11
@Anthony Ryan-Lorraine : Does the “Switch to standard” link not work for you?
José Espinal 02 Feb 11
Congratulations on this one! Great to hear such a big step for Basecamp.
Another thing…I really like the new tone/style you guys are taking on announcing things.
Wish you the best.
Sameer 02 Feb 11
Thanks guys for good enough efforts, though am quite disappointed because it do not work on Blackberry OS 5 . I couldn’t access the mobile version on BB Curve 8900 with 5.0 OS.
Any plans to support other blackberry OSes than 6.0?
Dan 02 Feb 11
Has this gone live? I tried on my iPhone and iPad, and I ot the standard site. Clicking on the “switch to mobile” link had no effect
Harvey Mason 02 Feb 11
Yes, yes yes. Its here… Been waiting loooooong time for this! Great news
David 02 Feb 11
Nice, very nice. Just hope you’ll consider doing this one for WP7 one day (no, i’m not kidding). Some (very few) people could pay for it!
lottadot 02 Feb 11
Nice work. One change request – add an option, on the view after a successful logout, to go back to http://basecamphq.com/ aka “log into another project” with one of your other accounts.
Cliff 02 Feb 11
There is no way to get back to the dashboard easily using basecamp with an iPad. An additional link needs to be added.
Natalie 02 Feb 11
Fantastic result guys big congrats. I’ll be fascinated to see the adoption rate and whether this causes people to use more of the functionality of Basecamp as a result of such easy access.
Would love to feature you guys in my eBook The Ultimate Entrepreneur’s toolkit.
Natalie
Joel 02 Feb 11
Woohoo! Love it!
Sherwood 02 Feb 11
I visited using my LG’s Webkit browser, and got the desktop site. Perhaps you could add a mobile URL like m.basecamphq.com just to be sure everyone has a stable go-to, minus the user-agent gymnastics.
Same applies to Kindle’s Webkit browser.
Love it all the same – sharing with my team right now.
JZ 02 Feb 11
@Sherwood
Can you tell us the model and Android OS version on your LG phone. We’d like to include any devices that have a capable browser but it’s not quite as simple as just detecting WebKit. We haven’t tested on the Kindle browser yet either.
And there is a URL you can use… go to http://[your account].basecamphq.com/mobile/ to force Basecamp to use the Mobile version. /standard/ will switch it back if it doesn’t work.
Please let us know how it turns out for ya.
Erick 03 Feb 11
Fantastic work you guys.. I’ve always thought that web apps ultimately would work better than native apps for services like this and I am already using the mobile version with much success.
I look forward to using Highrise and Backpack in the same way.
keep up the good work
Tim 03 Feb 11
This basecamp mobile is sooooo sloooow it’s unusable. I launch it on my iPhone 4 and it sits there spinning and spinning and spinning. Not just one time, but every time I try to access it. Switch back to normal version until you guys get it fixed. Also, you can’t even see todo’s assigned to just yourself, so what’s the point?
Nathan B. 03 Feb 11
Excellent approach! This is why we are on your products in the first place…web based & platform agnostic. We run windows, Mac, & Linix from multiple locations, which is hard for a small company to support unless it is in the browser & that’s all! Then primarily using webOS we were concerned you would never support our mobile devices, so this is awesome. Thanks for realizing iOS is not the only mobile platform. The Palm Pre (classic/minus) and all webOS phones already have webkit browsers & the site works great! Congrats!
Garry 03 Feb 11
Need to be able to enter times, that will get me interested, thats where the money comes from.
I tried it out on my sons Ipod Touch (iphone without the phone company) and it worked well on wireless. Carry a wireless router in your pocket and its baecamp without a mobile phone.
Dave 03 Feb 11
ios 4 + only for iphone & ipod. Come on.
Billy 03 Feb 11
Don’t see where I can access my project files?
Mario 03 Feb 11
THANK YOU ! JOB WELL DONE ! NOT HAVING NATIVE MEANS NOT DEALING WITH SYNC ISSUES . LIVE OR NOTHING AT ALL . THIS LETS YOU MOVE FORWARD AT LIGHTNING SPEED . CONGRATS! SORRY FOR CAPS I ’M JUST SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW ! WOO!
Ted Pearlman 03 Feb 11
37 Signals used to drive me nuts. No more.
Why? Because they are true to themselves. And you have to respect that.
37 Signals didn’t set out to “build a product that people were clamoring for.” They set out to build a product they’d enjoy using themselves. The fact that we all liked it is really, on some level, a coincidence.
Would an iOS and Android native app be better for customers? Of course. But let me let you in on a little secret. Running a business isn’t about satisfying customers. It’s about satisfying you, the business owner. Now, if you HAPPEN to love making people feel good, then your company will be about both your customers and you. But, at the core, it’s got to be about the business owner first.
Hiring an iOS developer would have required 37 Signals to stray away from writing web apps, their passion and the technology they’ve built their team around. Hiring an iOS developer would have required them to grow faster than desired.
You can’t begrudge the guys at 37 Signals for acting the way they do. Because, if they didn’t, you wouldn’t have Basecamp in the first place. You’d have Central Desktop or Liquid Planner.
I was inspired enough by all of this, that I wrote an article on my blog, going into it deeper: http://www.worktango.com/blog/build-your-business-around-you.html
Paul YM 04 Feb 11
Please make this something I can easily override, if you haven’t already. I was out of the office the other day for a client and needed to get a dev page link that I had in the announcement area of a project, but the new mobile version was there and the announcement was either buried or not there at all. Quite a surprise, since I often access Basecamp via iPhone and am used to using the interface I know and love while at my desktop. I had to call someone at a computer and get them to log in with my credentials and message the link to me. There may have been a better way, but I was in a rush and would have been boned without it.
As pleased as I should have been when I saw the announcement of BC Mobile the next day, I wasn’t much.
Paul YM 04 Feb 11
That should read “…needed to get a devpage link for a client…”. Feh.
Hovhannes Avoyan 04 Feb 11
The important advantage of having a mobile app versus web, is that you are getting additional channel to promote your service via the app store. And actually as soon you have web version it is easy to make a mobile app by just wrapping it and packaging. There are also frameworks like phonegap which allows to do it or you can do it manually with very little programming. We did that similarly for our service. Web app also give a bit better user experience as you can bundle the javascript libraries within the application package.
Paul 04 Feb 11
We’re thrilled to finally be able to deliver. We put a ton of work into it. We hope you love it as much as we do.
Alistair Warwick 04 Feb 11
Excellent. Great work guys, Works well on Samsung Galaxy S (Android 2.2).
I think you made the right decision to go down the HTML5 /CSS route.
(I expect the BinaryDuo guys will be a bit disappointed though as they did a very good job with the Beacon app.)
Looking forward to your next iteration for Highrise… Back to work now! :-)
Kajii 04 Feb 11
There’s an awesome app I would recommend, but it’s still in beta – getflow.com.com. They’ll have a native iOS app on launch, but their web app is sexy, too, and has an easier, nicer UI than Basecamp. I’m beta-testing it now, and love it!
Kajii 04 Feb 11
Sorry, should be getflow.com – it’s by the awesome guys at MetaLab.
JZ 07 Feb 11
@Paul YM
You can force the standard version of Basecamp by visiting: http://[youraccount].basecamphq.com/standard
Sorry to put you in a pickle!
Tony Mobily 08 Feb 11
Hi,
This is really the way to go. At Apollo (which overlaps with Basecamp and Highrise), we did precisely the same thing: a nice, mobile web app that we can maintain. We wrote about this too:
Why Online Applications have won and native environments haven’t
If the mobile world was just iPhone and Android, then we would definitely be tempted to “go native”. But what about Blackberry? And Bada? And WebOS? And… what about the next mobile platform that hasn’t come out yet?
One drawback is that in the world of PDAs (iPhones, android, etc.) users are pretty much stuck with the browsers that come with their phones; so, there is some not-so-pleasant debugging to do. Nagging users doesn’t really work if they are using their phone!
However, checking that an application is compatible across mobile environments is definitely less consuming than developing X different, specialised applications.
Kudos 37s!
Merc.
This discussion is closed.