Campfire: Sharing code snippets just got easier 29 Mar 2006
29 comments Latest by Tony
We just pushed a new feature in Campfire that makes sharing formatted code, HTML, CSS, and Javascript snippets in real-time significantly easier. Watch a quicktime movie to see how it works.
As part of this push we’ve also cleared out the idle messages so your rooms won’t be flooded with them overnight. We’ve got some other cool and useful features on the way shortly. We’re also getting started on the Campfire-Basecamp integration too. Stay tuned.
29 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Carlos 29 Mar 06
Wow. Some nifty voodoo making that happen, methinks.
I’m curious!
Dan Boland 29 Mar 06
Man, that’s cool. Certainly not half-assed. Love the way it maintains indents.
Chris Mear 29 Mar 06
Neato! How’s it figuring out that I’ve pasted something in? Does it just search for linefeeds in the input?
Jeff Coleman 29 Mar 06
That’s sweet! Now is there a good way to paste code into Basecamp messages? Whenever I try, the tabs go all wonky.
Carlos 29 Mar 06
I love working smarter, not harder.
Harder would have been having a checkbox for the user to check when they want this display feature to kick in.
Working smarter means doing something like using Javascript to measure the time between the first and last changes to the input field, perhaps correlating to the length of the submitted content, and having Campfire decide whether it was typed or pasted. Am I close?
Mike Rundle 29 Mar 06
Haha I just pestered Jason about the secret sauce ingredient behind figuring out what’s pasted or not, and he said they simply look for the new line character since that’s normally not present when you’re just randomly typing. Damn that’s genius!
Paul Marino 29 Mar 06
What is Sound Player v2 - an email client?
Paul 29 Mar 06
What is Sound Player v2 - an email client?
Adam Michela 29 Mar 06
We noticed this yesterday morning (and then Khoi sent me your movie)…
Really handy, and we got a ton of use out of it yesterday alone. Great feature.
I don’t like that the idle/return messages were removed, I found them useful. Would be nice if that was a setting/toggle.
Similarly, there’s a bit of a bug in our room… a fellow who left the project (and who’s account was removed from Campfire) is still able to login… but worse… his account is forever idle. When he logs in it places two of him in the room, 1 that has been idle since we removed his name… and then the rogue un-authorized login.
Otherwise, Campfire has proved very handy to us and it’s the first 37 product I’ve used daily and had little to nothing bad to say about it. Sweet implementation. Chat is just the type of thing that’s best left simple.
JF 29 Mar 06
Adam, if you are having technical problems them please email support at campfirenow dot com. SvN isn’t for tech support.
Adam Michela 29 Mar 06
I’m not asking for support, I’m simply relaying my experience with Campfire thus far.
Perhaps rather in-depth, but I’d rather be concise then vague in my review. Comments on SvN are regularly used for positive feedback, I see no reason why they can’t be used for mixed or negative feedback as well.
The long and short, we’ve used Campfire actively for probably 700 hours. We’ve noticed only this one oddity, that if not for the security concern would be almost ignorable. That’s really not bad at all, so, again, Campfire is a great little tool.
Dieter 29 Mar 06
Backpack calendar, eh? I’m pumped to see it in action, too…
Jerry Richardson 29 Mar 06
Ooooooh. I can’t wait for Friday — I hope Getting Real workshoppers get to see the BP calendar and Sunrise. Teasing in the video is the coolest tease, yet.
curious 29 Mar 06
what mail client was Sam using there? just wondering.
JF 29 Mar 06
Comments on SvN are regularly used for positive feedback, I see no reason why they can�t be used for mixed or negative feedback as well.
Sure, no problem, but your comment sounded like a glitch which is why I suggested sending something to support.
pwb 29 Mar 06
I’m curious, too: How�s it figuring out that I�ve pasted something in?
SS 29 Mar 06
curious, it’s Thunderbird, but don’t consider that an endorsement. I really don’t like anything about Thunderbird except that it handles my spam problem pretty well.
pwb, simple: does the message contain a newline? If so, it’s a paste.
Andrew Chi Yin Chow 29 Mar 06
Really a great and useful feature. Much appreciated!
Tony 29 Mar 06
Any chance of a screen shot for those of use who are QuickTime-deprived?
SS 29 Mar 06
Tony, feel free to try it out for yourself in the SvN room.
LC 29 Mar 06
Please tell me there’s a way to turn this feature off. We paste long paragraphs of text and multiple URLs and they automatically get turned into this code. It’s too hard to recopy the text and the links are no longer clickable. This needs to be a feature that can be disabled in the Settings tab.
Dan H 29 Mar 06
So if I shift+enter on a PC i make whatever \n character you’re looking for in the javascript and it thinks it’s pasted, huh?
I donno if it needs to be a feature that gets turned off like LC is suggesting (read “whining about”), but it’s a unique and mostly useful design feature.
Neat work, guys.
LC 29 Mar 06
Not whining Dan. I realize that for coders this is a great feature. But there are many that use it for other business reasons. My team needs to copiy/paste URLs to each other all day. Previously, all of those URLs would be clickable links — no matter how many we sent at once. Now when I paste two or more links at the same time, they transform into this code and the links aren’t clickable. I just wish for it to be a checkbox to enable or disable this feature.
SS 29 Mar 06
Dan, yes, you can use Shift+Enter in Campfire to insert a new line. It’s useful for writing short bits of code inline.
Tony 29 Mar 06
Thanks Sam. I didn’t realize the SvN room was still open.
Jordan 29 Mar 06
Cool — the funny thing is that I found this out by accident yesterday when I typed something in, forced a line feed using shift+return (for dramatic effect, as it happens), then it magically thought I’d pasted something in — teaching me 2 things:
1) Campfire now has a cool way of displaying pasted content
2) It’s done by detecting line-feeds ;)
Love discovering stuff before it’s announced as a feature…
Keep it up.
Dan Benjamin 29 Mar 06
Silly question but … what font are you using in TextMate?
Tony 29 Mar 06
Dan,
I could be wrong, but since that looks the same as what I see, I’d say it’s the default (“Mac Classic”). BTW, thanks for your great Rails installation tutorials.
Tony 29 Mar 06
Wish I could edit my comment. That’s the theme “Mac Classic.” The font in Monaco 12 pt.