Sweet! Thanks Matt!

This is very very nice!

Sweet! Only comment I'd have -- any chance of it using the default browser for pasted code / search results instead of reverting back to IE?

Hi Oliver - that's something I'm working on now. It's always been an issue but I think I may have a solution to try out in the next few days.

It is an important one though.

Thanks for everyone's nice comments!

Matt:

Does this app work with IE7? I've been having some rendering issues with Campfire inside IE7 where the rooms list across the top and the text entry box at the bottom are offset to the far right of the page.

-Aaron

Hi Aaron

37signals don't support IE7 yet in their products.

They announced a little while ago it would be supported by the time it launches (it's only RC1 at the moment I believe).

You're right, the rendering is a little off.

The good news is I'll be moving the rendering from MSHTML to the Gecko soon - so it will use a fixed version of Firefox.

At the moment Flare uses whatever version of Internet Explorer you have installed.

Although I have IE7 installed and it's still very usable, I find the textbox is a little far to the right, but other than that it's ok.

Thanks for the quick response Matt. No big deal to me, but I'm glad to know the problem isn't on my end. Thanks for the great app!

awesome great work!!

One thing. . . the installer uses the same path as the SWF Decompiler named Flare. I had to rename the old product's folder to install yours. Great work on the app! Thanks.

jf, you are living proof that the "Install Location" step on Windows Installer isn't pointless :-)

I'll add it to Flare's installer so users can change the install path if they need to.

Either that or I could add a company name:

<Program Files>\Matt Brindley\Flare\flare.exe

The only issue with that is it might take a while to find it (if you ever need to find the app folder) as you probably won't remember my name.

Hmmm... I do prefer the convention over config, in this case not having an additional step - I put a lot of thought into the installer and I love the way it just starts (after all, I clicked to install it, why do I need to say 'start' again?, imagine if every app you opened asked you to confirm opening it?).

I'll give it some thought - thanks for the feedback!

Great application. thanks

i've been using flare for just about a week I have got to say it's a champ! I've gotten 2 people who couldn't stand using campfire in a web browser converted.

What about doing something similar for backpack?

Wayne - Thanks!

Jonezy - Glad it's helped you. An SSB for Backpack would be cool, I'm not sure how many people would use it but I'll certainly look into it. Thanks again for the feedback!

well i built a stand alone browser for backpack but it's just a a winform with the ie activex control embedded in it which is pretty sucky :/

Jonezy - Cool! I'd say the next things to do would be

1. Implement minimise to tray, with double-clicking to bring it back (I think Nick Bradbury has the best implementation of this in FeedDemon.

2. Make it log you in automatically when logging onto the machine. This is very useful, especially if it's minimised to the tray.

3. I thought a cool idea for a Backpack SSB would be to automatically download known and acceptable files types (like pdf, gif, jpg, png, htm etc - but not exe, bat, mdb...) from the files section. And then open them from the context menu for the tray icon. So I could right click on the icon go to "Salted" > "Projects" > "SomeProject" > "Files" > "SomeFile" > "Version 3" and it would open immediately.

yeah matt, the other thing that i would love to see is offline capabilities... I would love to be able to use it as an offline organizer as well

Finally! Exactly what I have been needing all along.

another cool thing to add would be for users in the room to set their status (away, at lunch, etc). then have this client keep track of and display statuses; since there is this client-based component you can set a person to away if they are not typing on their computer for X minutes, etc.

It would be nice if Flare supported multiple campfire logins at the same time (like Pyro).

Crossing my fingers...

Excellent work, so much more usable than within the browser :)

Couple of feature requests to make my life even easier:

1) Other IM clients can be minimised by hitting Esc at anytime, it would be cool if Flare could do this too.

2) Its annoyingly easy to close the window (using the windows X button) absent mindedly. Any chance this can minimise to tray rather than close?

Thanks Matt. Flare is proving to be helpful. I finally dumped Trillian and I am just running Campfire.

Spell check and Links to default browser would be helpful.

R.

Hey. This is a nice app, but is there a way to make it so that it doesn't have to "install" itself each time I start the application (I'm using Windows Vista). Each time I open Flare, Windows Installer pops up and configures the program. It has to look for the installer msi and if it can't find it, Flare won't start. Then the AutoUpdateStarter.exe comes up and asks me to Allow/Cancel. Is there a way to just make it so that when I double click on Flare, the Flare window opens without all this stuff?

Thanks.

How much memory does this take up? Most of our development teams run Firefox, a couple screens, etc and just keep two or three campfire sessions up with the remote teams, marketing, etc - in FF it's just a couple tabs.

I noticed in running the previous version of flare that a 30-40mb process was launched just to have CF up... Seems a little much - I guess that was just the IE browser in the background?

haven't seen any activity here in a while. and your forum has been down for a while too. you done with this? if so, how about sharing the code - nice tool but needs a few extra things (like nudges w/sound). thanks.

Hi David,

Flare is open source, you'll find the code at: http://code.google.com/p/flare-browser

I'm sorry about the forum, I know it's not ideal, but I'm in the process of moving to host my site, blog and forum away from MT and Vanilla, to a Rails app, built by Jesse from HogBaySoftware - I've been working on it to help get it ready and it's fantastic, just what I need. MovableType and Vanilla just don't do what I want anymore.

I'll be announcing it all very shortly - along with some exciting news about some of my products :-)

Seems the default browser feature is bugging or broken in flare. It opens iE every time, but i have FireFox as a default browser.

Cool beans! Very useful.

Anyone else having problems with getting their openid to work?

Thanks Matt! I use it every day. Are you still developing this, and do you have any interesting features planned?

I think this type of app would be an excellent candidate for an Adobe Air app.

Awesome app. And I am even more impressed that you have released this under GPL. Is there an option to hardcode a room url to it, so that it logs into that by default - trying to target the non-tech crowd, who want an app to install, and just run with it.

Flare is a sweet app man, thanks. I was hoping that in an upcoming build you could add a way to configure the length of the message preview. 2 sec does not give me quite enough time to read it, and this is the feature that I like best. Either way, nice work.

Thanks for your positive comments and great feedback!

I've released version 1.0 of Flare now, which includes many of the features that have been requested.

Download Flare 1.0

Hi,

I'd really like to try out this software. However I do not have administration right on my work computer and hence can not install. The installer doesn't let me choose where to install and fails to write to "C:\program files"

Any chance this could be installed w.o. needing admin rights?

Matt, you're a badass - Thanks for adding my feature. I requested it and you added it in less than a month. I like to keep flare minimized and get the tray updates, so this is great.

I'd like to request a feature that will allow me to be logged into multiple rooms at the same time. I can currently do this, but the other rooms that I'm in get timed out unless I'm actively switching between them.

I have the same wish as Borkur Steingrimsson:

Is it possible to create a non-setup version of the files? Or a portable version?

Testing Communication.

Awesome application Matt. It really fills in a gap that web browsers just can't do at this point. Well done.

One thing I'd be tickled to see in a future release would be the *option* to specify an audible alert when new messages are posted. (Right now, I sometimes leave a web browser open to give me that audible cue.)

Also, it'd be GREAT if there was another *option* to leave the pop-up indicator on the screen if and until Flare has the application focus. The current timeout option is excellent for most situations. But, I'm not always observant to notice the orange glowing flare icon in the systray. ;)

Thanks again Matt for an awesome app!

Matt, thank you so much for this app, is this still the lastest open source for this app?
http://code.google.com/p/flare-browser

Flare has been broken for several weeks. Ever since 37signals pushed at update a few weeks ago, Flare has not worked. Is Flare dead or will it be updated?

Is Flare going to be fixed in the near future?

Please fix it, MAC seems to have loads of solutions, but Windows only has this which is broken :(

Still broken...

There are no working Campfire programs for Windows. Lame.