Posted on Jun 12, 2008
Create a Kick Ass Intranet App using
I use three 37signals applications: Backpack, Basecamp and Highrise (go go referral links). With these 3 excellent web apps, I'm able to rock out a seriously awesome complete intranet setup for my business.
Just using them is fine but, as usual, I like to take it one step further into better integration with my desktop workflow. That's where OpenID and Fluid.app come in.
OpenBar
If you didn't already know, the 37signals apps support OpenID (they call it OpenBar, to be cool). Step one is to go into all your accounts and switch over to OpenID login.
If you're wondering, I use my custom url for OpenID.
This gives me a convenient bar at the top of all my applications whereby I can switch between them. If you don't already use this, you're insane.
Having all of these applications in place really creates a great intranet-type workflow. It's helpful even when working solo but if you have a small team like me it really shines. I also noticed my people used the various apps a lot more once I introduced them to using OpenID to bring them together -- as well as putting it all together in Fluid.app (below).
Fluid.app
So we have our cool kid intranet setup with OpenID. Now we need to go download Fluid.app and turn this puppy into a desktop-like application. Fluid is an SSB (site-specific browser), which is basically just a web browser without all the extras and with a customizable dock icon (I would recommend grabbing these nice icons for use with Fluid).
It's great for tabbing to your intranet window, adding a calendar entry, and tabbing back to Photoshop, to give a quick example. This is a process that just isn't as exciting when you're stuck in Safari.
(If you're completely insane and not using a Mac, Prism does something similar on the PC)
When creating a new Fluid app for this project, I would recommend setting the url you use the most as the homepage. For me, this is /calendar in BackpackIt. You may be more inclined to roll with one of the Dashboard views in either Backpack or Basecamp though. I'm considering a move to one of those 2 options as well.
By default, when you click one of the links in your OpenBar (to go from Basecamp to Backpack, for example) Fluid will open that link in Safari. It does this because it assumes this is an external link and treats it accordingly -- each service has a different URL.
There are 2 options to get around this. For me, it was easy because I use the same URL prefix for every one of my 37signals services: vocino. So what I did was change the URL wildcards in the Fluid preferences to include any URL that contains *vocino*.
If you've used different account URLs for your 37signals apps, you could either add each one of simply allow any linked to be opened inside Fluid. The latter option is not ideal because a lot of times you'll have real links to external sites that people in your intranet have posted and you'll generally want to view those in Safari so that you can keep your original app pure.
Now you have a stylish intranet app that lives in your dock, complete with all of your 37signals services. Ah, sweet sweet synergy, the web 6.0 word of the future.
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