Just found a nice little BaseCamp nugget I’d like to share with everyone.

When your typing a message/comment put [UPDATE]. Just like the sample below:

Basecamp turns your update text into a neat little tag graphic! Just like this:

Looks neat on the Dashboard too:

More here http://futuretrack5.com/articles/2007/03/30/basecamp-tip-update-tag

I totally forgot about that one! Thanks Dave.

Neat. I’d like to see something similar for [DONE].

Yeah, that really is a great little added benefit in the system. I enjoyed it so much, I actually created some of my own to be used in my messages, and borrowed from Basecode as well. However, in order to add them, I need to revert to standard HTML, but I’ve just created each that is stored in a text file that is open when I’m inside BC. I’ve got lots of little things that I’ve done to make life easier & to satisfy my clients requests for information.

Benjamin – very nice add-on. I love the regular update – but I could definitely see a good reason for your implementation as well.

I think thats what makes Basecamp equally successful – every once in awhile you’ll find out something that you need in Basecamp – but because Basecamp is so simple you can devise your own solutions – if you hit that kind of feature wall in another app – the chances of you being able to devise a reasonable solution is slim to none.

What other words work like the UPDATE example above?

gbs

mattdetails,

I totally agree. And what I’ve found to be great is that the “hacks” that I’ve added to Basecamp have also translated over to the StikiPad wiki that I use for my system documentation & training. So essentially, I can drop special graphics & such into my FTP server, and use them across sites since HTML & Textile is the common denominator.

gbs,

I think that’s the only one that’s natively available within Basecamp.

1. If I use Textile to insert my own image (i.e., ! http://myurl.com/myimage/gif !), it does not show up properly on the “Overview” page. The Textile doesn’t convert.
2. If I use < img src=”.... > to insert the image it DOES work on the project Overview page, but NOT on the “Dashboard” overview page. Very strange.

If there was a way to make either one or the other work consistently, I’d use this much more. As it is, I just end up putting my bugs in the message body—which sort of defeats the purpose.

(and of course it would be awesome to be able to upload as many custom bugs as I wanted and just call on them the same way you call on [UPDATE]. But I’m sure that’s way to “feature-y” for 37signals. :-)

I experimented with images, Textile and HTML a while back. Here is the link to the Writeboard I made. The password is “basecamp”.

http://123.writeboard.com/41dec0965187bc39c

You succinctly covered the exact issues I mentioned. Thanks for the breakdown. I hope 37s updates Basecamp at some point to at LEAST be consistent in the way it handles these helpful graphic bugs. I don’t even totally mind having to hard code the images (I can use a copy/paste helper app), but I would at least like it if the Dashboard and Overview pages handled them consistently.

Hello Guys,

Could someone be so kind as to ‘dumb down this conversation a bit’ for those of us who use basecamp who are not coders/designers….who knows, maybe that is just me, but I’d certainly appreciate it if someone could walk me through this.

I got the [UPDATE] part, but I could not follow what Andrew did in the whiteboard link he posted. I really like the ‘status complete’ and the ‘priority 1’ tags he created, but I’m not getting what he did to insert them. Being a non-coder, looking at the edit page Andrew posted just looks like gobbly-gook to me. So does anyone have the patience to show my non-coding brain what is going on?

Thanks so much.

Not to take anything from Benjamin, but the 37Signals Product Blog credits him with the following images:

These were from Basecode 1.

Yeah, I hacked those from Basecode for sure. I should send an e-mail to support to correct that. Sadly, my graphical skills are nowhere near good enough to have created those myself.

Nice catch, Andrew!

I have contacted support, and I’m hoping that they’ll correct the text. For graphics that I did make myself, which are more for my database design notes are:

Field –
Form –
Macro –
Query –
Table –

And anyone can feel free to copy them for their own use. I only ask that you don’t directly link to them since it could impact my bandwidth usage.

Those graphics are actually pretty cool. I never thought about using images to call out specific functions or components. Neat. Thanks for sharing them.

@robynpaula:

I completely forgot to respond to your post about how to insert images. It’s really nothing special, just using some basic code. After you upload any images to your server, you just need to add the code that tells Basecamp where to look for them.

For example, the code would look like this:

The path and directories is up to you. The exclamation marks are Textile’s way of inserting images.
Another, more traditional way of coding the images is straight HTML:

I use the image technique in To-Dos to indicate progress on select projects where I need fast visual indication to discern progress:

Wish it was do-able natively but alas { ... }.

Andrew: Thank you for the props, and I have more icons that I use as well, but they’re direct from the Office 2003 icon set. Basically, if I wanted something to visually cue myself, I figured an icon was a more intuitive method… along with being more fun.

Michael: Okay. Those make my icons look like child’s play. How incredibly slick. Now I’ll have to try & figure out something similar, if you’re cool with that. And I’m wondering if there is a way to do it natively… sorta. Now I have to put my Greasemonkey hat back on.

Thanks BJ. It’s all cool—go for it. I’ll zip up and send you the images (png) in a bit if it will help / you want.

That would actually be excellent. I appreciate it.

That would actually be excellent.

Sent to xxx @ time xxx dot xxx.

:)

I got it. Thank you.

In Basecode you can set up any number of custom images in SETTINGS (in right click).

I think it would be just swell if some of the above words were include natively in Basecamp.

I could see myself using [QUOTE], [APPROVED], [ON HOLD], [COMPLETED] etc very often :)

3stripe, you’re not alone :)