Hide “…has entered the room” details in Campfire chat rooms using Firefox

I use Campfire for group chat every day. It’s a great way to stay connected with the rest of the team, especially since I work remotely.

Something that’s been annoying me lately are the constant messages in the Campfire stream about who is entering and leaving the room. These messages often push important content further up the page and muddy up the discussion. I’m not sure why I should care about this information in the first place, since I can already tell who is in the room by glancing at the sidebar.

There is currently no option to turn these messages off, and 37signals doesn’t have plans to build such a preference.

Chrome users can add Chromefire to gain additional options. But if you use Firefox, you’ll need a homegrown solution. It will take about 5 minutes and anyone can do it.

With thanks to Emil Sundberg as shared in this thread, here’s how to do it:

1. Download the Stylish Add-On for Firefox. Stylish allows you to restyle anything on the web with your own customizations.
    
2. Click into your Firefox Add-Ons Manager (Ctrl+Shift+A) and find the User Styles tab in the left sidebar.
    
3. Click the “Write New Style” button and insert the following code:
    

   @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
   @-moz-document url-prefix('https://<strong><em>yourcompany</em></strong>.campfirenow.com')
   {
       tr.timestamp_message + tr.timestamp_message,
       tr.leave_message + tr.timestamp_message,
       tr.enter_message + tr.timestamp_message,
       tr.kick_message + tr.timestamp_message,
       tr.enter_message, tr.kick_message, tr.leave_message {
         display: none !important;
       }
   }

4. Give your style a name and hit “Save”. (I called mine ‘Hide Campfire Entering/Exiting’).
    
5. Refresh your Campfire page and you’re all set!