JRG — Information about bridgeblogging.com

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a Firefox browser plugin (it also works with Chrome). That means it is multi-platform and thus an alternative for all the environments being discussed. There are two versions, “ScribeFire Classic” and “ScribeFire Next” — be sure to get the “Next” version. I tested under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Here’s a site that describes using Scribefire: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/scribefire-write-quick-preformatted-blog-posts/

Supports bold, italic, underline, strike-through, sub2- and super3-scripts, and coloured fonts. One particular awkwardness I ran into involved using the cursor keys for positioning the insertion point. It causes weird jumping around, moving the mouse pointer out of the text entry area. The cursor keys simply cannot be used to navigate the text in the entry area — you must use the mouse to move the cursor by hovering where you want the insertion point and clicking the mouse button.

The plugin is aimed squarely at WordPress and allows much of the text manipulation supported by the WordPress visual editor (TinyMCEdit), including lists, indenting and, very nice, the “More…” separator (i.e. allowing you to set the first few sentences or paragraphs as an excerpt).

You can also create a completely separate “excerpt”, just as in WordPress. Another feature that shows its target audience is that it allows scheduling the publication of a post (using WordPress’s features). There are a number of such WordPress features, although I didn’t see a way to save a post as a Draft, rather than publishing it (setting a future date for publication is a workaround).

One might wonder, “Why use a Firefox plugin and not simply use the WordPress editor?”. Well, the biggest plus is being able to browse the net and copy-and-paste quotes easily, like this one from Ryan Dube.

Like many people who have very full and busy lives, finding the time to write a blog entry is very difficult. There are a lot of Firefox plugins available for blogging, such as the three Joel previously outlined in his article. However, when I discovered ScribeFire and wrote a review of the software, one of the things that I mentioned being impressed with is the ability to create a blog post template.

One thing I found a bit annoying is that the editor tool-bar scrolls with the text and that makes it necessary to scroll back when wanting to use one of the tools. It does allow opening ScribeFire in a new tab/window, but that detracts from browsing the Internet as one writes the article.