ScribeFire for Blogging

A coworker sent me a great article listing the author's favorite Firefox extensions. I was familiar with several of them (Adblock, FlashGet, FoxyTunes), but there was one that really caught my attention: ScribeFire. ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that operates right inside your browser. After you install ScribeFire and restart Firefox a notepad icon will appear in the lower right of your browser's status bar. Click this icon and your browser window will be split into two panes. The upper pane will display your usual browser whereby you can continue to visit websites. The lower pane is the ScribeFire editor. I was interested in this particular extension because I am the kind of person that takes a really long time to complete blog posts. This is because I spend the majority of my time preparing for my writings by locating links that I want to include and pictures that I may need in order to add some pizazz to my posts. ScribeFire allows me to write while still able to view websites in the top pane thus cutting down on tab switching and increases my efficiency by giving me a clean, single-window view.

Setting up ScribeFire is easy. Simply select the "Blogs" tab in the right-hand toolbar and the software will launch simple wizard to set up ScribeFire for your blog. It is also capable of handling multiple blogs (for all of you "Uber-bloggers" out there!); however I have read that this feature isn't perfect. And since I only have one blog, I can neither confirm nor deny that fact.

Inserting links into your post is also simple. Simply highlight the text that you want to act as a hyper-link and then select the Link button in the ScribeFire toolbar. You will instantly see the text change to indicate that it is now a clickable link. Inserting photos are equally as easy. Select the image button in the toolbar and you will be presented with a box that will allow you to enter a URL (for linking to pictures that reside online) or upload your own images from your computer.

ScribeFire also features an amazing toolbar on the right-hand side of the pane. Not only does it have a tab for displaying all of your blogs, but it also has a tab that displays categories, a history of past blogs, and your blog's pages. The left-hand menu features even more options, including the ability to pull links from your del.icio.us account and the option to incorporate different Themes for the ScribeFire interface. Of course spelling correction functionality is included. Suspect words are underlined red and the user may right click to see suggested spellings.

I learned all of this while using ScribeFire for the first time. The intuitive nature of this product has quickly made it one of my favorite and indispensable tools.