I want a ScribeFire that’s as easy to use as Delicious
by tdaxp ~ June 14th, 2007
I sometimes use ScribeFire to blog from Firefox. It’s a nifty tool, but I often find it’s as easy to open wordpad off to the browswer’s side than to have ScribeFire’s dialog box take up the bottom half of the screen.
Delicious, by contrast, is almost a perfect blog editor for me. It’s plain text, it’s fast, and it can be moved around. del.icio.us’s main drawback, however, is that the “description” has to be short… as can be seen below, I can’t even fully describe my own blog in it’s description field:
What I want is a Firefox extension that allows me to blog like ScribeFire, but is as lightweight as del.icio.us. I don’t care about fancy editing, wysiwyg, or other capabilities. If I can add a title, descriptoin, and tags, and have it post the hyperlinked title and my description, I’d be as happy as a clam.
Any suggestions?
PS: I checked my delicious network today, and saw that BobbyZero of Biro Sketchbook sent it Tom’s Ancient professions always suffer when globalization embraces a natio. Thanks BobbyZero! You’re now part of del.icio.us net!
June 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Hi. Thanks for commenting on my blog. You did see the link to your site on there didn't you? They were posted 20 minutes apart so I wanted to make sure you seen my update. I posted them thru scribefire as drafts and published bing bing and of course there was a 20 minute delay lol Anyways, Nice blog!
June 16th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Dan,
Yes! Somewhat.
First, make sure that in your ScribeFire settings “Hide the ScribeFire context menu” is NOT checked. Then, when you are on a page you want to blog, just 1) right-click on that page, 2) Scroll down to ScribeFire, and 3) in the menu extension choose “Blog this page.” If you hadn't saved your last content after publishing — i.e., if ScribeFire would open for you blank and ready for new material — then the link to that page would already be included, to help you start your new post.
For instance, if I follow this route I get a new post which starts out “I want a ScribeFire that's as easy to use as Delicious : tdaxp” linked to this page.
Unfortunately, if you've retained info in ScribeFire from your last post/note, the new link will show up below that stuff; you could just delete the previous material. Plus, you'll still have to create a title for your new post. Also unfortunately, nothing but that link will be scraped from the page; and, only the split-screen option will be available when starting a new post this way.
However, selecting info from the page you are blogging is pretty simple: Just highlight it on the blog page and drag-n-drop into ScribeFire! This has the added benefit of also transferring the HTML from the cited information, which means: emphasis (bold, italics), links, etc. (Careful doing this with photos, because you'll be hotlinking those photos! Generally not a good idea.)
Good news: you can select “Bookmark” from the ScribeFire context menu to create a new Delicious bookmark. (You can also use the “Page Tools” menu option to check out the site's Technorati info.)
June 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Curtis,
Does ScribeFire have a method to automatically cite & hyperlink the page being blogged.
Because I want to make it clear what I am talking about, as well as because I use tdaxp as my own reference, I try to do this when I have the energy. For example, take a look at how the recent post on Avandia begins [1]. Even if the first-line reference is in a simpler style (just a hyperlinked title, for example), I would love a tool which puts that in automatically. That way I could get immediately to writing, and not have to first divert into housekeeping.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/06/06/avandia-has-a-moderate-to-very-large-practical-effect-on-hea.html
June 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Dan,
If you right-click the Scribefire icon at the bottom of your browser, you'll get three choices of where to open it:
Tab
Window
Browser
Choosing “Open in Window” will open Scribefire in an open window (kinda like a pop-up, without the standard Firefox toolbars) that can be resized and moved independently of your Firefox window.
You can always use the WYSIWYG window and type normally or even the HTML view to type normally, adding the HTML code as you please.
I've tried a couple other interfaces recently, but they were not as good — kept locking up or doing odd things. (Piss-poor programs.)
Did you know that ScribeFire integrates with Delicious, btw? You can log in via ScribeFire after clicking on the Bookmarks in the menu on the left of ScribeFire; then, you can add links and descriptions, etc., to your Delicious account.
June 17th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Curtis,
Can you scribefire-in-window while still getting the benefits of “blogging this page”? I can do one or the other, but not both.
I love deliciou's interface so much — I just wish that scribefire was that straight forward.
June 17th, 2007 at 12:00 am
No.
I think a previous incarnation of the add-on, when it was still Performancing, allowed you to set your preferred method via an options setting; but not now. Perhaps a future version will re-enable that.