ScribeFire is a rich-text blog posting… thing… that I’m trying out to see if I blog more. It works within the Firefox browser, popping up inside the window you are using when you click a little icon.
This is my first run of using it. I’m writing down my impressions of as I go.
The setup was pretty easy for my wordpress-based blog, and I got presented with the editing function after a few minutes of clicking ‘confirm’ dialogues. The text editing area is displaying the text much larger than I would usually have text, and it’s pretty ugly (but that could be due to Firefox 2.0).
It seems to have the same trouble with text links that most in browser rich-text editors have. It also has a bunch of ‘social sharing’ buttons that are all the rage these days, accessible in a different tab. However, the button don’t have the traditional “y-on-its-side” icons. Also struck by how small the area is.
Time to test the publishing.
Update: Well, it worked. However, the interface is nowhere near as fast or as good as the actual interface supplied with WordPress, and I found no way of putting tags or categories into the post. Perhaps I’m missing something, as it was only my first time of using it, but using the inbuilt interface (and that of Mars Edit or similar) it’s simple to add taxonomy.
Extra Update: The developer of ScribeFire, Christopher Finke, pointed out in a comment that I can add categories from inside the-bit-of-UI-to-the-right. I’m testing that, and he’s right (but I can’t figure out why I ignored that section on my first run – maybe because it was taken up with empty space?) However, I am tweaking and editing this update from within ScribeFire, so it’s capable of dealing with most of the stuff that I would normally have to do when editing.
Kudos must obviously go to Mr. Finke, for being able to deal with ill-informed criticism from people with very little programming skill.
The idea for this post comes from Andy Ihnatko‘s series of first-run reviews. He’s much cooler and better at writing than me, so I suggest you check his stuff out.
