Testing ScribeFire

I've been searching for a blog editor that is compatible with blogspot blogs for a while now. GoogleDocs has been the best but has some annoyances - especially with images. This post is a test of the ScribeFire plugin for Firefox. ScribeFire installs in the lower right hand of Firefox . Configuring ScribeFire was really easy. I simply added this blog into the tabs on the right of the program

The Toolbar


As you can see the toolbar has all the basics. One thing I would like to see is the ability to use styles - this would be complex because I embed my styles in my Blogger template, you could also post a css file somewhere on the web and use that.

Pictures

Uploading pictures was also really easy. ScribeFire gives you a choice of whether to upload via FTP (file transfer protocol) or Blogger's API (application programming interface). The API method is what Blogger uses natively so thats what I want to use.

The Blogger editor has a nice feature that lets you link to a bigger version of an image you uploaded. ScribeFire doesn't do this but I was able to by copying the URL of the image I uploaded in the HTML window (click the tab) and then clicking on the image and adding the URL as a link () - NOTE: I have an issue with this that I'll solve later.

Comparison with other blog editors


I've tried Blogger, Adobe Contribute, Word, and GoogleDocs as blog editors. Blogger is just clunky - for one - its in such a tiny window that it is infuriating. For another, inserting pictures always puts them at the top of the post - ScribeFire puts them where ever the cursor is. Contribute is just messy. Word wont do images. GoogleDocs has poor integration with Blogger (a Google product). GoogleDocs also substitutes its own context menu when the right mouse button is clicked - this interrupts the Firefox spellcheck feature which places suggested spellings in the context menu. ScribeFire solves all of these problems and only leaves a few items on my wish list.

Bugs
Biggest bug - ScribeFire returns an error when trying to embed YouTube video in Blogger and strips the video when editing posts with video embedded with Blogger's editor.