For the last few months I have been using ScribeFire to maintain this blog. ScribeFire is a Firefox extension that seamlessly integrates into the browser. Prior to ScribeFire, I was primarily using the in-built WordPress authoring page. While I think that WordPress offers one of the best content-creation UI’s available in a CMS, I was looking for something that had a little more “punch” and that was better suited for offline writing.
I’ve tried a couple of alternatives including Word 2007, Journler and Flock. I know that there’s also highly-rated apps like Ecto and MarsEdit, but I’m not looking for something quite so robust, and I like free. ScribeFire just seemed to grab me.
The extension by default opens a small pane in the bottom of the browser, similar to Firebug. You can also open ScribeFire in a new window or, as I have become fond of, into a new tab. Here’s what I like:
- Simple WYSIWYG editor
- Round-trip to a code editor
- Ability to connect to multiple blogs
- Support for tags and pages
- Ability to edit exiting posts
I think that the feature I like best is “Notes”. As I browse the web, I can pop open the SribeFire pane and create a quick note. I’ll save the note as a reminder for a blog post I’d like to complete in the future. For example, this post started as a note 3 months ago 
The ability to quickly start and save a thought really helps to get my ideas in order. There’s even a context menu items to “blog this page”.
I currently use Ecto, but will install ScribeFire to see how it works for my non-desk blogging. I find myself on my work machine or somewhere else not wanting to blog because I don’t have by desktop Ecto setup with me. Maybe this would help fill that void.
[...] Dan Harrelson [...]