Blog Entry Editors: ScribePress
This is the first of a weekly series of reviews of external blog entry supplements. These programs can be used in place of the Add New Post editor. They allow you to create blog additions externally on your own computer, then load them into WordPress (or any of several other platforms). At first there might seem little reason to do this, but some of the advanced features in these editors make them worth consideration.
What is ScribeFire?
This week, we will look at ScribeFire. I reviewed version 3.2.2. Unlike the other editors we’ll be examining, ScribeFire is a free addon for Mozilla Firefox and operates entirely inside the Firefox window. A handy tablet icon in the lower right Status Bar brings it up across the bottom half of the browser window. Once set up, it’s about the quickest and easiest way to blog I’ve ever seen. ScribeFire holds your blog’s password info so you can upload a new entry without entering the WordPress Dashboard or even logging in. Talk about convenience!
Installation
You install ScribeFire as you do any other Firefox addon, by going to it’s addon.mozilla.firefox page and clicking the download button. Firefox makes you click a few buttons, reboots and Scribefire is installed. Now you must set it up with your blog’s site specifics. You will probably need to log into your Dashboard and enable the XML-RPC setting under Settings > Writing. You will get a choice of several sub-site blog hosts, including WordPress.com. Skip them and click “Custom Blog” at the bottom to set it up for your self-hosted WordPress site. After that, there’s little more to do than enter your site’s url to get it going. The program should generate a version of your url with “xml-rpc” at the end.
Interface
You will find the ScribeFire editor occupying the lower half of the browser screen, with the white text entry area on the left half of that. On the far right are 5 tabs that serve littler purpose for regular use: product info, settings, a “Share This Page” that attempts to notify a few social media sites of your post, and a “$” tab that has nothing.
To the right is a tabbed space that allows you to add/remove blogs to the editor and to easily switch between blogs with the click of a radio button. This is a great convenience. It also shows you a list of previous entries and allows you to edit them with a quick click. You can set the blog’s categories and tags, set the timestamp and so forth.
Entry
You should find blog entry easier in ScribeFire than in the WordPress WSIWYG form. Just like the stock version, you can switch between a more-or-less normal appearance and the HTML code. It has a “Live Preview” button gave me an Javascript error that did not go away until I closed the program. The same thing happened with the Zamanta app. I keep scripting in Firefox disabled by default and enable web scripts individually, so this might not happen on a less secure browser. Once up, though, ScribeFire’s Preview feature is no substitute for the full page version WordPress provides.
I found the text entry space worked best when dragged to span the full width of the page. This gives you access to more controll buttons and eliminates a tendancy to cut off the last two letters on the right, when narrow.
Here’s one nasty issue I ran into. After I changed the text window width during a session, the carriage return settings got fixed narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. I had to copy the text out and reformat in my word processor to undo that. There was no problem when I left the window the same during a session.
Multimedia
ScribeFire offers some multimedia options not found in the stock WordPress entry box. It makes it very easy to upload and insert images from your computer or draw them from the web. It makes insertion of YouTube videos a snap. It does a search, then offers a choice of thumbnails and titles. This is a great feature, but you do not get any other info on the video, so be sure to preview it before posting.
It will search and insert still images from Flickr the same way that it does with YouTube videos. I’m sure this was included with the best of intentions, but I do not recommend ever posting an image to the web this way. While all YouTube videos are embeds offered per the creator’s agreement with YouTube, this is not the case with Flickr images. Most Flickr images are not legally available for posting on your website. A great many are available through the Creative Commons license, but this utility does not distinguish between the usable images and the unusable. Also, you are always required to credit the creator when using Flickr images and the utility does not provide this.
ScribeFire also has a utility for accessing images through the interesting Zemanta system, though this, too, sort of crashes the program if you have Javascript disabled.
Recommendation
Overall, I like the convenience of ScribeFire and intend to keep it in my browser for quick blog prep. I probably won’t publish with it directly, though. I will upload the entry as a draft, the preview it later in the WordPress interface before posting. It’s shortcomings shouldn’t interfere with my style of use. For convenience, it’s hard to beat.
Update
After checking out other blog editors, I’ve uninstalled ScribeFire. I find it a bit too rough around the edges and smoother operating editors for Windows users like Blogdesk and Raven are far preferable. For instance, I don’t care for the way it locks up your browser until you enter the password. I would only really recommend this one for non-Windows Firefox users with fewer choices.
You can find additional information on ScribeFire at the ScribeFire website.