DygiScape

Posting from ScribeFire, Firefox Addon

After tinkering with some Firefox Addons, I decided to install the ScribeFire addon.

ScribeFire is an intuitive add-on which empowers bloggers to blog from their Web browser (locally) instead of using an AJAXed editor, resulting in solid performance and streamlined network activity.

Just from the looks of it, having used it less than five minutes … it appears to have everything that an amateur blogger needs in addition to the tools a professional blogger wants to make their online writing easier. It integrated seamlessly with my WordPress installation (2.51), and that alone makes this worth a try for other bloggers.

Haven’t seen any ads or other distractions. This is just one heck of a useful tool that should be in a serious blogger’s arsenal.

SixApart tried to make something like this, BlogIt Facebook Application, but has failed for me and many others. It would be more successful if it was a browser addon. In my experience, I was unable to get BlogThis to work with my blog, even after several attempts.

ScribeFire’s setup was painless, set my blog up in 15 seconds!

Wow, fully integrated Technorati tags!

Technorati Tags: blogging, tools, tips, free, firefox, scribefire

Tags: Blogging, firefox, scribefire, tools

Firefox Breaks 500M Downloads!

Mozilla Firefox has officially broke past 500 million downloads of their Web Browser. In light of their success, Mozilla has donated 500M grains of rice which will feed approximately 25,000 people.

Firefox has been the browser of choice among power users and it appears word of mouth marketing has paid off is paying it forward for people in need by donating 500M grains of rice in celebration over to FreeRice.

Mozilla is able to make this possible with a very positive synergy between Google. For every download of Firefox, Google funds Mozilla an estimated $1.50 per installation. Google knows that with the integrated search bar that isn’t intrusive but very useful, they will have a lot of Web traffic, visibility on their ads and deliver millions of impressions for their advertising network. Do people mind? Obviously not.

To download Mozilla Firefox (it’s FIREFOX, not “Foxfire”), just head on over to Mozilla’s Web site and grab yourself a copy of the best darn Web browser since 1994 — that was, Netscape.

Congrats, Mozilla! Thanks for making the fastest, most secure and easy to use Web browser.

Tags: firefox, internet, mozilla, Tech News, web

Firefox 2.0.0.8 Released

Mozilla is at it again, standing by to make sure their Web browser is safe and secure (and compatible). The new binaries were updated for OS X to be compatible for the upcoming OS X 10.5 “Leopard” — should be good news for Mac folks.

The fixes for 2.0.0.8 are:

Fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.8

MFSA 2007-36 URIs with invalid %-encoding mishandled by Windows
MFSA 2007-35 XPCNativeWrapper pollution using Script object
MFSA 2007-34 Possible file stealing through sftp protocol
MFSA 2007-33 XUL pages can hide the window titlebar
MFSA 2007-32 File input focus stealing vulnerability
MFSA 2007-31 Browser digest authentication request splitting
MFSA 2007-30 onUnload Tailgating
MFSA 2007-29 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.1.8)

Tags: firefox, leopard, mozilla, os x

Do You Use Adblock Plus?

Adblock Plus has received a lot of criticism lately from small Web site owners. The debate rages on. So I’m curious to see how many folks use the Adblock Plus addon for Firefox.

{democracy:4}

Share your thoughts in the comments about what you think about Adblock Plus!

Tags: ads, firefox, mozilla, online advertising

5 Firefox Extensions I Can’t Live Without

Firefox is an awesome Web browser that supports third-party extensions. These add-ons add even more power and control to the popular browser. I use the Internet more than 8 hours daily, so I’ve tried and kept many extensions, and I’ll share my insight on them, here.

What are extensions? … Add-ons?
Extensions are enhancements for Firefox, serving a purpose of adding on features that aren’t natively available in the current Firefox release. For the sake of user-friendliness, Mozilla grouped the category of “extensions” and “themes” into Add-ons. Simply put, extensions add features and themes change the interface (colors, buttons, etc…)

I use the Internet a lot. Trust me, with a full time job that primarily exists online and a geeky life I need to support … I can say I’m probably using Firefox more than 8 hours daily. That said, I maximize my productivity with Firefox extensions and without them, I’d be pretty darn upset.

Extensions I Can’t Live Without:

1. Adblock Plus — With this extensions, I can speed up Web browsing by filtering out ads. This increases speed by about 25% when browsing. Adblock Plus instructs Firefox not to render any addresses that are in it’s blocklist, and works wonders when blocking ads. An extension that self-updates, lets me add custom strings, and even shows stats, is a keeper for me and many other users!
2. Fasterfox — This speeds up Web surfing by tweaking the internals of how Firefox retrieves web pages. It’s pretty straightforward. I also like to see how long a Web site took to load. Fasterfox also functions as a stopwatch to view the length of time to load a site. Powerful little tool for Webmasters, and helps speed things along for all users alike.
3. Forecastfox Enhanced — This extension delivers Weather alerts and forecast, all from Accuweather.com. This version is “enhanced,” adding a higher resolution RADAR picture for your area. I love it. It updates automatically and conveniently alerts you, but doesn’t bother you that a storm is coming. All you need to do is enter your ZIP code, and you’re done. No spyware, no BS. When you’re done, go ahead and uninstall Weatherbug.
4. Del.icio.us Bookmarks — The popular bookmarking service has their Firefox extension to help you synchronize bookmarks. It lets me tag sites right from my navigation bar, in seconds. I use this to access my bookmarks from anywhere, cross browser/OS. With tagging, it’s even easier to organize my bookmarks.
5. Colorful Tabs – If you’ve used tabbed browsing, you can understand how challenging it is to keep ‘tabs’ on your favorite Web sites. This extension colors the tabs so you can easily identify tabs by color. It know it sounds silly, but it’s awesome. I have about 5 tabs open any given time, so this definitely helps!

Bonus: When I’m performing Web development or SEO work, these extensions are invaluable for working with Web development and analyzing existing Web sites: Web Developer for viewing and changing pages on-the-fly and SearchStatus for performing SEO functions and viewing Google PageRank and Alexa Rank. Ideally, this isn’t for the masses, but is very useful for Web developers.

That’s the best of the best extensions that I use. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of useful extensions available for Mozilla products such as Firefox and Thunderbird. It all depends on how you use the Internet and what you want to accomplish. You can check out the Mozilla Add-ons site and see what suits you best.

Do you have a favorite extensions? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Tags: firefox, internet, mozilla, Software