Performancing extension for Firefox
UPDATE: Performancing for Firefox has been acquired by PayPerPost.com and is now known as Scribefire
While reading and writing about Flock, I kept seeing mentions of a extension for Firefox that would handle blog publishing better than Flock does: the Performancing extension.
I installed it, and WHOA. This extension kicks some serious blogging-through-the-browser a**.
Below is a screen shot. Click to see a larger version.
Overall impressions
I road-tested this extension with WordPress 2.0.3.
Pros:
- Automatically loads recent posts and drafts from your blog for editing.
- Lets you save drafts locally (but prompts you that you are about to overwrite a note, even if you’re just saving changes to the same note).
- Also grabs your categories from your blogging software and uses check boxes for easier selection of multiple categories.
- Ability to post an entry or note to your blog as a draft post for editing from another computer.
- Option to use CSS rather than HTML for styling.
- Tight integration with Performancing.com services.
- Performancing operates in the same window, offering a split-pane view (that you can cklick-and-drag to resize).
- Ability to view Technorati inbound links and data for the active page in your browser window.
- Ability to add Technorati tags, bookmark the post at del.icio.us using the same tags, and submit TrackBacks URIs from the Performancing interface.
- WYSIWYG interface is a bit more robust, offering color and size options. However, you still have to manually add headings, abbreviation and acronym tags, insert and delete tags, etc. by editing the source.
- Doesn’t re-write your custom code … sort of. My lowercase <h3> stayed a lowercase <h3> (see ‘Cons’ for more).
- Code removes most excess white space, which loads a bit faster (there’s a downside to this, however; Again see ‘Cons’ for more).
- Can upload an image at a time to your server via FTP, HTTP or HTTPs.
- Super-fast alerting that your post has been published.
- If you edit a post via your history, you can publish your changes as an edit, or as an entirely new post.
Cons:
- The option to use CSS over HTML for styling leads to things like <span style=”font-weight: bold;”> when <b> or <strong> would use fewer bytes and still be valid (x)HTML.
- If you save a post with HTML entities, then close your browser, your entities will be converted to their actual character codes. < will become <. Ditto if you edit a post from your history.
- If you save a post and close your browser, you may wind up with extra tags. I think it had to do with the extension trying to close tags that became tags after < was converted to <. (Did that make any sense?)
- Inserts some miscellaneous where they are not needed.
- Doesn’t always produce semantic code
- No SFTP option for uploading images.
- Can’t schedule a post for publication through the blogging interface.
- Lack of white space in the actual blog post makes it a NIGHTMARE to edit from your blogging software interface.
What it’s missing:
- A spell-checker. Should be mandatory for a blogging extension.
Why you may prefer Flock
- While this extension is a great blogging tool, that’s all it does. If you also want integration with photo-sharing services like Flickr and Photobucket, then you may prefer to use Flock. Performancing just doesn’t have that feature. To my knowledge, there isn’t yet a Firefox extension that provides an upload interface to Flickr.
- Flock offers the ability to drag-and-drop photos or text as a web snippet. It’s perfect for saving material that you plan to use in a blog entry.
- Flock handles RSS and news feeds far better than Firefox’ craptastic “Live Bookmarks.”
Are you using the Performancing extension? Is there another blogging browser extension that you use to publish your posts? Do you even like the idea of browser-based blogging?
Related posts: Flock browser: Is it worth the switch?
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