Journalism Optimized: Power Blogging In Firefox Faster, Writing Research and Media Included.
Writing takes time, no matter how fast you type, there is no rushing inspiration. Even the most well thought out post will have innumerable seconds lost to pauses as you make minute decisions in your words. A journalist approach, something all bloggers writers and media makers should be, takes immense research. From fact finding, to content and reference procurement, there is always more to it than just typing some text to make enough words.
Great content takes careful crafting rich with research, be it newsprint magazines books or blogs, all require that extra effort to become so. The only true way to be faster without losing as much quality as time, only efficiency will work. An optimized strategy planned to your target market and audience will take you far. As a researcher and author to hundreds of independent writers, website owners, news media organizations, journalists and blogs, I have found one simple thing above all else can make the greatest impact, Firefox.
Firefox with the right set of extensions can take hours off your combined research and writing time. If you post to a web based blog or posing system, you can do everything from any computer connected to the internet with a usb port. By use of a thumb drive you can carry your office in your pocket. With the right extensions you can mirror your laptop your work station and your thumb drive without even thinking about it as soon as your set up. In fact, you don’t even need a thumb drive if you do not need the portability and all systems can still be synced as long as they have Firefox and a live connection.
Research:
To begin as seems most fitting, the collection of researching tools.
CopyAllURLs
Developer Juergen R. Plasser Homepage http://plasser.net/copyallurls/ Add-ons for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/934
CopyAllUrls is a Firefox extension that copies and pastes all urls of open tabs including history in structured and well defined form to and from the clipboard.
CopyAllUrls works and has successfully been tested under Windows (XP, Vista) and Linux (Ubuntu, OpenSuse).
Copy Link URL
Developer JasonFah Homepage http://www.bluelightdev.com/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10552
This addon allows you to select any number of links and right click copy their URLs to clipboard. Particularly handy for grabbing links and pasting them into your favorite download manager.
DownThemAll!
Developers Federico Parodi, Nils Maier, Stefano Verna Homepage http://www.downthemall.net/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201
DownThemAll lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want.
DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400%, it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time and, last but not least, it’s fully integrated into your favorite browser!
DownThemAll is absolutely freeware and open-source. No Adware, no Spyware.
gTranslate
Developers Pau Tomàs, Pierre Bertet Homepage http://code.google.com/p/gtranslate/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/918
With gTranslate you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension uses the Google translation services to translate the text.
gTranslate is a Firefox extensions which:
- Translates from:
- English to German / German to English
- English to Spanish / Spanish to English
- English to French / French to English
- English to Italian / Italian to English
- English to Portuguese / Portuguese to English
- English to Japanese / Japanese to English
- English to Korean / Korean to English
- English to Chinese (Simplified) / Chinese (Simplified) to English
- English to Arabic / Arabic to English
- German to French / French to German
- Auto-detection of browser locale and page language (if lang attribute is defined for the selected tag or for the whole page).
For example: By defalut gTranslate has ‘German to English’ as language pair. If you your locale is set to French then ‘German to French’ is going to be used, but if the page (or the selected text) is detected to be in English, it will be translated from ‘English to French’.
- Support for translating text from input and textarea form fields. Image title or alt attributes can be translated also.
The extension uses the Google translation services to translate the text.
- Option to automatically identify the language of the original text.
- Option to detect the "lang" attribute of the of the selected text (or the whole page).
- Option to set the destination language to the browser locale.
- Replace texts from input and textareas form fields.
- Image title or alt attributes can be translated too.
Juice
Developer Linkool Labs Homepage http://grabjuice.com Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9488
- Discover great new content
- Organize rich media
- Store any image or video in the Juice sidebar for later viewing
- Share great discoveries
- Juice comes with seamless Facebook integration
- Allows you to share discoveries with just a single click
Juice is a free browser add-on that allows you to discover great new content, search using popular search engines, organize rich media and share your discoveries instantly. All from within the sidebar area of your browser.
Juice is an intelligent discovery engine that integrates seamlessly with your browser. Highlight and move a chunk of text, and Juice directly delivers a set of rich, relevant content to you.
Simply search or grab a chunk of text, and Juice will start performing its Magic. We’ll try to understand its meaning and serve you with the most relevant information from the internet’s best sources.
Meet the new Juice from Thijs Jacobs on Vimeo.
Read It Later
Developer Idea Shower Homepage http://readitlaterlist.com Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7661
Position Sync
Read It Later now syncs your position in every article between all of your devices. This means you can start reading an article on your computer, get up, grab your phone, and pick up exactly where you left off.
Tagging
Tagging has been supported in the Firefox version of RIL for over a year. In 2.0, tagging has not only been made easier and more useful in Firefox, but it is now supported directly in the iPhone app too.
This makes categorizing your items into groups and folders a snap.
Save pages to a reading list to read when you have time
• Offline Reading Mode – Read the items you’ve saved for later on the plane, train, or anywhere
• Access Anywhere – Manage your list in any browser, on any device. Your list is saved on readitlaterlist.com for web access.
• RSS Feeds – View your list from anywhere with automatic rss feeds of your items
• Sync Between Computers – Sync your reading list with any number of computers, work or home
• After reading, bookmark pages on your preferred bookmarking service
• Click to Save Mode – Quickly batch a reading list just by clicking on interesting links
Reference Maker
Developer kppk05 Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/55981
This addon output reference file of title and url, date in Website. You can storing interesting links to sidebar, and saving these links to file of Text/XML/BibTex format. It runs in your Firefox sidebar.
Method of saving link to Reference Maker’s sidebar
- Click icon in left side of statusbar to open sidebar, and drag link and drop it to sidebar
- Drag link and drop it to icon in left side of statusbar,
- Right click on a link and click "Save Link to Reference Maker" in right click menu,
- Right click on a page and click "Save this page to Reference Maker" in right click menu
If you click a link in Reference Maker’s sidebar, you can open the link on new tab.
Method of output links in Reference Maker’s sidebar to file
- Select output format, text / XML / Bibtex, in listbox and click "save" button.
Other function
- Rererence Maker add item, "Copy title and url in this page", in right click menu.
- This item can copy title and URL, Copying format is "title, URL", in the current page to clipboard
Selection Links
Developer Florian Gilles Homepage http://code.google.com/p/selectionlinks/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8644
Key Features
- Fetch anchor links
- Fetch text links
- Remove duplicate links
- Open new links in new windows or new (active) tabs
Media:
These tools are focused on enhancing multi-media information and manipulation.
ColorZilla
Developer Alex Sirota Homepage http://www.colorzilla.com/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/271
Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.
Drops
Developer Linkool Labs Homepage http://grabjuice.com Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/54912
Drops is a free browser add-on that allows you to organize rich media and share your discoveries instantly. All from within the sidebar area of your browser.Store any image or video in the Drops sidebar for later viewing. Drops allowing you to share discoveries with your friends.
Grab Them All
Developer rzelazko Homepage http://rafal.zelazko.info Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7800
Grab Them All is a Firefox extension based on o Screengrab – http://www.screengrab.org/ Difference between Grab Them All and Screengrab is that G.T.A. takes screenshot of all specifed URLs with one click.
Sites to shot have to be provided in *.txt file with URL addresses starting from http:// or https:// prefix. URLs are separated by new line. Lines not starting with http:// or https:// are omitted.
Screenshots are saved in *.jpg or *.png files in specifed directory. File names have syntax: Base64.encode(site_url).jpg or Base64.encode(site_url).png. Grab Them All opens new window load there each site URL and take screenshot.
To configure Grab Them All select Tools->Extensions->GrabThemAll->Preferences. There can be selected:
- Output file format (jpg or png)
- Screenshot type: grab window only or grab entry page
- Window size (if screenshot type is set to "grab window only" it is output file size too).
- Maximum processing time (in seconds per page). 0 seconds means no limit.
FireShot
Developer susbox Homepage http://screenshot-program.com/fireshot/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648
FireShot is a extension that captures, edits, annotates, organizes, exports and prints screenshots of your web pages. Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers. Screenshots can be saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP), printed (NEW), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.
MeasureIt
Developer Kevin Freitas Homepage http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/539
Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
Writing:
This set of tools are focused on writing and text manipulation. Several oft overlooked ways to post and edit your words.
Character Counter
Developer qatools Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11490
This is a simple extension that places in the status bar a little text panel.
When the user drag-selects, double or triple clicks text on the page, the characters are counted and displayed.
It is handy for developers, QA/testers or SEO people needing to count large amounts of characters on a page.
Counts the characters selected via click/drag select, double or triple clicks anywhere in the chrome.
EasyComment
Developer Benjamin_Flesch Homepage http://blog.bf-itservice.de/82/easycomment-firefox-extension Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9095
easyComment enables you to One-Click Comment on Wordpress Blogs which makes it an perfect tool for people who comment on a lot of different Weblogs and who don’t want to sign up on every single one.
You’ll have to define your Personal Data once in the Preferences Dialog and every time you click the easyComment Button on the bottom Status Bar in your Firefox window, it searches the comment form on the current page and fills it with your data saving you a huge chunk of type-in work
Fill out Blog Comment Forms easily with your Name, Email, Homepage URL and Message. EasyComment is able to create blog comments on every single weblog software I’ve found during my research including Disqus, IntenseDebate, Wordpress, Movable Type, etc. You can use either the Statusbar button or Shortcut keys to comment a blog post – easyComment will always insert your data into the appropriate form fields and focus on the message box. So everything you have to do is compose the message you want to leave behind and not having to wonder about your personal details!
FireForm
Developer Jean-Marc Bastide Homepage http://fireform.free.fr/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3193
A simple yet configurable form filler. Includes support for multiple profiles and custom field names. Localized for English, Français (French), limba român? (Romanian) and ??????? ???? (Russian). Now includes sites list management for automated filling of many forms. You may add you own fields, but this requires some HTML knowledge. For every field FireForm knows there is:
- A description (for you)
- A value. This is the value FireForm will use to fill this field.
- A trigger. This is either the html field name or the text before the field. You can use many triggers by separating them with semi-colons.
Dynamic Fields
You can teach FireForm with temporary fields. If you add to your url variables like fireform-trig=trigger&fireform-val=value a temporary field is created.
FireStatus
Developers pastith, chstath Homepage http://code.google.com/p/firestatus/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8973
FireStatus is a Firefox extension that aims to be a swiss army knife for dealing with various social networks, right from your browser, without visiting any particular website. Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Delicious and Identi.ca are currently supported, but more are in the pipeline. For starters, it allows you to simultaneously update your status to all or some of these services, so that all your friends see it, no matter what they are using. The notion of a status that is occasionally updated is familiar to Twitter, Identi.ca and Facebook users, since the text field that asks ‘What are you doing?’ is prominent in their user pages. FriendFeed does not have the notion of a status, but its users can post short (or long) messages, just like Twitter’s. FriendFeed also allows posting links to web pages, accompanied with a short description, something that many Twitter and Facebook users have been doing by constructing status updates that start with the description text and are followed by an appended link, usually shortened. Delicious does not have a status but you can use FireStatus to quickly save a bookmark for the page you are currently viewing along with some tags and a short description.
Settings Panel:
Status bar Function Panel:
FireStatus can ease the task of posting these messages or status updates, by being always available, instead of needing to have the service pages open and without a large memory footprint, like other similar applications, since it takes advantage of the fact that most people nowadays always have one browser open.
QuickFox Notes
Developer InBasic Homepage http://inbasic.mozdev.org/root/ext3/home/index.html Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13572
QuickFox Notes is a multi-tab note taking add-on for Firefox that uses the integrated bookmarks system to store the notes. Therefor, if you already have a bookmarks synchronization add-on installed in your Firefox (e.g. Xmarks or Mozilla Weave), your notes will be synchronized automatically. In this case, you don’t need any new registration to synchronize your notes. QuickFox Notes can be run within Firefox as well as like a standalone application (when being started via customized desktop shortcut). QuickFox Notes offers a variety of features and also supports most shortcuts as used in Notepad++.
Features:
- Simple interface
- Multiple tabs
- Autosave
- Spell check
- Adjustable font size
- Various background colors
- Text search
- Autocopy text (disabled by default)
- Paste on middle-click (disabled by default)
- Store to "Archive" (to free tab space)
- Popup after X seconds upon Firefox start (disabled by default)
- Supports most of Notepad++ shortcuts
- Always on top (Windows only)
FAQ: [ See: http://inbasic.mozdev.org/root/ext3/home/index.html ]
QuickFox Notes Tutorial Video
ScribeFire Blog Editor
Developer Christopher Finke Homepage http://www.scribefire.com/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730
ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs.
ScribeFire currently supports the following services:
- WordPress.com (http://www.wordpress.com)
- LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)
- Xanga (http://www.xanga.com/)
- Windows Live Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com)
- Performancing (http://www.performancing.com)
- Jeeran (http://www.jeeran.com)
- Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com/)
- MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/)
- b2Evolution (http://b2evolution.net)
- Splinder (http://www.splinder.com/)
In addition to the hosted services mentioned above, ScribeFire also supports custom blogging platforms which are usually blogging software hosted on your own server.
The currently supported blogging platforms are:
- WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org/)
- Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/)
- Drupal (http://www.drupal.org)
- Textpattern (http://www.textpattern.com/)
- Roller (http://www.rollerweblogger.org)
- Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)
- MetaWeblog API (Any blogging software that implements this API)
As mentioned above, any blogging software or blogging platform that implements the MetaWeblog API is implicitly supported by ScribeFire.
Shareaholic
Developer The Shareaholic Team Homepage http://www.shareaholic.com Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5457
Shareaholic is an award-winning add-on that has been downloaded over 1 million times by people looking for a customizable, light-weight method of sharing virtually any web page. It is a quick and easy way to share and bookmark stuff you care about online with friends, family and co-workers, without cluttering up your browser. If you like to connect and share with people in your life, you’ll probably love Shareaholic.
Make Shareaholic work the way you want, it’s 100% customizable. An alphabetical sample of some of the 100+ supported services:
- A: Amazon Wishlist, AttentionMeter
- B: Bit.ly, Blogspot, Blogger, Buzzster!, BzzAgent Bzzscapes, Boxee
- C: Connotea
- D: Delicious, Diigo, Diigolet, Digg, DiggBar
- E: Evernote
- F: Foxiewire, Friendfeed, Followup.cc
- G: Google Bookmarks, Google Notebook, Google Reader, Google Gmail
- H: Healthranker, Hub.tm
- I: Identi.ca, Instapaper, Is.gd
- J: j.mp
- K: Kaboodle
- L: LinkedIn, Windows Live, Hotmail, LiveJournal
- M: Meneame, Mixx, MySpace, Mozillaca
- N: Netvibes
- P: Plurk, Posterous, Ping.fm
- R: Reddit
- S: Simpy, Soup.io, Sphinn, Stumbleupon, Streakr, Smaknews, Smush.it, Su.pr
- T: Techmeme Tips, Tipjoy, TinyURL, Tipd, Tr.im, Truemors, Tumblr, Twine, Twitter, Twitthat, Tweetie, TBuzz
- V: Vi.sualize.us
- W: Weheartit, Wordpress
- Y: Yahoo Buzz, Y Combinator YC Hacker News, Yammer, Yahoo Mail
Shareaholic Browser Tools Demo Video
Word Count Plus
Developer S Waters Homepage http://wordcountplus.mozdev.org/ Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4718
Word Count Plus, an extension for Firefox, sits unobtrusively in the status bar of the active window, where it shows you the number of currently selected words. You can choose to add that number to a counter, in which case you will also see a running total.
To use, select some text on the page, then right click and choose Count Words from the menu. The word count will show up in the status bar. You can also choose Add and Count Words to keep a cumulative word count, so you don’t need to open a calculator application to figure out the total word count across multiple text selections.
Another way to trigger counting is to click in the status bar area:
- Left-Click to Count Words.
- Shift-Left-Click to Add and Count Words.
- Middle-Click or Alt-Left-Click to reset the counts to zero.
To access the full array of commands, right click in the status bar area to pull up the menu.
- The Auto Copy Counts option will copy the count to the clipboard immediately after a count is triggered.
- The Auto Text Deselect option will remove the selection from the text immediately after a count is triggered.
- The Options dialog allows you to provide a custom thousands separator and a custom copy format.
Additional Features:
- Can count selected words in a focused textarea or text input box. Notice that the box must have the focus.
- Has primitive character counting abilities. The character count doesn’t show up in the status bar and you can’t copy it to the clipboard or do anything with it really, but if you want to see the selected and total character counts, you can hover in the status bar panel and they show up in the tool tip text.
Individually all of these firefox extensions can give that little extra edge you may need. Combined your overall efforts can find a natural groove to fly through many of the most tedious tasks. I really hope this provides as useful for others as myself and would love to hear your feedback. If this turns out to be as helpful for others as it is for myself and our writing teams we will continue with a series of similar helper setups many of the writers and new media persons I work along side use for every aspect of our digital days. Because quiet simply, we could all use a little more time.
tagged: blogging firefox extensions journalism research tools writing
