Argh, trying this program was a test in patience.

I downloaded the ScribeFire plugin for FireFox and tried it out. Everything about it is wrong, imo. Which is surprising considering the large following it has. I suppose of the free alternatives its, well, really the only one besides BlogDesk that looked up to par.

But ScribeFire proved buggy, hard to use, hard to understand, and poorly designed. And while it had keyboard shortcuts, they weren’t documented and I didn’t intend to spend hours figuring them out to forget them later.

Their search feature fails if I put an = sign into the search (such as searhing the html for class="bold") So I ended up moving this post over to BlogDesk to finish writing it, which went buggy.

So now I’m back to BlogJet, who will be getting my $29.95 for a licence and a bit of peace of mind.

I tried out BlogDesk today. I tried to use it to write a review of ScribeFire (coming next). It didn’t go so well.

The interface is decent, not great but not horrible. Keyboard shortcuts and decent formatting. Most of the standard blogging features. No search and replace; typical.

However, after a while the program “glitched” and I was unable to edit the content of a post anymore.

The focus, even when I clicked on my text, seemed to go somewhere random, like the category list. So BlogDesk gets the thumbs down.

I tested out BlogJet ($29.95/free trial) for posting to my blog from a desktop editor. Very sharp and polished so far. When I opened it, it suggested I send this post, though it had some really silly text for the content.

It did, however, have this spiffy quote:

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” – Albert Einstein

I’ll also be trying out BlogDesk over the next few days, which is freeware. But I have a suspicion it won’t live up to BlogJet’s polished UI and nice set of hotkeys…

I downloaded Google Chrome today and tried it out.  All I can say is wwwOwww. Fast. Fast. Fast.  

Everything about it was fluid and quick, down to the scrollbars, which move like liquid lightning.

And easy to use.  Simple and clean; exactly what a browser should be. And it’s compatible with every page I tried, including standard js libraries and advanced banking apps.

The only things missing, imo are:

• DOM inspector — found the dom inspector; it works like safari, have to highlight something on page and right click to ‘inspect’ it
• Keyboard shortcut for bookmarks — for mouse haters like me, this is a necessity. It’s way to slow to go clicky through menus when you view a couple hundred web pages a day (that translates to over an hour of clicking). I can type alt+b,c,d,1 lightning fast to open a login to my favorite app
• Greasemonkey — greasemonkey is essential for serious web users, it allows me to tweak nearly any page to my needs

If you’ve been thinking about trying Chrome, or updating your browser, head on over for a quick and painless install. Find out what fast web pages look like.

Yes, yes, I see it : )

I’ll have it up and running shortly. The main issue is, I’m deliberating whether I should take the time to make it a wordpress plugin. Here’s the basic idea:

1. You post to a special page, adding comments to specify progress on your stories
2. Alternately, use twitter posts to update progress on your stories
3. The goals box shows updated chart
4. Clicking on the goals box takes you to a full screen view of the chart, including the comments and posts about that goal

The question is whether other writers would find that useful.