Computerworld published an article entitled “Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Avoid” and of course I had to read it. Some of their choices were odd, most I agreed with and one made me write this post.

ScribeFire (formerly Performancing)

This falls into the category of extensions that seem pointless. What we have here is a browser-based tool for writing blog posts. But don’t most blogs already have a browser-based editor that works just fine?

Perhaps there’s a blogging system out there that needs this kind of helper app, but we’re not familiar with it. Until we come upon such a beast, we’d rather skip the overhead of an extension and stick to our blogging software’s built-in editor.

Don’t get us wrong, ScribeFire is a nice piece of software. We just don’t see a need for it at this time. If you do happen to be using blogging software without a decent editor, ScribeFire would be a fine addition to your extension toolbox.

Yes, WordPress and other blog engines have build in editors, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be very useful, now would they? I think they’re missing the point with ScribeFire. The nice think about this extension is I can post to my blog without having to go there. I can keep all my tabs open in Firefox, click back and forth between them, copy and paste, and all the while, the ScribeFire window stays in place below. It makes it terribly easy to reference what you’re writing about. If I used the WordPress editor, I would have to click back and forth between tabs or have multiple windows open to do the same thing.

Sorry ComputerWorld, but you missed the mark on that one.