New Comm Biz

I’m a huge fan of ScribeFire and with every new update it keeps getting better. Since switching to Ubuntu Linux on my personal laptop I find myself using SribeFire almost exclusively.

I’ve been using ScribeFire off and on since it was originally the Performancing blogging plugin for FireFox. SInce it became ScribeFire I was never really sure who was running it these days. I did a little homework (it wasn’t that hard) and discovered that Chris Finke was the driving force behind ScribeFire these days.

I’d like to thank Chris for taking the time to answer a few questions and encourage all of you who blog to
A) make sure you’re using FireFox and
B) get the ScribeFire blog editor.

So who is Chris Finke?

I’m a 24 year-old software developer from Minnesota, married, out of college, and I work full-time for Mahalo.com.

How long have you been working on ScribeFire?

I’ve been involved with ScribeFire since February of 2007, or about 14 months.

Were you involved in the original development?

No, I took over on the project after the original developer, Jed Shaw, abandoned it, due to lack of time, I suppose.

How did ScribeFire end up being separated from Performancing?

When the Performancing.com/ PayPerPost deal was initiated, Performancing split off the blog editor as ScribeFire, since it wasn’t something that PayPerPost was interested. (Note that this happened shortly before I became involved with the project, so I don’t have any more details than that.)

(For those of you not familiar with the Performancing/PayPerPost deal you can read more here. Long story short: It didn’t go through but Performancing did get purchased by Splashpress Media.)

Are you the only one working on Scribefire?

No; in addition to the work that I do, there are several other developers that contribute patches and help with issue tracking (Evan and Alaa, specifically), as well as about a dozen translators, and of course, all of the users that submit feedback and bug reports.

You also do dev for Mahalo right?

Yes, I’ve worked for Mahalo since November of 2007.

Is that tough doing both projects?

It takes a lot of time, but since I’d choose to work on open-source software in my free time anyway, it’s not a stretch for me to make working on ScribeFire my hobby-programming, and working on Mahalo my work-programming.

Any other projects you have going on?

I’ve always got a handful of projects going, although none of them are currently demanding the same time commitment as ScribeFire: I’ve written 10 other Firefox extensions that I update occasionally, a few Wordpress plugins, and I do some contract Firefox extension work on the side. (The Compete Toolbar was one of mine originally, but I believe that they’ve hired someone fulltime to update it.)

What are the plans for ScribeFire longterm? Any up-n-coming features we should be looking forward to?

We just released the Quickblogging toolbar – a way to quickly update your blog posts with pictures, videos, quotes, and links. I see ScribeFire’s future as making it as easy as possible to update and edit content. Any features that help with that will certainly make an appearance.

Do you ever see a point where it might become it’s own stand alone app, or being integrated into other browsers?

It certainly couldn’t be integrated with a browser like Internet Explorer without thousands of hours of work – the platforms are just too different. It is possible, however, that it could be made into its own app via Mozilla’s XULRunner platform, but that’s not currently in our plans for the near-future.

Are you happy with ScribeFire?

I’d say so. The community behind it is great and very opinionated, and it’s definitely the best blog editor for Firefox. I don’t know if it’s the best blog editor period, but it’s our plan to make it that.

If you don’t run Windows then I would argue that ScribeFire is the best blog editor available to you.

I’ve mentioned before how I use the ScribFire blog editor. When I wrote that post Windows Live Writer was my main blog editor. Today I only use WLW at work when I have a larger post to format and I’m pulling together on and off line content.

I really like the convenience of ScribeFire’s in-browser editor and it has 90% of the functionality of WLW. If you use flickr and YouTube for your photo’s and videos you should definitely be using ScribeFire since the new Quickblogging toolbar makes adding those to your blog post a snap.

Technorati Tags: Chris Finke, ScribeFire, Performancing, Blog, Blogging, interview, blog editor, Mahalo,

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