Performancing 1.1
Posted by: dnorman in Uncategorized, tags: firefox, performancing, softwareThe Performancing extension for Firefox was just updated, and they added some great new stuff. It’s now tied into del.icio.us, and adds a “Page Tools” view that looks up the current web page in Technorati (handy, but no handier than a bookmarklet).
Firefox is still not quite as nice as Safari, so I don’t think I’ll be using it full time (page scrolling performance in Firefox is terrible on my ‘book, and text rendering isn’t quite as nice as in Safari). Maybe I’ll try it for a few days to see how it works out.
The beauty of keeping all bookmarks in del.icio.us is that it completely commoditizes the browser. My bookmarks are completely portable. The only links/tools that get left behind are the bookmarklets I keep in a browser’s bookmark toolbar, and those are easily replaced.
Two things that they could add to make Performancing rock harder would be:
- Sorting categories. 285 categories and counting, and it’s hard to find specific categories for a post (where did “performancing” go in this unsorted mess?)
- Category search. Even with sorting, it would be handy to be able to search/filter categories. Maybe it’s a tool that only shows up if a blog has more than 20 categories or something… It took me longer to find the categories for this post than to write it.
One thing that strikes me is just how much faster/easier/more flexible adding categories is through the WordPress web UI, when combined with the Cat2Tag plugin - it is a simple text entry field, similar to del.icio.us or Flickr, with autocompletion of existing categories and seamless creation of new ones as needed. It even provides a sorted and weighted tag cloud view of existing categories if desired. No idea if adding categories is even possible via the posting API, but it keeps me coming back to the WordPress posting UI…
Update: Disabling Firefox’s “live scrolling” makes it feel about 6 bajillion times faster. It’s totally usable now. I’ll try it for a week or so (again)…
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I downloaded Performancing version 1.1 early this morning, but haven’t been able to “play” with it due to many outstanding chores to complete.
I would like to comment that downloading and installing this extension was a breeze. All softwares should download and install like this. Some are a real pain in the neck.
I don’t like Delicious bookmarks that well. I prefer my own private bookmarks and properly managed as Firefox does. Delicious does not have a well organized layout for its extensions, in my humble opinion.
Another fact that I would like to point out, is that Performancing follows the trend of Flock, which integrated a blog editor inside its browser directly linked to Delicious and Flickr.
As browsers evolve, things are going to be a lot easier for us bloggers. Tomorrow will start tinkering with Performancing. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Just my two cents on this exciting Firefox extension.
Omar.-
We are on very similar tracks. I too upgraded to Performancing 1.1 and liked the changes. I submitted a request in their forums for alphabetizing categories and it was accepted, but obviously not in time for 1.1 — if the techorati insertion were just a little bit more flexible, I’d be pretty satisfied with it.
Now that I’ve moved to WordPress I’ve been eying the cat2tag extension– but being stuck with WPs editing interface makes me hesitant…
Chris, I’m not sure why you’d consider WordPress’ editing interface being “stuck” - especially in Firefox, the rich text editor/wysiwyg interface is as good (or better) than the editor in Performancing. And by adding bookmarklets it becomes as easy to access…
I mean stuck as in the location– even that tiny bit of friction to access it, particularly when I am on slow Bush Alaska dial-ups makes it less useful. I like the utility of an external editor and, for the functions I typically use (title, text, technorati tags for which I end up using another bookmarklet to create), the process is easiest at this point with Performancing. Not perfect, but better.
And of course I only use FireFox– what kind of tech heathen do you take me for?
I’m telling you what you already know, but the reasons I started looking for a client in the first place were offline drafting (I spend a lot of time without a connection and, when back on, like the nearly instant posting) and, perhaps like you, I am active in a dozen blogs for myself, work, teaching. Anyway, I’m by no means knocking WP, being a regular on the dev-list and having submitted a fix or two to the codebase…
Chris - agreed on all points. I’m blessed with non-sucking bandwidth most of the time so don’t mind the web interface (but even then the javascript engine for the rich text editor, and flickr integration, etc. can take longer to download than I’d like).
It’d be cool if there was a standalone/local version of that web UI. Perhaps a XUL wrapper. I guess that’s where Performancing and Flock are heading, but they aren’t quite there yet…