9 Crucial Add-ons for Freelance Writers.
Posted On January 26th, 2008 under Tips & TricksFrom gaining complete control of your text to keeping your work safe and sound, all the essentials are here. No filler. Just really good tools.
1. Copy Plain Text
This extension gives you complete control over rich text by stripping it plain. Perfect for research or quoting other sources without links and formatting you don’t want or need.
2. Split Browser
Pasting from one tab to another can be cumbersome. This extension makes the process a breeze by splitting your browser window into two (or three, or four) panels, allowing for instant copying and pasting between pages.
3. Resizable Text Area
This extension makes text input areas flexible by allowing you to resize them as you like. Give your writing the room it needs to breathe.
4. AutoCopy
Clever little time-saver which automatically adds text to the clip-board as soon as you select it.
5. ScrapBook
When gathering research for an article you’ll often find yourself cutting and saving snippets of text from various websites. ScrapBook is a simple, bookmarks-style interface designed to make this process quick and painless.
6. Signature
Every web writer finds themselves re-using certain snippets of text again and again — whether it’s your byline or the HTML code you use for that image in every article. Signature allows you to save these snippets and access them at any time via the right-click menu. Lovely.
7. Dictionary Search
Search Dictionary.com from the Firefox search bar. Great for answering that perennial question: does the word I’m using mean what I think it means, or am I about to embarrass myself?
8. Zotero
For more in-depth research work this extension is a slick and powerful way to track sources, references and citations. Also includes refined note-taking capabilities.
9. Text Area Word Counter
An extension for freelance web writers by, arguably, one of the best: Gina Trapani. Instantly retrieve the word count of text in any web form. Perfect for paid bloggers with a word quota to meet.
Comment RSS | 867 views
January 26th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
1. You can use tiny MCE’s feature to paste text only, You can also copy-paste to notepad, then copy again clean text. TinyMCE even has a copy from Word where all the links and what not are preserved, but not the additional crap that come with it
2. Why split the same browser when you can open two and AlT-Tab between the two?!
3. Good one, but should be built into forms.
4. Nasty little bugger keeps overwriting the stuff in clipboard. I would love to see one that copies things incrementally maintaining the original content
5. Can’t you copy-paste to word or notepad?
6. meh! I haven’t seen you add a signature for as long as you’ve been blogging
7. or just say: Define:YourWord in google field
8. Nice I guess! I should try it first then see if it’s better than copy-paste links to word for example
9. LOL! 3 lines of Javascript! place that in any form!
Welcome back man!! I missed you soooooooooo much
Thank god for your safety. I feared the worst wallah.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:01 am
OK….great info, but, um, where do I get these? on Microsoft Word somewhere? :S
January 27th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Kinzi: these are add-ons for Firefox
January 27th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
So if I am surfing around looking for info, I could use this instead of going from internet to word doc (#5)? So, I could go to the Firefox site (I do use Firefox, whether I know what it is or why or not) and even I could figure out how to add it on? Or would I need a tutor?
January 27th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Kinzi: hmm I think you need crash course on firefox and installing add-ons for firefox
January 27th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Bakkouz, yea, i need to do some even PRE crashing courses, period, I think I will never get any of this figured out. :0