For those of you who don’t keep a miniature English teacher on your desktop to help you with your writing woes, there is After the Deadline.  Now, I have already told you before about the great bookmarklet they provide to help you with your spelling and grammar errors, but now they have a Firefox extension too.

After the Deadline bring a smart, contextual spelling and grammar checker to the Firefox browser.  Once installed, all you have to do is click on the check icon displayed on text areas of web forms to check your grammar and your spelling.  Click it one more time to finish your proofreading.

You can see it in action here:

I just can not highly suggest using this add-on for Firefox enough.  You can pick up the After the Deadline Firefox add-on on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

How do you use it?  That much is simple:

1. Click the "Add Proofreader" link on your link bar to add a Proofread button above each text box.
2. Click to find spelling mistakes, misused words, and grammar errors
3. Click to continue editing.

Right now the bookmarklet does have a few limitations, such as it is limited to 7,000 characters worth of text, and it only works in text area form elements, however this is a great way to bring a great tool with you, no matter what web site you are on.

You can pick up the After the Deadline bookmarklet on AftertheDeadline.com.

Which blogging scripts and services are supported?

Blogger, Drupal, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Radio Userland, TextPattern, TypePad, WordPress, journalspace, b2evolution and BLOG:CMS and more!

If you want the latest and greatest version, pick it up from the add-on’s official web site. You can also find the latest “Mozilla tested, mother approved” version on Mozilla’s own add-on site.

To get started, all you need to do is download the addon from the Mozilla web site, restart Firefox and then launch ScribeFire by clicking on the orange task bar icon or right clicking on any web site and selecting “blog this page” from the ScribeFire menu item.

For the best blog updater I often recommend people uses Windows Live Writer. If it isn’t your cup of tea though my number two choice would definitely be ScribeFire.

It is important to hear it from all sides of the fence, so getting a few more voices in the mix is never a bad thing. Now I can not promise you fame or fortune. What I can give you is a nifty link back to your own web project though and a state of the art “Author” credit in the post.

What type of folks am I looking for? Anybody who has a passion for the Firefox browser, likes to write and can deliver some cool tips, tweaks, reviews or lists for us all to enjoy.

If you are interested, drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I’ll be in contact with you.

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Let me know when and if you use it to. I’d love to check out where this thing gets posted to or on.

Textarea Backup – This one is actually a Greasemonkey script that will backup what you type into any large text field, so you don’t have to worry about your message getting lost. The backup should be transparent so if the page is reloaded for whatever reason, be it browser crash, unintended exit or a forgetful website, the previously entered text will be restored.

StumbleUpon – Need something to write about or some random inspiration for your next big post? StumbleUpon can be your new best friend then when it comes to finding topics to write about or cover. Just start stumbling on a topic that interests you and let the creativity flow to you.

Dappad Notebook Sidebar – It is always good to have a few notes you have written to yourself while you are blogging away as well. This extension gives you access to an entire sidebar of personal notes you can store, edit, and save.

Have any other good blogging Firefox related tools?

Alright, I have been missing in action a few days due to the holidays, but now since they are almost all gone I can get back to work here and my various other projects that you watch me at. I have enjoyed my little vacation – but I am itching to start posting again.

No matter how badly I wanted to not look at Firefox related stuff for a while, it just kept coming back to me.

Due to the recent surge in the number of Firefox users around the world, the interest in developing well-written extensions has become a goal of many individuals. Unfortunately, many of the tutorials currently online provide enough information to get users writing simple “Hello, World” extensions, and leaves you hanging on developing more interesting projects. The goal of this tutorial is to provide the reader with the information and resources to write feature-filled, Mozilla-compliant, extensions.

+ Read More About the Guide to Writing Your First Extension!

The release of Performancing Firefox 1.3 brings a whole new dimension to the free open source blog editor. By making PFF extensible via the Themes and Addons API’s, and opening up the source code via subversion, we’re putting the blogosphere’s favorite editor where it belongs, in the hands of it’s users.

[Learn More About Performancing!]