As time goes on, the list of extension dealbreakers for users pondering the jump from Firefox to Chrome keeps getting shorter. You may soon be able to cross off one of Firefox's most popular extensions for bloggers: Scribefire is now available as a Google Chrome extension.
It's not as full-featured as its FF cousin by any stretch, but this is an alpha build. By the time it's all said and done, there's no doubt that Scribefire on Chrome will be every bit as good as the original. This isn't a port -- it's very nearly a complete re-write. Developer Chris Finke says, "For comparison's sake, the current version of ScribeFire for Firefox has been under development for four years and contains about 17,000 lines of JavaScript. This first version for Chrome is three weeks old and contains 3,000 lines of JavaScript, only 110 of which were taken from the Firefox version."
Right now the essentials are there, and they work well. Plug in your blog's address to set it up (multiple sites are supported), choose an existing entry from the dropdown to edit, or new to post from scratch. Most major blogging platforms are supported, including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Live Spaces, and TypePad. Scribefire will display your existing categories, but not integrate tags -- yet. Hopefully autocomplete/suggestions for tags will be added soon.
As far as writing goes, the extension works beautifully. Where I run into trouble is with the addition of images. You can't drag and drop as you can on FF, nor can you upload inline. That means you've got to deal with the additional step of uploading with another tool, and then adding in the URL to your image. As Scribefire and Chrome's Extension APIs mature, however, that functionality will no doubt be bolted on.
