Walkthrough:: del.icio.us plug-in for firefox
A mate emailed me asking for an explanation of the del.icio.us firefox plug-in. I got a couple sentences into the reply and decided I should take a few screenshots and put them here, along with a few pointers. I could have done a screencast but I’m a little lazy. So here we go:
The plug-in adds new submenu to the right-click context menu on the webpage:
The first thing you need to do is choose the ‘Options’ submenu item and setup your account details, like this:
The submenu also exposes the most useful feature of the plug-in which allows you to add to your del.icio.us bookmarks without having to navigate to the del.icio.us site and interupt your browsing.
That’s the ‘Post current page’ menu item which displays a a dialog box that is like an evolution of the standard del.icio.us bookmarklet. You can start adding your own tags while it gets busy downloading the list of tags you’ve already used. It also highlights recommended tags based on how other people have classified the page.
Another useful piece of functionality is the ‘My tags’ submenu option that displays a list of your tags and allows you to jump directly to that page in del.icio.us
I don’t use this one all that often but it’s still kinda handy to have.
The last thing I want to show you is the plug-in’s sidebar. It acts just like a bookmark list, interacting directly with the del.icio.us service interface to provide real-time lists of the bookmarks under each of your tags. Ctrl-Shift + d is the shortcut key.
When I first started using the plug-in I used this a lot but I find the interface is a little cluttered and there’s a slight delay while the plug-in fetches the list of bookmarks when you select a tag.
I’ve since started using firefox Live Bookmarks because my preference is for a responsive interface rather than a completely up to date list. The major flaw with the Live Bookmark approach is that you must manually add a new one for every new tag you create in del.icio.us if you want to keep the two in sync.
I hope that’s a decent little introduction that gets a few people started using the plug-in. Have fun.
