Talkin' Trackbacks, Part 4: One More Tool

I mentioned yesterday that I had a better tool to do outgoing trackbacks. It will only work, though, for people who are using Blogger and are using Firefox (and why would you be using any other browser??).

The tool is a script written by Stephen Weber of Singpolyma. It uses the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. OK, I'm sure I saw some eyes glazing over out there, so if you would like to try this excellent tool, just do the following:

1. First check to make sure that you are running Firefox. If you are running Internet Explorer, you can't use this tool. See yesterday's post about Haloscan
   
2. Install Greasemonkey. Go to the Firefox add-on site, and click on the "Install Now" link. If it pops up any dialogs, just click "OK" or "Yes" or "Allow" or whatever you need to to make things continue running. At the end of this step you may need to restart Firefox. After you do, come back here for the remainder of the step. Remember this is the Jan 28, 2008 posting in the "Clearing up the Confusion" blog. I'll wait while you do this.
3. OK, still waiting.
4. Huh, he must have gone off to get a sandwich or something. Oh, well, for those of you who returned, now you just need to install the script.
5. Go to Stephen's blog. Be patient. his blog seems to be a bit slow to load.
6. Click on the "Install the new script" link. Again, click on the "OK"/"Yes"/"Allow" buttons.
7. I don't think you have to restart Firefox again, but feel free to do so if it makes you feel better.

Now whenever you go to post a new entry on your blog, you will see a new entry field right under the title of the post. When you want to do a trackback, you just paste the trackback URL into that spot. When you publish the entry, the trackback engine will do its thing without any further intervention from you.

Oh, the first time you try a trackback with this tool, it will ask you for your del.icio.us ID. If you have one, feel free to enter it. It will give you a one-click link to post your new entry on the social bookmarking site, del.icio.us. Or hit "cancel" and it should stop pestering you about it.

Well, I hope these last few posts have gotten you excited about the possibilities for using trackbacks with your blog. If you do decide to give it a try, let me know what you think and whether it was worth the trouble.

So, have you tried out any of the other add-ons for Firefox?