Fluff from the naval of my mind

If, like me, you spend a significant amount of time editing text on-line (and you use Firefox) you will appreciate the It’s All Text! plugin. This marvellously simple idea saves time and effort when editing text in text areas on-line. Better yet, it allows the use of your favourite text editor when doing so.

Once installed It’s All Text! adds a sub-menu to your context menu for text areas in on-line forms (shown below) from which you select how you want to edit the text. Your text editor will then be invoked and the content of the form made available for editing.

It's All Text! context menu

Saving the file from the text editor will update the content of the text area. The update is accompanied by the text area momentarily showing a fading yellow background. Once saved from the text editor in this way, the web form continues to work just as if you had edited the text in situ.

Better still, if the form fails to submit for some reason, when you return to the form you can choose to edit using the previous content. This opens the text you previously saved from your text editor rather than the text currently in the text area. Nice!

I find this plugin vital when editing HTML in online forms. It means I can use my BBEdit text editor and take advantage of all the HTML functionality of that editor even though I am editing text for an on-line web form. The ability to edit using the last saved version also means I do not have to worry about losing a web connection – essential when working on-line on the move!