sugarenia.com

A recent trend in web designer blogs, this post. I thought I’d give it a try.

My computer is both the heavenly tool that makes me relax and the infernal tool that causes me so much stress. These things help me enjoy both:

• I run Windows XP, can’t wait for Vista, but deep down, I’m a Mac gal.
• My tools of trade are Firefox, Dreamweaver 8, TopStyle Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS2. (although I regret upgrading from v7.0). My text editor of choice is jEdit. Don’t you dare lecture me about Vim. I hate it.
• I use Thunderbird and Gmail for my e-mails.
• I extensively use the Web Designer Toolbar, View formatted source, ForecastFox, IEtab Firefox extensions.
• I use Microsoft Office for all my office work. Sadly, there is no better out there, at least not for me.
• I don’t really like listening to music for long hours at home. I prefer doing that at work. I used to prefer Winamp for music, but I gave iTunes a try the other day and was left with a sweet aftertaste. I also use pandora.com and last.fm much.
• My RSS feeds are conveniently read by Sage, my favourite RSS reader extension for Firefox.
• I use Google Analytics and my hosting company (go SpoonoHost) cPanel for tracking my websites’ stats. I’d love to give Mint a try, however I don’t have a working Paypal account, because they don’t accept Electron Visas.
• There’s no other online photo application like Flickr, no matter what they say.
• I use del.icio.us for some quick online bookmarks and technorati for searching blogs.
• Newsvine and NowPublic are my favourite news applications.
• Wikipedia is my online library on steroids.
• Wordpress is my blogging software of choice.
• I’m subscribed to a great design magazine, Before & After. For the lowest fee, great design tips in your fingertips. Precious.
• All the rest is Google.

How I Work

I was looking for this kind of tool for days now.

What is Sage? (apart from a cool name for a Firefox Extension)

Sage is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader extension for Mozilla Firefox. It’s got a lot of what you need and not much of what you don’t.

Short feature list :

• Lightweight interface in-Firefox (always a plus), fully customizable with stylesheets (my favourite is Midautumn by Xavier Giro)
• Reads RSS (2.0, 1.0, 0.9x) and Atom feeds, automatic feed discovery
• Integrates with Firefox’s bookmark storage and Live Bookmarks, meaning you can import your bookmarks directly in Sage
• Imports and exports OPML feed lists
• Technorati and RSS search engine integration
• Highly localized
• Easy install / uninstall procedure

In short, it’s the one blog reader you’ll ever need, if you don’t want to be separated by your beloved Firefox. (I know, because I shudder even at the idea)

I admit I didn’t know anything about it until I saw it in my FeedBurner stats, but when I gave it a try, I was left completely satisfied, not to mention that it managed to help me organize my ever-scrambled live bookmarks. Be sure to give it a try, if you’re looking for something similar.

Quick tip #1 : I love the fact that you can open up several articles in one click : just middle-click the title of the article in the article list that resides on the bottom of Sage. Handy!

Quick tip #2 : Be sure to download the relevant images, if you want your selected Sage style to work exactly as displayed.

sage, firefox, extension, feed reader, RSS, Atom