Today is the inaugural Captain’s Pick. The Captain’s Pick will be lenses that the Captain feels are exceptionally useful to the average Lensmaster out there (Think a Toolbox reference manual). They may also include examples of exceptional execution of some of the concepts laid out here. Finally, they may be whatever lens I want because I’m the Captain! ARRRG!

The Captain’s Pick for today is Advanced HTML for Squidoo by Glen (N376). Glen is the Moderator of SquidU, has performed design work and HTML coding in the past, and is a very helpful guy all around.

This lens has been ‘favorited’ by me ever since I found it. Considering I have a grand total of 7 lenses ‘favorited’ on Squidoo, I feel that’s impressive.

I bring it up today because Glen made a forum post about a new trick he shared on creating unique Quotes . This falls in well with the discussion on Scribefire yesterday.

Keep on thinking of new things to try! That’s how you become an excellent Pirate Squid!

/grump

Other times you’ll notice how people will have ordered lists, numbered lists, block quotes, bold, italic, and more scattered through all of their modules (not just the introduction or the text/write module). This usually garners a big 5 stars from me, as it is done so rarely.

Why is text rarely dressed up well?

People don’t know HTML. They don’t really want to learn it. You want to make lenses, market them and make money. You may also not be technically oriented and want to do things but it’s just not where your talents lie. That’s fine. Staring at HTML code will make anyone cross-eyed. There’s got to be a better solution…. oh wait, there is.

The Solution?

Download Scribefire. This Firefox Plugin (See? I told you that you’d need Firefox….)

This nifty little plugin provides a way for you to create text with all the formatting and none of the hassle. A tiny orange icon will be on the bottom bar of your browser after you install it. Click this orange square and a box will pop up with the ability to type text in and edit it using easy buttons (like Word) to get what you need.

One click toggles you over to the code that you need to copy into any description box in Squidoo. Ta-Daaaaa! No more typing HTML code again.

Captain’s Secret: If you have your own website or blog, set up the FTP settings for scribefire and you can begin uploading and incorporating pictures in seconds.