I’ve become a fan of Ping.fm and its mass notification abilities.  However, I wanted to update my Ping.fm status without navigating away from the page I was on.  So I created the Ping.fm Mobile Sidebar for Firefox.

Much like my many other Firefox sidebars, it simply works as a shortcut to access the mobile version of a site.  This time it’s Ping.fm.

Yes, you could easily do this with a bookmark in Firefox, but I prefer to have an icon in my toolbar and a keyboard shortcut at my disposal.

The Ping.fm Mobile Sidebar comes complete with Firefox 2 & 3 support, a blue P button for your toolbar and a keyboard shortcut. The actual features of the Ping.fm sidebar application are under Ping.fm’s control.

Download the Ping.fm Mobile Sidebar extension. (removed)

To install: Download the extension to your desktop. Then go to Tools -> Add-ons and drag ping.fm1.1.xpi to your add-ons window. It’ll install and you’ll have to restart Firefox.

To use: Go to View -> Sidebar -> Ping.fm Mobile Sidebar, or hit control+alt+shift+p, or customize your menu bar to add the Ping.fm button.

Enjoy

Known Issue: The mobile version of Ping.fm has no background color so the sidebar version currently takes on your current sidebar background color.  If you have a dark background color, this may make the text hard to read.  I’m looking into a way to fix this.

Thoughts Wanted: The iPhone version of Ping.fm works in Firefox’s sidebar, however the sidebar either needs to be about 480px wide or it’ll scroll left and right.  The iPhone version looks much nicer, but it doesn’t fit quite right.  Would you like to keep the current version or have me code in the iPhone version?