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A while back a new browser called “Flock” entered the fray to a decidedly mixed response. A couple of months have passed, and I thought I’d revisit this browsing youngster that some are calling a “web 2.0 browser“.
So a quick recap: Flock is a Mozilla based browser that allows users to seamlessly post web content to their blogs, Del.ico.us accounts, and Flickr photo streams. The Del.ico.us support is what first peaked my interest, as it essentially allows the user to have an automated backup of their bookmarks online at all times. As it happens, I’m actually typing this post from Flock Developer Preview 0.5.13.2, and I have to say I’m quite impressed! You can tell the Flock team really gets where the web is going right now, and they’re expanding their feature set to meet that need.
One of my favorite features thus far is the integration of plain toolbar bookmarks and RSS feeds. Instead of asking the user to decide whether they want to bookmark a blog’s main page or RSS feed individually, creating a toolbar bookmark for a site like crashpod simply gives me a dual purpose button: click the center and I am taken to crashpod.net, while clicking off to the right where an arrow indicates further content drops down a list of the last 10 RSS feed items.
Attention to detail like this goes a long way in a market where many new browsers are fighting to justify their relevance. Of course the bread and butter of Flock’s feature set is their blog, bookmark, and photo integration, and while I don’t have Flickr setup yet, tying in my Crashpod wordpress account and Del.ico.us bookmark list was a simple and painless process. The promise of having a permanent online repository of my bookmarks is very enticing indeed, as recent upgrades and reinstalls have gotten me particularly frustrated with the export/import system usually required for web favorites.
If you dismissed Flock when it first made its debut, I urge you to take another look: their developer preview has the feel of a well executed product that would lend itself well to everyday use.
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Here’s another thing: the source code view isn’t as horribly broken as Firefox either, that’s a great fix!
Hey Ryan,
Glad to hear you are enjoying Flock! We have our first beta release, Cardinal, coming in May. If you like it now, we’re hoping you’ll love it then.
Is there anything we can do better, or you would like to see in the browser?
Sorry, forgot to identify myself
Will Pate
Community Ambassador, Flock
The one thing that’s been confusing me lately is the “Flock Faves” drop down that’s used to access the blogs, maps, and other integrated features. Maybe “Faves” sounds too much like bookmarks, but I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to post to my blog before I clicked on that drop down as a last resort. The faves menu is where a lot of the magic occurs in flock, so I’d say make it a bit more obvious that’s where these features reside.
Other than that, all I’d suggest is keeping my email handy if you guys are in need of a web standards focused User Interface Engineer.
Looking forward to Cardinal!
I would add that you need to be able to position pictures in your blog posts. As of now, Flock doesn’t seem to allow any alignment settings for images when writing up a post.
Thanks for dropping by the ‘pod!
[…] Scrappy upstart browser Flock has been the subject of examination by Crashpod in the past, but the development team behind this social-collaboration apparatus has continued to refine and polish their product, thus introducing truly worthwhile features into an already promising piece of software. […]