Flock At A Glance
June 19, 2006
Flock, the mozilla-based web browser has released its beta version. You can read their stories about their ups and downs on making this application.
Yeah I know that you think I’m so late and this release was an old-school news, but I’ve got my reasons, total non-stop tasks has made these past few days a very busy day for me, don’t have any chance to write something. Okay I’ve been toying around with this Flock creature; torture it, loaded it with massive image-based websites and finally here’s my say.
Opening this browser was swift and smooth. Right after installation, it asks you to setup accounts to your blog, news (rss) and online photo service (photobucket or flickr). If you have accounts on these services, you can set things up immediately. The application then gives you the chance to import your mozilla settings, favorites, and history to Flock.
From the user interface perspective, Flock’s simple light blue default theme looks slick and comfortable. It has the standard mozilla toolbar like the URL field, Live Bookmark, and the search bar to the most of the popular search portal.
One peculiar thing to notice is the rather elusive Stop button. When you load a page, the Stop button is sometimes nowhere to be found. Especially when it loads the homepage in the initialization phase, it seems that Flock compels you to open that page.
As for the memory usage, Flock uses a little less memory compared to Firefox, but I’m not absolutely sure since my firefox browser is filled with lots of extensions. When comes to loading websites with tons of image, Flock has no significant differences to Firefox.
For this release, and for at least the next year or so, we are primarily focused on supporting the social dimension of the web, and on bringing information closer to the user. - Bart Decrem, Flock Developer.
Now we go to the social networking tools that were built in onto Flock. Before that, you should know that Flock build as an alternative browser that armed with social networking tools like RSS reader, blog editors, and photoblog. It eases you to read blog contents of your friends upload photos and update the content of your blog.
The RSS Reader
Flock has an integrated RSS Reader that was called “My News”. You can access it via the toolbar or using a shortcut (Ctrl-Shift-N). It has the standard RSS reader feature including OPML Importing and sub-menus. The headline of a feed is displayed in a 2 column grid. The not-so-very-nice thing (though it depends from your point of view) is that Flock does not give an option for manual update to certain feed. It updates automatically within an uncertain periodic time. On menus, you can only make two degrees of sub menus. Adding a new feed is easy, just click the feed button on the top left and a drop-down menu will appear.
Photos
By clicking the photos icon on the toolbar, a new window will appear on the top center and shows your latest online photos on your flickr or photobucket account. Within this photo interface, you can manage photos, view others photo gallery, filter photos and of course upload a photo. The upload photo interface is simple, informative and relatively easy to use.
Blogging
The built-in blogging tools are a little bit different from the other two above. You won’t see it in the toolbar, but you can find it in the Tools menu or using Ctrl-B as a shortcut to the blog editor interface. The blog editor has a standard feature and it seems that the editor is based by the TinyMCE editor yet they lack of more advanced editing tools. You can switch from the WYSIWYG and the source view back and forth. The content uploading process is relatively simple.
Okay, there’s my brief first look through this nifty web browser, i still had tons of work to do here, so mind me with this short review. I used Flock daily nowadays though it’s still in its beta stage. I’m expecting a lot from this nice browser in their upcoming releases.
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Patrick G. van Diest a.k.a "patvandiest" thinks he can fulfill his "world domination scheme" by writing in this weblog in his spare time. We'll see about that in the upcoming future. Now, just expect writings on random geek things that may interest you. Oh yeah, did you know that he works as web developer on a tech magazine...? More
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Okay, life must go on, right? So with the spirit of Sumpah Pemuda and the recent festive of Pesta Blogger 2007. I officially announce that:
It's just around the corner, not very far away.
The reason? Well you can say that I'm getting bored with Wordpress and I want to try something new. But trust me, I won't move it anywhere else in the future, I will use patvandiest.com as my main blog, always. I promise you that!
So please... please update your bookmark, I will forever graceful if you do that. But if you are reading my blog through my Feedburner account, worry not, I will automatically update the link. That goes to my other social networking related link.
I won't delete this blog, though. I will keep it as past archives of my writings.
So, sorry for this inconvinience. I hope you don't mind. See you at my other room.
Sincerely Yours,
Patrick Gerard van Diest
- #
www.patvandiest.com- I definitely will go to Pesta Blogger 2007. I've register there this afternoon, hope they approved my application. Will go with Rifie. It would be fun!
- # - And so begin the brick wars! On the axis side, it's Steve Jobs and its Apple. The Allied side consists of peoples who unlocked their iPhone. But nooo, they're not the only ones. According to Scoble, some regular iPhone user has the same problem too after the update that Apple released. It's getting hotter now. :) - #
- Remember Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange"? here's behind-the-scenes footage to relive that legendary movie (via Bedazzled)
- # - Ouh yes! know I now the first item in my "to-be-bought" list for Dody when he goes to Singapore next month. The new Dashboard Confessional album "The Shade of Poison Trees" (release date: October 2nd). Yaay!
- # - So I got bored (again) with the last theme. I had to change it, but not much though. So, here it is in it's full glory. - #