Tell Me About Flock

April 5, 2008 – 12:41 am

Flock Logo Every modern operating system comes with a web browser. On Windows, it is Internet Explorer. On a Mac, it’s Safari. Linux usually comes with more than one, but usually has at least Firefox. All of these (arguably) are decent web browsers and do the job of displaying web pages. Generally, you should never need to install another browser on your computer, except for maybe on Windows. There, many people are not satisfied with Internet Explorer for a number of reasons, and tend to install Firefox as their primary browser.

So, why switch to a new browser? Isn’t it possible to do everything you want to do with the one you are using, via plugins or mods? Well, perhaps. But maybe you will find a browser that works just as well as the one you are using, and provides a level of integration and convenience with services and sites you already use. Maybe that web browser is Flock.

As you can see, Flock is betting that you will be intrigued by its additional baked-in features enough to give it a whirl. And once you get it set up, that you might just end up loving it. So how exactly is Flock different from, say, Firefox? Well, it is simultaneously similar and very different. The similarities lie in the core.. Flock is built on the Firefox core rendering engine. Almost everything that Firefox can do, Flock can as well.. addons, tabs, themes, extensions, etc. The Flock team has also stated their intention of moving to to the Firefox 3 engine once it comes out of beta.

Flock IconFlock is also different from Firefox, mostly in what it has built in:

These services are integrated in a way that do not impinge on the core browsing experience, but give you a wealth of information just by summoning up a sidebar or a media bar. In addition, Flock has a very useful default home page called My World that integrates these disparate feeds of information such as new Twitter and Facebook entries, new photos and videos, and RSS feeds on to one page. The page is configurable as well, you can have as much or as little information on it as you like.

My World is nice, but when you are browsing, you probably won’t go back to it all that often. Honestly, how many times do you go to your home page, no matter what it is set to? At best, it is usually a launching-off point. No matter though, as Flock has more ways to get at that information, namely a custom sidebar and novel media bar.

The Sidebar

Let’s face it, in Firefox the sidebar is useful, but we generally avoid keeping it open. Unless you have a compelling plugin like Meebo or a Twitter app that fits nicely in a sidebar-sized window, it’s easier to just keep it closed. Flock’s developers realized this and built in some very useful apps. In order from left to right you have My World (not a sidebar app), People, Media Bar (more on that in a bit), RSS Feeds, Email, Favorite Sites, Accounts, Clipboard, Blog and Upload Pitctures.

flock sidebarLet’s start with the People sidebar. When you click on this icon, you will get another set of tabs listing the services you have provided Flock with a login to (it also picks this up by context, if you log in to Facebook it knows to cache your credentials for the sidebar), and lets you know if there is any new updates for each of those services, as evidenced by the red dot in the upper-right corner of each tab. If you click on All, you will get a “river of news” type display, showing the most recent 6 or 7 updates from all services flowing down the sidebar. You can then use this sidebar to perform actions such as send a message or view new media. It’s a nice way to catch up on your social networks without having to leave the site you are viewing.

Let’s skip the Media Bar for now and look at the RSS Feeds. While probably not as full-featured as a standalone feed reader such as NewsGator, this does allow you to add RSS feeds directly into Flock and them pull them up one at a time or as one big river of news. It is flexible in allowing you to set how much from each article you see (title only, some text or all text) as well as how you mark an article “read.” Personally, I think it a much nicer implementation than the RSS bookmark feature in Firefox, but doesn’t really compare to Google Reader or Bloglines in its feature set.

Next is the Email button. This doesn’t actually come up in the sidebar, but a dialog window will pop up and let you see what new messages you have waiting, or compose a new email if you so choose.

The icon with the stars is your Favorite Sites sidebar button. This is very much like Firefox’s bookmarks sidebar, except it also integrates sites bookmarked online in del.icio.us and mag.nolia as well. This is ver handy if you wish to quickly search through all of your online and offline bookmarks to find a web site that you have previously saved. You can also copy (or publish) your local bookmarks to your online site or make a local copy.

The next icon is Accounts and Services which lists what accounts Flock is currently keeping track of, and allows you to log in/out or remove that account from Flock’s memory. You can also see a list of services that Flock supports here if you wish to add it.

Next we have the Web Clipboard. This is actually very handy; you can compare it to Google Notebook in that you can drag stuff that you highlight on a web site into this bar, and save it for later. You can then view, edit, delete, email, or publish these clippings to a blog post.

Speaking of blog posts, the Open Blog Editor button, which looks like a feather quill, allows you to write a new blog entry and then publish it without ever having to open a different application. It is a fairly no-frills affair, on par with what you would get with a Firefox addon, but it does support multiple blogs and handles all the HTML for you.

Finally, we have the Upload Pictures button. This will open a new dialog window which will allow you to upload local pictures to any photo service you are subscribed to, such as Flickr or Picasa. It is designed to work with batches of photos and has tabs for batch editing as well as individual photo descriptions and tags.

The Media Bar

flock media bar This is a horizontal bar that can be confgured to appear at the top of your browser window (inside the active tab) or at the bottom of same. This media browser is almost as flexible as the sidebar apps in what it does. Basically, it intelligently gathers media from many sources such as Flickr, YouTube and Facebook and allows you to browse through either individual streams or full mashups across all your registered sites. When you see a photo or video that you like, you can hover over it to get a larger picture, or click on the arrow that appears to bring up an action menu.

From the action menu you can share the selection via email or blog, you can make a copy for yourself or, in the case of video, even view it in a mini-window. Very handy! There is also an integrated search field that allows you to search different services for specific images or videos. By the way, you can also drag a photo or video from this bar into your Web Clipboard to save it for later.

A Few Other Features

Flock has a few other tricks up its sleeve. On the main navigation bar, you will notice that it has the usual back/forward and refresh buttons, but no STOP button. Also, there is a giant button with a star on it! The refresh button actually turns into the stop button when a page is loading. As for the star button, that is your “add to favorites” button. By default, this allows you to save a bookmark locally, but unlike Firefox where you can only specify the location where the bookmark goes, Flock also lets you tag the bookmark (basically, categorize it) as well as optionally save it to an online bookmark service. You can configure it to always save local, always save online or both, or always ask.

There are more buttons next to the address bar that change color to indicate the page you are on having a media stream, a RSS feed or a custom search engine. When you click a highlighted button, you can view the stream or add the feed or search engine directly in to Flock.

There is one last thing that is built-in to Flock that I find handy, which you can add to Firefox via an addon. If you are on a site and you have Flock set up to open a new window as a tab (which I believe is the default configuration) Flock will open the tab right next to the tab you are viewing. In Firefox, the tab that opens is at the very end of your list of tabs, so logical grouping isn’t always preserved. It’s a small point but I really like that.

Well, I am sure there is more I missed but that covers the big differences between it and Firefox. If you want a browser that is social media savvy, look no further than Flock.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Viewing 1 Comment

    • ^
    • v
    Good review! I had heard about flock, but never took the time to really investigate the features. Do you actually use it yourself? If so have you found your use of flock's features diminish with your use of friendfeed?

    If facebook would only allow the minifeed to become an unfiltered stream of all my friend's activity that I could pull into friendfreed, I don't think I'd need any of the extensions that flock has to offer. My only concern is that the many of the options offered by flock are just not as good as the standalone apps I use. ie Twhirl, Windows Livewriter, GReader etc....

    I do like the possibility of the offline/online bookmarks though! Thanks for the thought! However that firefox extension you pointed me to for Del.icio.us probably provides that functionality. When I get a moment I'll give it a shot.

    Cheers.

Trackbacks

blog comments powered by Disqus
scribkin is proudly powered by WordPress Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS). Theme by Bob