Flock: the Facebook-friendly browser
Posted 5 November 2007 at 8:17AM by Simon Dickson in Connecting to the Internet
A few months back, I played around with the resurgent Flock web browser, and concluded that it didn't offer enough to tempt me away from my customised Firefox setup. They're now edging closer to a 'proper' public release, with the emergence of Release Candidate versions - and I have to say, I like what I'm seeing.
I'm finding myself inevitably drawn to the People bar, which brings the latest activity among your contacts on the leading social networking sites - Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and most notably Facebook - into a browser sidebar giving instant access to your friends' uploads and updates. Crucially, though, it includes the ability for you to send your own Twitter or Facebook updates from the sidebar too: a fantastic addition.
The customisable 'My World' homepage is a nice touch, giving an at-a-glance view of your favourite feeds and social destinations. I'd almost forgotten there ever was a 'home' button in my browser, so it's a smart move to try and reinvent the concept. The built-in search box tries to offer me search results before I've even finished typing my query, which is clever but could get annoying. The integration with bookmarking site del.icio.us is neat, taking a slightly different approach to del.icio.us's own Firefox extension. Other elements of previous Flock releases remain - the 'media bar', the blogging tool, the RSS reader - but don't seem to have made such significant steps forward.
So do I find myself revisiting my previous conclusion? In all honesty, no; I'll still be sticking with Firefox. Flock does most things well, and a few things extremely well. But with the exception of the People bar, it doesn't do things sufficiently better than Firefox (in conjunction with various add-ons) to make me switch. I just hope the Firefox gang are watching: their experimental 'Co-op' plugin seemed poised to offer something to rival the People bar, but it now seems to have stalled.
Tags: browsers, facebook, firefox, flock, social networking, twitter
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