Flock 1.1 Arrives in Two Weeks
Flock, the Social Web Browser, has announced that the Flock 1.1 beta will launch in just two weeks. The browser, built on Firefox code, is designed for social interaction on the web, with features built into the browser just for this purpose. Flock chose last week's Macworld conference to show off the new version. With the upcoming release, several new features will be added, including Yahoo and Gmail support, Picassa integration, and a friend activity feed.
The integration of the popular webmail services from Yahoo and Gmail will allow users to share web pages, images, articles, and links with their friends using a click-to-compose function built right into the browser. By just clicking the email icon in the URL bar, Flock users can instantly share these items with their friends. When new mail arrives, the Flock Mail icon will light up to let users know to check their inbox. This is especially handy since webmail doesn't alert users of incoming mail the way that Outlook or other desktop clients do, forcing them to either keep checking it in a browser tab, using an add-on, or some sort of 3rd party notification software.
Image Credit: CNet Networks
As to why email was the next big feature to be included, Flock's CEO, Shawn Hardin, states that "Email is the single most frequently used communication application on the web, and is often overlooked as social activity."
The new Picasa feature will let users of the popular photo-sharing service quickly upload pictures to Picasa from Flock. To share these photos, users can email them via web mail or just drag and drop them onto the Flock People sidebar, the same way that YouTube videos, flickr photos, Photobucket photos, and others are shared in version 1.0.
The Friend Activity feed is like Facebook's News Feed, expect that it tracks your friends recent activities across all of Flock’s supported services. The feed will inform users when their friends update their Flock profile or online status, upload new photos, and it even displays their Twitter updates.
The new version will be available for as a free download for Mac, PC and Linux in two weeks at www.Flock.com.
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I am not able to understand why functionality given by flock can't be achieved by extensions.
Any comment?
The main thing I want from a browser is reliability. I have noticed that browser tends to be the most likely of all my apps to crash (even on Mac). I use both Safari and Firefox and have problem with both. Probably we are using browser for more activity, its getting more feature rich. We sure don't want the browser becoming unwieldy and chaotic. Loose coupling is the mantra. It looks at first glance as if Flock is trying to do stuff that can be easily done outside browser such as Start Pages. That is much safer. If Page Flakes bombs (never has in my experience) I just move on. If browser bombs its a real pain.
Flock's great, but I think still a little buggy. Magnolia's 'built in' service is never seemingly available and there are some obvious user interaction tricks that the browser is missing, for instance the ability to send Twitter statuses from the 'accounts' sidebar instead of having to download a plugin...
the delicious tag library sidebar is pretty useless too -- it should pull in your bundles and organise itself better.
Dheerj: yes you can get much of Flock's functionality via extensions, but not all. It offers those tools built right into the browser itself, instead of you having to locate and install extensions.
bernard/Andy: Flock is a first attempt to make a social browser. It's not by any means perfect, but it is an interesting project with potential...if the bugs can be worked out and features are refined. But I have to agree with you - it's still too "raw" to become your main browser yet.
@Dheeraj: While I could argue that Flock's features are built with more thought than most extensions, that's not even the main reason to use Flock instead of a series of extensions. The most compelling reason is the way that Flock's features intermingle. You can send a Feed Reader article to the Blog Editor, you can upload photos with the Photo Uploader and then view and share them via the Media Bar, you can drag and drop any photo or video from the Media Bar to your friends in the People sidebar to share, and in 1.1 you can send items from almost anywhere to your webmail. You won't find that kind of integration with a bunch of extensions...in fact, your extensions will more than likely create the kind of unreliability and slowness that bernard is worried about!
@bernard: Flock is built off of the Gecko codebase that powers the Firefox2 series, so we're pretty much as reliable as your current Firefox2 build. We intensely QA our features, and I have not heard of any causing crashes or performance issues in quite some time; any bugs in our features should only affect the features themselves, not the reliability of the browser.
@Andy: Ma.gnolia issues are most likely their API, though you should send me some more info on your issues. You can actually send Twitter statuses from the People sidebar. Just click your current status to change it. In 1.1 we will be adding a more obvious "edit" button to avoid this confusion in the future. As for the delicious sidebar, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the organization could be better; I read feedback all day and haven't seen any complaints.
We're always trying to make Flock better. I encourage you to give 1.1 a try and send any issues directly to me at evan at flock dot com. We do listen, we do work to solve our issues, and we do want you to have a browsing experience that makes you feel comfortable calling Flock your default browser.
Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
Hey Evan,
I understand performance problems installing series of extensions in firefox. Moving useful features of be integral part of browser is certainly nice. But here are few questions,
1)How to identify useful features, which most(80-90%) of users are looking for.
2) Can every firefox extensions be installed on flock?
Or are porting extensions to flock manually/automatically ?
(I am not able to see firebug and web developer toolbar in your extension list?)
-Dheeraj
(dksidana@gmail.com)
Hey Dheeraj,
1) Well, I'd like to think we're a smart group of people that know what people want. That said, a huge part of my job is scouring the web and our site for community feedback to figure out what our community wants, how they want it, and then making it happen. For example, the upcoming Picasa integration in 1.1 is driven by the overwhelming community requests for it.
2) Most Firefox extensions will work in Flock, which is why they are not hosted on extensions.flock.com. If they are favorites/bookmarks-related they probably will not. If you run into any problems, you're welcome to contact us and we can try to work through the issue with you.
Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com