burnaby t wallace

Really, it’s 0.8.99, something like that. Yep. I am using a beta of the new browser–before it really goes public (yay!). I am beta testing this guy and so far, it’s not bad.

I like the “My World” page–it’s better and cleaner looking than many home pages out there. And other than the Yahoo search, I consider it free from advertisements that plague many other portals.

I also like the bookmarks part. It’s easier to understand and use than the earlier releases.

The Web Clipboard is still something that I have yet to see in other products (with the exception of the Microsoft specific Office Clipboard).

Also, Flock looks better in Vista than Firefox does. I think it might just be with how the icons and reflection looks, but it looks more like a Vista app than Firefox currently does.

But what’s wrong?

However, I have to admit that much of the excitement that I initially had when I first found out about Flock’s web2.0 goodness (built in blog writer, integration with Flickr, the RSS feed reader) has gone. Why?

It’s not that Firefox has replaced it. Far from. I blame Google and Microsoft. The blog writer that Microsoft allows you to download is far and away the best blog post writer I could ask for–especially the new one. It allows me to not only write the blog, but to see how it looks in my blog’s theme before I even post it. Plus, it’s graphic editor is nicer, as it at least has one–which is more than I can say for Flock.

However, the big one is the RSS feed reader. The RSS reader that I used to swear by in Flock has been replaced with Google’s. With Google’s RSS feed reader, I can read some posts on one machine, then go to another one to finish reading the other blogs I haven’t completed reading. It keeps track of it. While not as streamlined, it’s consistent no matter what machine I am on. It’s also customizable with Greasemonkey. And it’s fast and with Google Gears, can let me read it offline. These are issues that may be too much to ask from a browser, but once you experience these abilities, it’s sort of tough to go back to any RSS feed reader built into a browser. To add, many pages that I would have normally bookmarked have RSS feeds now–making Flock’s cool bookmark feature less and less cool and making Google’s RSS reader even nicer.

The integration with Flickr is done well on Flock. However, as I have posted about not only on my blog, but on Flock’s blog as well, is the integration with the up and coming Zooomr. I use Zooomr–pretty much exclusively for storing my images online. The Media Bar is awesome, and I know that Flickr is among the top image repositories today, but if jUploader can upload to Zooomr, then why can’t Flock?

Lastly, while other browsers out there (with the recent release of Safari for Windows) there has been a movement for a cleaner browser interface. Browsers have been moving its interface real estate more and more out of the way and instead giving it up to the content. Flock doesn’t seem to get this. The browser buttons are big and don’t scale (at least in the beta release) too well to the smaller size. It’s weird, but it looks sort of like an old-school Netscape with rounder edges and reflections.

For example, here’s a screenshot of Flock’s top right corner.

Here’s what I can do with Firefox (and the Tiny Menu plugin).

Well, true, that I am using a plugin to get the Firefox looking minimal. I have tried it Flock, but it just doesn’t come out looking right.

Check:

I hope that Flock can work out the kinks. I want to experience browser excitement like I did when I just discovered Flock. I know that as web 2.0 is maturing, and it’s making the browser less relevant in certain things, while more relevant in others. Flock needs to embrace this and keep us posted.

I hope they can deliver, or they just might go the way of Netscape.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flockbrowser beta