The uber geeks

Flock Browser Review (1.2.1)

Up until a week ago, I’d been using Safari 3 with the Netvibes homepage as my primary web browser and RSS reader. Safari uses a lot of memory, and has been hanging up or crashing on me more frequently. That is to say, very occasionally, but it was still a pain. I decided to give some other browsers a go and see if anything stuck. If not, I would be fine going back to Safari.

In comes Flock. It’s billed as “The Social Web Browser,” and for the most part, it’s true. There have been a couple reviews of early builds and betas here at TUG.n: First was Colin’s review here and then a Screencast by Josue (video doesn’t work, but he says it has gotten much better). Another good article is from SolutionWatch. But these are from a couple years ago. Where is Flock at now?

I’m enjoying my time so far. It still feels a bit slower than Safari, the same thing Colin found in his time browsing, but not so much that it pushes me away. But this could be because I’m running it on a G4 iBook, with 1.33GHz with Leopard. Aside from that, there are still some memory leak issues, but nothing deal breaking that other browsers haven’t faced, or currently face.

In this newest version, Pownce and Digg have been added to the people services. People services allow you to login once and then add photos, digg stories, send tweets, or update Facebook status right in the browser. There are a healthy number of services supported, with probably more to follow in future updates. I like the people services and I think they are well placed in the scheme of the browser. They aren’t obtrusive and allow you to sign up for the services you use. Choose Flickr, Photobucket, Piczo, or Picasa, whichever is best for you.

The blog editor and photo uploader are also pretty useful. The photo uploader let’s upload to any of the image hosting sites you’ve logged into while on the browser, including Facebook, right from the browser window. The blog editor, in conjunction with the Web Clipboard, previously called Shelf, makes posting to blogs easier. Web Clipboard allows you to save bits of text, images or links right there in the sidebar of the browser for later use. While in the blog editor, just drag and drop to add to the post.

The feeds sidebar for RSS and XML is a bit cumbersome. Any time you click a site, it opens it up in the current window. I think I’d rather see a separate window for the feeds, similar to the blog editor and image uploader, so that I can scroll through the feeds without having to open a new tab as to not lose the current page I’m viewing. Still, the actual browsing through feeds is nice and straightforward.

There is also a media bar feature that I haven’t found useful for myself just yet. I can see how it can be used, but the feature itself is a bit slow and so I’ve avoided it for the most part. It opens up in the top of the browser and allows immediate access to photos you’ve uploaded, videos you have on your favorites list on YouTube. Simply right click any of the media and you can copy the url, add it to a blog, or e-mail it. It looks slick, and if I did more with media on the web, I’m sure I’d find it more useful.

Aside from all these major features, there are little things that make Flock unique. When browsing websites. Next to the address bar are three buttons that light up whenever a specific option is available on a page. If a feed is available, that button lights up. If a search bar for that specific site is found, that button lights up, allowing you to search that site anytime. The third button looks for media streams on a site, specific YouTube users, Flickr accounts, and adds that stream to the media bar, so you can sort through them using that feature.

With one of these types of apps, one that has so many features and attempts to wrap everything into one, there is always the problem of being too bloated. But Flock is here specifically to be this type of social browser. Share everything, all within one application. It may be missing a few people services *cough*Viddler*cough* but those can be added later. I’m happy using Flock for the time being. I find most of the options genuinely helpful. Aside from it being a bit sluggish sometimes, the design is sleek and the browser does what it sets out to do.

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