Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Web services, web 2.0
Flock version 1.2 Flies the coop
by Drew Olanoff Jun 3rd 2008
Flock, the "Social Web Browser" built on the same Mozilla engine as Firefox, has launched the latest stable version, 1.2. The beta has been available for a while now.In this version, Digg, Pownce, and AOL Mail integration. Digg and Pownce makes sense, but the AOL mail one didn't really excite us all that much.
It seems like Flock is stockpiling partners and features though and are putting together a very nice user experience "out of the box" that other browsers can't offer.
Firefox is perfect for the ubergeek that wants to install his or her own extensions, but for someone like our mothers or aunts who just want to try out this new fangled web thing, Flock is the answer.
Plus, the browser's blog editor is still the killerest app out there for any browser.
The knock on Flock has been stability which we haven't seen issues with on Windows or Mac, but the loadtime for first startup is a known issue that they're working on.
They recently won a Webby award for "Best in Social Networking" which is actually quite impressive considering that they were up against Facebook.
Go give Flock a shot and let us know what you think.
Do you want your web browsing experience to be social?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
robotrock said 1:05PM on 6-03-2008
"...but the AOL mail one didn't really excite us all that much."
hah! and you're owned by AOL...at least that's an indication your parents don't mind if you slag them off
Reply
will said 5:45PM on 6-03-2008
I want to like FLOCK but everytime I try it, a few days later I get an auto update and suddenly key plugins (like roboform) no longer work
Too frustrating until they fix this.
Reply
evanhamiltonld said 1:31PM on 6-05-2008
Thanks for the awesome writeup, Drew!
@will: This isn't an issue on our end. Firefox does plenty of auto-updates as well. It's the responsibility of the extension developer to keep their extensions updated to work with the latest version of the platforms they work on. This isn't even something they have to do every time; they can set their extension to work up to Flock version 1.9 if they so choose.
I would recommend you contact these extension developers and tell them you would like consistent support for Flock. We're happy to work with them on this, and you can provide my email address.
In the meantime, there is an unofficial hack to make many extensions work even if they say they're incompatible at http://pascal.vanhecke.info/2007/10/22/firefox-extension-not-compatible-with-browser-flock-mozilla-seamonkey-version-what-to-do/
Flock'n'roll,
Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
Reply
Jay said 11:05PM on 6-11-2008
Evan, to say, "This isn't an issue on our end" in response to things breaking, is not a good answer. When the product breaks for your end user/customer, he really doesn't care who is to blame, he'll just stop using the browser.
So you better believe it's an issue on your end. You ask the user to do more work. Software is supposed to make the end user's life easier. If it doesn't -- he's not stupid -- he'll stop using it. So blaming the developer is not in your own best interest. Figure out a way that things update properly, by default, without the end user having to do extra work. Cuz that ain't gonna happen, he'll leave.
Firefox used to do the same thing and I stopped using it for awhile, but now they have gotten better. Haven't had many problems with things updating lately. But there for awhile I would become dependent on an extension developed by a 15 yr old kid who then decides to stop updating it. Things were breaking all the time. Why in the world would I use a browser like that? Terrible user experience for me.
So think like a user, not like a developer. If you're going to ask users to go around and contact 10 different developers and lobby them to keep things up to date, that's doomed. Eventually, you won't have any complaints cuz you won't have any users.
Figure out a way to make things stay functional and up-to-date, by default.