Flock browser is nice but not there yet
Early last month Flock released the latest version (0.9) of their browser. This release moves them “significantly closer to their 1.0 release”. Some of the features that’s included with the 0.9 release are:
- MyWorld: a dynamic home base for all your favorite sites, feeds, and media streams
- Flock’s Media MiniBar provides fast access to both photos and videos on Flickr, Photobucket, Youtube, and Truveo.
- The new Accounts & Services sidebar offers easier configuration and enhanced discovery and activation logic
- Improved Favorites with folders and support for Ma.gnolia and del.icio.us
- Blogging: Improved UI, integrated Clipboard, support for all major Blog services including Blogger, WordPress, Typepad and Livejournal
- Security improvements
- In-line spell check
The Flock browser has gotten a lot of media attention since day one and I’ve been a frequent user of their browser since early on. When this latest release came out I was very excited about the new feature and the possibility of switching from Firefox permanently. At first glance the Flock browser looks great and all of the unique features are easy to figure out. I really like the Media MiniBar as it’s a great way to see my friends Flickr photos and video. Additionally, I really like the convenience of the uploader tool which makes it real easy to upload your latest photos to flickr. Now I know that this is not their 1.0 release and that they’ve come a long way since their first release. But, I’ve been using this browser “full time” on my laptop for more than a month now and have threatened every day to move back to Firefox becasue of how incomplete this version is. First of all, I use two different computers everyday and if I’m going to use the Flock browser I’m going to need some sort of way to sync the two. As you might imagine, it’s pretty frustrating when you save something on your laptop but when you flick on your desktop computer you have to start all over. I would be happy to signup with Flock for an account and sign in to my browser just so everything can be synced. That shouldn’t be to hard, should it? The other feature that needs some work is the “star this page” or favorites. I use Del.icio.us for my bookmarks, which Flock favorites is integrated with however they’re lacking in execution. For example, you have to many steps (2) to enter a Del.icio.us tag and you don’t get a list of the previous tags that you’ve used. The most frustrating thing about the favorites is actually trying to locate one of your saved Del.icio.us bookmarks. If they were to copy how del.icio.us does it then it would be perfect. Another feature on Flock that will need more attention is the RSS reader. It’s fully integrated with the browser and is a great feature, however there are a few improvements that should be made that would make it even better: For example when you add a new RSS feed to the reader you don’t have any option to organize that feed. You have to wait untill it’s added to the list and then find and then drag it to the folder that you want. Additionally, there’s no way to edit the feeds. The last thing that I’m going to bitch about is the Blog Post tool. I can’t use it until it has a post to draft.
All in all I see a great future for Flock but I think they still have a ways to go before I can make the switch. As of writing this post I’m switching back to Firefox and will be anxiously awaiting the next release of Flock.
Hey Chris,
I appreciate the depth and balance of your post…it’s always nice to see intelligent, researched posts!
I’m sorry to hear that Flock isn’t quite there for you, but I would love to pull some insights out of your blog post for the team. Perhaps I can solve a few of these issues as well.
Syncing: This is something that we would love to have someday, but it’s not simple. Even if it was simple to figure out, we’d need to set up a webservice, which is no simple feat. That’s not to say that we won’t ever do this…we just need to be able to commit to it 100% if we do.
Tagging favorites: Can you explain the difference in steps between the Flock Star and the del.icio.us button? You can double-click the Flock Star to get tagging in properties or even set properties to always appear. I’m not a big user of the del.icio.us site though, so let me know what you’re missing.
Tag autocomplete: This is definitely on the feature request list. Hopefully in the next couple of months.
Searching favorites: Can you explain your difficulty here?
Organizing feeds: While it does have some bugs, you can organize a feed when adding by dragging the “Subscribe” button on the Feed Preview Page to wherever you want it in the Feed Reader.
Editing feeds: What specifically are you wanting to edit?
Blog to draft: I’m not familiar with this feature…can you fill me in?
Thanks for your feedback and clarifications, they will definitely be helpful in determining what we change in the coming months. I hope our 1.0 later this year fits you better!
Flock on,
Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
Thanks for your response Evan. Just so you know, I’ve been a big fan of Flock since day one. I also realize that Flock is a work in progress. But, with so many browser choices these days, I think that if Flock is going to be the one spot for manging my online world then I think you have a little more to do to get me and others to make the switch. In response to your questions:
Syncing: Yep, I understand that this would make you guys a web service and that it’s difficult. But, imagine how great that would be. I for one would have no reason to ever use another browser and or competing web service (i.e. bloglines, scribefire etc). Maybe some other party could make this happen through an API?
Tagging favorites: I wasn’t aware that you could double-click the Flock star to bring up the tagging properties window. But, since I mostly use the Del.icio.us “service” for Flock. It would be nice to see a little tighter integration (i.e. tag suggestions and community suggestions).
Tag Auto Complete: It doesn’t even have to be auto complete it would be just as nice to show a list of previous used tags. I’m looking forward to seeing your fix on this in a couple of months.
Searching Favorites: Again since I mostly use the Del.icio.us “service” for Flock, and not the local “Flock favorites”, my recommendations are based on that. When trying to find a specific tag or bookmark with the “favorite manger” it’s pretty difficult to find specifically what your looking for quickly. If I click on Favorites->Online Favorites it shows a random list of tags and no way to sort alphabetically. If I click on Favorites->show in sidebar, it shows a list of all of my local bookmarks and web bookmarks but if I do a search by a specific tag, I get a list of all results even sub tags. And all of the folders are open so that you still have to do considerable scrolling just to find what your looking for. Optimally, if I was to do a search in the side bar I would like to see the first folder be the tag that I did the primary search for and then all sub tags should be in closed folders below that. The other way that I’ve tried to search is via the favorites manager. It is easy to sort and search but just like the sidebar approach it returns the results in a nonsensical order. And, if I sort the column by name or tag, it still comes up in some sort of bazaar order. This might not be a big problem for most user but since I have a couple thousand bookmarks, being able to find them quickly is a big deal.
Editing feeds: first of all, when I save a new feed it would be nice to save it directly into the folder that I want. As opposed to saving it to the bottom of the list and then dragging into the folder or collection that I want. I suppose when I say edit, I’m just use to how Bloglines handles this. The edit function in Bloglines pulls up the feed properties page that allows you to rename the feed or move it into a different folder and has a place to enter some notes about that feed.
Blog to Draft: Normally when I write a blog post outside of WordPress or MT or whatever I don’t always want that blog post to go live right away. When I use the Blog Editor tool for Flock, I’m usually browsing the web and then see something that I want to write a blog post about. So, I Blockquote what I need and then write up a few things, add a picture and then click post. Well, that post goes live on my site. But, what I want to do is when I click the “post” button I should get an option to send it to my blogging app (wordpress) as a Draft so that I can do some SEO optimization or set it to post at a later time/date. Currently I don’t see anyway to do this. With the Performancing Firefox plug in, I have a option to send a post to wordpress as draft. That’s what I would like to do with Flock.
So, I hope my comments and suggestions help you guys out. I’m sure I’m not the majority but I’m not the minority either. Keep up the great work and if you have more questions for me please feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email.
-Chris