I just heard about this new project based on Mozilla's Firefox browser called "Flock", while listening to an interview with one of the founders of Flock, on Amber MacArthur,and Leo Lapporte's new podcast "Inside the Net".
I've been trying it out for about a week on both my Mac's, and my PC's. So far it looks pretty good, especially considering the fact that it is ony a developer preview. But the fact that it is based on a full release of Firefox, gave these guys a pretty big headstart on building a "new" browser.
There are some pretty nice little tricks that this little thing does that good 'ol FF doesn't, such as using your del.ico.us account as your bookmarks instead of having them locally, something that may seem like a detriment, but if you aren't connected to the net, then how are you going to be getting to the bookmarked sites. This functionality also means that you will be able to search your bookmarks based on tags, (everything just has to have "tags" these days).
The other nice thing is that there is the ability to blog directly from your browser. In the past I liked not having to go to my blog's publishing webiste, log in, and create a blog post, then wait for it to republish my blog... and so on... Now it's not quite as convenient as the OSX blogging dashboard widget, but then again this is cross platform, and I don't have to stop whatever else I'm doing until I finish my post. In fact I'm writing up this entry using it right now. Here's hoping it all works out.
The down side of this project, is the same as any WIP project. It's not yet done, and that means that even though it is pretty much Firefox with a whole collection of extentions, and themes bundled all together into a slick install package, there are some underlying differences in the two, making the new "little cousin" a different beast to deal with. This also means that not all FF extentions are going to translate well, since they are looking for certain hooks, that just wont be where they are expected to be.
This is a pretty early release as they freely admit, but it looks to have some amazing potential, even at this early stage. I can't wait to see what they come up with for the next release.
T
I've been trying it out for about a week on both my Mac's, and my PC's. So far it looks pretty good, especially considering the fact that it is ony a developer preview. But the fact that it is based on a full release of Firefox, gave these guys a pretty big headstart on building a "new" browser.
There are some pretty nice little tricks that this little thing does that good 'ol FF doesn't, such as using your del.ico.us account as your bookmarks instead of having them locally, something that may seem like a detriment, but if you aren't connected to the net, then how are you going to be getting to the bookmarked sites. This functionality also means that you will be able to search your bookmarks based on tags, (everything just has to have "tags" these days).
The other nice thing is that there is the ability to blog directly from your browser. In the past I liked not having to go to my blog's publishing webiste, log in, and create a blog post, then wait for it to republish my blog... and so on... Now it's not quite as convenient as the OSX blogging dashboard widget, but then again this is cross platform, and I don't have to stop whatever else I'm doing until I finish my post. In fact I'm writing up this entry using it right now. Here's hoping it all works out.
The down side of this project, is the same as any WIP project. It's not yet done, and that means that even though it is pretty much Firefox with a whole collection of extentions, and themes bundled all together into a slick install package, there are some underlying differences in the two, making the new "little cousin" a different beast to deal with. This also means that not all FF extentions are going to translate well, since they are looking for certain hooks, that just wont be where they are expected to be.
This is a pretty early release as they freely admit, but it looks to have some amazing potential, even at this early stage. I can't wait to see what they come up with for the next release.
T
No comments:
Post a Comment