I’ve been playing with Flock for blogging purposes lately. It’s a new browser based on Firefox. I’m interested in it because of the driving force that all the big Web businesses like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google, and many of the smaller sites too, like Craig’s List, are focused on: user generated content. It’s interesting, there’s some areas where it just isn’t as nice as IE (the font in the editor on my monitor is ultra tiny, for instance, gotta figure out how to change that) but I love the drag and drop editing of blog posts (I just did that on the previous eBay Stores post) but overall I like it better — the integration to Del.icio.us and Flickr and drag-and-drop blogging is real nice.
I wonder if this will be a trend of seeing specialized browsers be built for unique purposes? Or, will the world just stick with Firefox and IE and add components onto those? I wonder what the browser of 2007 will look like?
Update: One thing I notice is that my workflow has to change if I’m going to keep using Flock. With IE I just Shift-Click on a link and open a new instance of the browser. That’s one reason I never got too enthralled with tab browsing.
But when I do that in Flock my Web performance goes WAY down. I like separate Windows on a high res screen. But I’m weird, so you can ignore me. 🙂
Scobleizer 
>>I wonder what the browser of 2007 will look like?
Something tells me you probably have a good idea.
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Exactly the fucking same as the browser of 2003 I expect, considering browsers have barely changed over the last 5 years. Tabbed Browsing being the only new thing I can think of. Oh sorry, you’re from MS, you won’t know what that is. One things for sure, they won’t look like IE. In fact, I wonder if there’ll be anybody at all in 2007 with an IQ aove 80 who still uses IE?!?
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>>I wonder what the browser of 2007 will look like?
Something tells me you probably have a good idea.
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Exactly the fucking same as the browser of 2003 I expect, considering browsers have barely changed over the last 5 years. Tabbed Browsing being the only new thing I can think of. Oh sorry, you’re from MS, you won’t know what that is. One things for sure, they won’t look like IE. In fact, I wonder if there’ll be anybody at all in 2007 with an IQ aove 80 who still uses IE?!?
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phatfunky: I guess you aren’t on the betas of IE 7. Cool. I don’t get religious about my browser and try them all. There are good and bad to all the different browsers. Do you think that kind of evangelism technique is going to convince anyone, though? It sure didn’t work for Apple.
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phatfunky: I guess you aren’t on the betas of IE 7. Cool. I don’t get religious about my browser and try them all. There are good and bad to all the different browsers. Do you think that kind of evangelism technique is going to convince anyone, though? It sure didn’t work for Apple.
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“Do you think that kind of evangelism technique is going to convince anyone, though? It sure didn’t work for Apple.”
Hey, they’re moving up in market share, so something is working. I find it odd that a Microsoft evangelist is cursing any kind of evangelism. Oh, and I have used the IE7 beta – that RSS functionality seems awfully familiar.
The browser of 2007 will look like IE7, because Microsoft will make sure that IE7 is the universal default, whether you want it there or not. It will look like IE7 because Microsoft has (yet again) gone out of their way to break interoperability of web standards and create an island unto themselves.
Just sayin’. We’d see many more Flocks if IE was as open as Firefox.
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“Do you think that kind of evangelism technique is going to convince anyone, though? It sure didn’t work for Apple.”
Hey, they’re moving up in market share, so something is working. I find it odd that a Microsoft evangelist is cursing any kind of evangelism. Oh, and I have used the IE7 beta – that RSS functionality seems awfully familiar.
The browser of 2007 will look like IE7, because Microsoft will make sure that IE7 is the universal default, whether you want it there or not. It will look like IE7 because Microsoft has (yet again) gone out of their way to break interoperability of web standards and create an island unto themselves.
Just sayin’. We’d see many more Flocks if IE was as open as Firefox.
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>Hey, they’re moving up in market share, so something is working.
Yeah. Two things: their new store network and iPod.
iPod especially.
And the FUD about breaking Web standards is TOTALLY untrue. I guess you haven’t been following http://www.molly.com
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>Hey, they’re moving up in market share, so something is working.
Yeah. Two things: their new store network and iPod.
iPod especially.
And the FUD about breaking Web standards is TOTALLY untrue. I guess you haven’t been following http://www.molly.com
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Ummm…quoted from Molly’s blog:
Chris Wilson: “I knew when we started IE7 was going to be a challenging release for us, we weren’t going to get as far as people wanted us to get…I understand we might be the worst offenders today, but hey – I remember back when we weren’t the worst offender.”
So even the “Group Program Manager for IE Platform and Security” is acknowledging that IE (even in the yet to be released IE7) is one of the worst offenders when it comes to web standards.
It’s great to see improvements, but let’s not get carried away and start pretending that IE7 will no longer be a pain for web developers.
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Ummm…quoted from Molly’s blog:
Chris Wilson: “I knew when we started IE7 was going to be a challenging release for us, we weren’t going to get as far as people wanted us to get…I understand we might be the worst offenders today, but hey – I remember back when we weren’t the worst offender.”
So even the “Group Program Manager for IE Platform and Security” is acknowledging that IE (even in the yet to be released IE7) is one of the worst offenders when it comes to web standards.
It’s great to see improvements, but let’s not get carried away and start pretending that IE7 will no longer be a pain for web developers.
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chris: true, but we’re going in the right direction, not the wrong one. To claim otherwise is simply FUD.
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chris: true, but we’re going in the right direction, not the wrong one. To claim otherwise is simply FUD.
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Yup, agreed and it’s good to see – hopefully it will continue in future releases as well.
As for Flock, I think they made a mistake in not releasing as a Firefox extension. I know they have talked about doing things that might be beyond the ability of extensions, but I think people are more comfortable loading new toolbars etc into their existing browser than installing a whole new browser just for specific (and arguably minor) functionality improvements.
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Yup, agreed and it’s good to see – hopefully it will continue in future releases as well.
As for Flock, I think they made a mistake in not releasing as a Firefox extension. I know they have talked about doing things that might be beyond the ability of extensions, but I think people are more comfortable loading new toolbars etc into their existing browser than installing a whole new browser just for specific (and arguably minor) functionality improvements.
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Sorry the “user generated content” things is really getting to me now since you pointed it out, lets get a better term.
How about :
1) Participant contributions
2) Social content
3) Group input
4) The many content
5) Public publishing
…
I’m sure others have even better ideas.
I think a browser should support “social contribution” by default, the old Text Area just doesn’t cut it any more, it’s not just browsing anymore it’s contribution also. Can you persuade the IE team to inlude a better “social contribution” feature similar to flock, even if its just for blogs, I think that alone would made the biggest single contribution to the new web (2.x whatever).
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Sorry the “user generated content” things is really getting to me now since you pointed it out, lets get a better term.
How about :
1) Participant contributions
2) Social content
3) Group input
4) The many content
5) Public publishing
…
I’m sure others have even better ideas.
I think a browser should support “social contribution” by default, the old Text Area just doesn’t cut it any more, it’s not just browsing anymore it’s contribution also. Can you persuade the IE team to inlude a better “social contribution” feature similar to flock, even if its just for blogs, I think that alone would made the biggest single contribution to the new web (2.x whatever).
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I had to read that 3 times before I understood what you’re trying to say (pretty much like WIndows help) and you seem to be mislead. Installed on my computer (in order of preference, just for kicks) are Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, and Flock. IE isn’t installed, I deleted it. I’ve tried them all (including IE), at all of their respective major versions (exception being Netscape 1 and Flock is obviously not even a major version yet) and I keep and exceedingly open and very UNreligious mind. In fact 4 of those mentioned have all been my “browser of choice” at some time in my 9 years of internet use.
Unfortunately I have a life and a girlfriend which prevents me from actively using every browser there is, much as I would dearly love to be a browser guru.
Oh and as for IE, I can quite honestly say it’s the most redundant browser i’ve ever had installed on a computer (which is why I’ve deleted it on my Mac – Windows being less forgiving, so it’s still installed there… I assume… haven’t seen it rear it’s ugly head for a while). Without exception EVERY one of those Browsers I mentioned has at least one redeeming feature which makes it stand out. What can IE do???
But anyway, I’ve totally digressed, your original point was how will they look. Well Flock will die it’s death no doubt, as all hyped crazes do (why on earth do I need a specialised browser to write a comment and click the “Submit” button?!?) and I expect all the other browsers will, by and large, remain looking much as they have done over the last few years. Introducing support for RSS feeds and the like is hardly going to revolutionise the world of browsers anymore than blogs (ie. web forums for beginners) are going to revolutionise the web.
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I had to read that 3 times before I understood what you’re trying to say (pretty much like WIndows help) and you seem to be mislead. Installed on my computer (in order of preference, just for kicks) are Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, and Flock. IE isn’t installed, I deleted it. I’ve tried them all (including IE), at all of their respective major versions (exception being Netscape 1 and Flock is obviously not even a major version yet) and I keep and exceedingly open and very UNreligious mind. In fact 4 of those mentioned have all been my “browser of choice” at some time in my 9 years of internet use.
Unfortunately I have a life and a girlfriend which prevents me from actively using every browser there is, much as I would dearly love to be a browser guru.
Oh and as for IE, I can quite honestly say it’s the most redundant browser i’ve ever had installed on a computer (which is why I’ve deleted it on my Mac – Windows being less forgiving, so it’s still installed there… I assume… haven’t seen it rear it’s ugly head for a while). Without exception EVERY one of those Browsers I mentioned has at least one redeeming feature which makes it stand out. What can IE do???
But anyway, I’ve totally digressed, your original point was how will they look. Well Flock will die it’s death no doubt, as all hyped crazes do (why on earth do I need a specialised browser to write a comment and click the “Submit” button?!?) and I expect all the other browsers will, by and large, remain looking much as they have done over the last few years. Introducing support for RSS feeds and the like is hardly going to revolutionise the world of browsers anymore than blogs (ie. web forums for beginners) are going to revolutionise the web.
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I wonder if you could create something like Flock by publishing groups of extensions instead of rebuilding the browser…I’ve tried Flock and Maxthon, they haven’t stolen me away from Firefox, and I doubt IE7 will. FFox keeps getting better (1.5 seems to incorporate some things from Deer Park, like links open new tabs instead of overwriting the content in the current tab).
Having more than one browser window open drives me completely nuts…I already have Listen Rhapsody, VS 2005, .NET 2.0 help (separate window?! ugh), VB6, Outlook, Explorer, TaskManager and Sametime running…why would I want ten IE windows open? Maxthon feels like a hack…right-click on the icon to close a tab? That just feels wrong.
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I wonder if you could create something like Flock by publishing groups of extensions instead of rebuilding the browser…I’ve tried Flock and Maxthon, they haven’t stolen me away from Firefox, and I doubt IE7 will. FFox keeps getting better (1.5 seems to incorporate some things from Deer Park, like links open new tabs instead of overwriting the content in the current tab).
Having more than one browser window open drives me completely nuts…I already have Listen Rhapsody, VS 2005, .NET 2.0 help (separate window?! ugh), VB6, Outlook, Explorer, TaskManager and Sametime running…why would I want ten IE windows open? Maxthon feels like a hack…right-click on the icon to close a tab? That just feels wrong.
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I don’t use Tabs either and that’s why I have stuck with IE (besides the fact that is unlikely to go to a page that breaks on IE, while that holds true for Firefox). I prefer windows on the taskbar as it is easier to find the windows when I am using applications other than the browser (which is always the case).
Two other problems I have with flock:
1. It ia annoying that to look at all bookmarks I have to open the bookmark manager which takes full content area.
2. Some of the panels are fixed and cannot dock them in other areas. Like for example I would like to dock them on my right as I have more screen space available, but I can’t is stuck in the top.
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I don’t use Tabs either and that’s why I have stuck with IE (besides the fact that is unlikely to go to a page that breaks on IE, while that holds true for Firefox). I prefer windows on the taskbar as it is easier to find the windows when I am using applications other than the browser (which is always the case).
Two other problems I have with flock:
1. It ia annoying that to look at all bookmarks I have to open the bookmark manager which takes full content area.
2. Some of the panels are fixed and cannot dock them in other areas. Like for example I would like to dock them on my right as I have more screen space available, but I can’t is stuck in the top.
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Anonymous: >why would I want ten IE windows open
Because I can put the Windows side by side and compare. I also have a high resolution screen. I often have lots of windows going.
I noticed this is a difference between Mac users, though, and power Windows users. It’s a lot easier to manipulate windows (small “w”) in Windows (big “W”) than on other OSs.
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Anonymous: >why would I want ten IE windows open
Because I can put the Windows side by side and compare. I also have a high resolution screen. I often have lots of windows going.
I noticed this is a difference between Mac users, though, and power Windows users. It’s a lot easier to manipulate windows (small “w”) in Windows (big “W”) than on other OSs.
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Tetra, I am not sure if you ever tried to build a browser – but personally I have built several simple ones for special purposes (mainly testing etc) and trust me it is quite easy to build a browser using IE (and with the free VB and C# express i would expect even more.
By the way I don’t think Firefox invented tabs, Opera is the earliers browser I can remember that had tabs – and there were a bunch of IE based browsers that had them too after that.
Check this link and you will find a bunch of very nice browsers built on IE(some nicer than Firefox in my opnion, like avant which has 11 million downloads from Download.com) :
http://windowsmarketplace.com/Results.aspx?collID=46
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Tetra, I am not sure if you ever tried to build a browser – but personally I have built several simple ones for special purposes (mainly testing etc) and trust me it is quite easy to build a browser using IE (and with the free VB and C# express i would expect even more.
By the way I don’t think Firefox invented tabs, Opera is the earliers browser I can remember that had tabs – and there were a bunch of IE based browsers that had them too after that.
Check this link and you will find a bunch of very nice browsers built on IE(some nicer than Firefox in my opnion, like avant which has 11 million downloads from Download.com) :
http://windowsmarketplace.com/Results.aspx?collID=46
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Malarky. Add the Super Drag ‘N Go extension to Firefox’s tabbed browsing and there is nothing more efficient and effective:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=137
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Malarky. Add the Super Drag ‘N Go extension to Firefox’s tabbed browsing and there is nothing more efficient and effective:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=137
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Care to explain why you think it is easier in Windows? I’ve always found it to be quite the opposite, especially with Expose on Mac and virtual desktops or Kompose in KDE.
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Care to explain why you think it is easier in Windows? I’ve always found it to be quite the opposite, especially with Expose on Mac and virtual desktops or Kompose in KDE.
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A collection of Flock Extensions can be found at http://adminid.com/flock
You might try Split Screen to create multiple windows that you can drag/drop links into. It doesn’t look that great on a 15″ laptop, but I’ll test it on a 42″ screen if you send one to PO Box 233, just kidding. Good luck trying out Flock.
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A collection of Flock Extensions can be found at http://adminid.com/flock
You might try Split Screen to create multiple windows that you can drag/drop links into. It doesn’t look that great on a 15″ laptop, but I’ll test it on a 42″ screen if you send one to PO Box 233, just kidding. Good luck trying out Flock.
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quote from molly’s blog:
“He finished up his comments on Acid2 by assuring me that IE will pass the Acid2 test at some time in the future, but to not expect it by IE7’s release.”
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quote from molly’s blog:
“He finished up his comments on Acid2 by assuring me that IE will pass the Acid2 test at some time in the future, but to not expect it by IE7’s release.”
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Bart Decrem once asked me :
“Scobles seems to like Flock a lot. How about you?
/bd
”
Bart, sometime one has to wait for conversations to happen.
Scobles: yes flock is specilized browser. The analgy is simple flock is what netscape v0.1.9 was for the web then but flock is for the here- now !!
Its a radicle paradigm shift. Early adopters, difficult to predicts,but certainly there exists promise !!
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Bart Decrem once asked me :
“Scobles seems to like Flock a lot. How about you?
/bd
”
Bart, sometime one has to wait for conversations to happen.
Scobles: yes flock is specilized browser. The analgy is simple flock is what netscape v0.1.9 was for the web then but flock is for the here- now !!
Its a radicle paradigm shift. Early adopters, difficult to predicts,but certainly there exists promise !!
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Oht btw , I love FF candidate1 and its stickyness is great. If flock had this variate it would be awsome.
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Oht btw , I love FF candidate1 and its stickyness is great. If flock had this variate it would be awsome.
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“I noticed this is a difference between Mac users, though, and power Windows users. It’s a lot easier to manipulate windows (small “w”) in Windows (big “W”) than on other OSs.”
You are now in full bullshit mode. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back – your feed is being deleted from my list. FUD? Fucker, you’re the king of it.
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“I noticed this is a difference between Mac users, though, and power Windows users. It’s a lot easier to manipulate windows (small “w”) in Windows (big “W”) than on other OSs.”
You are now in full bullshit mode. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back – your feed is being deleted from my list. FUD? Fucker, you’re the king of it.
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Tetra: I can explain very well what I mean. But glad you’re religious about your belief and not willing to learn. Have a nice day!
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Tetra: I can explain very well what I mean. But glad you’re religious about your belief and not willing to learn. Have a nice day!
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For your high-res example, well it’s funny that you criticize Flock when normal IE has horrible support for scaling fonts. It gives preference to the site designer’s font size and doesn’t zoom nearly as well as Opera (my browser of choice).
I do have hopes for IE7, but hey it’s not shipping and talk is cheap at this point. A year from now the other browsers will be more advanced as well.
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For your high-res example, well it’s funny that you criticize Flock when normal IE has horrible support for scaling fonts. It gives preference to the site designer’s font size and doesn’t zoom nearly as well as Opera (my browser of choice).
I do have hopes for IE7, but hey it’s not shipping and talk is cheap at this point. A year from now the other browsers will be more advanced as well.
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JD: that might be true, but on my screen at least IE’s font is readable and Flock’s isn’t.
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JD: that might be true, but on my screen at least IE’s font is readable and Flock’s isn’t.
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I have tried Flock but am not sure what to make of it. I cannot see the reason to switch from using Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. While Flock is pretty well designed and looks pretty, it really adds nothing to my browsing and/or work experience. As it is now, things like my WordPress adminstration panel are only one click away in my bookmarks toolbar.
Flock most likely will find a niche in the marketplace, but will most likely never become mainstream. In many ways, Flock suffers from the same problem as Firefox does when convincing IE users to switch, but on a grander scale. I often hear, “IE works fine for my purposes, why should I change”. With Firefox you can point to issues such as tabbed browsing, security, extensions, etc. that some people agree with and make the change. With Flock I just cannot find what that reason to switch is. I think I first saw Paul Scrivens, of 9rules fame, talk about this. In its present form, Flock is a solution without a problem.
Robert: Regarding the update to your post. Does not Flock work the same way (though I may have made some change in the setup and have forgot about it)? In Flock, or Firefox for that matter, I can Shift + Left Click on a link and that link will open up in a new browser window (Ctrl + Left Click will open up in a background tab).
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I have tried Flock but am not sure what to make of it. I cannot see the reason to switch from using Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. While Flock is pretty well designed and looks pretty, it really adds nothing to my browsing and/or work experience. As it is now, things like my WordPress adminstration panel are only one click away in my bookmarks toolbar.
Flock most likely will find a niche in the marketplace, but will most likely never become mainstream. In many ways, Flock suffers from the same problem as Firefox does when convincing IE users to switch, but on a grander scale. I often hear, “IE works fine for my purposes, why should I change”. With Firefox you can point to issues such as tabbed browsing, security, extensions, etc. that some people agree with and make the change. With Flock I just cannot find what that reason to switch is. I think I first saw Paul Scrivens, of 9rules fame, talk about this. In its present form, Flock is a solution without a problem.
Robert: Regarding the update to your post. Does not Flock work the same way (though I may have made some change in the setup and have forgot about it)? In Flock, or Firefox for that matter, I can Shift + Left Click on a link and that link will open up in a new browser window (Ctrl + Left Click will open up in a background tab).
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Flock is nice but pretty basic for blogging. For a full-fledged blog editor, check out RocketPost (I designed it):
http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost
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Flock is nice but pretty basic for blogging. For a full-fledged blog editor, check out RocketPost (I designed it):
http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost
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