Flock 0.9 Beta Observations
Posted by admin | Filed under Apps
Flock has just released the next beta, based on Firefox 2.0. I’ve been testing it out for most of today and have to say the graphics don’t make up for the features advanced users are accustomed to. My grasp of Flock is integrating online services more with the browser, so I’ll start with the services I use:
News: Google Reader
Photos: Flickr
Media: YouTube
Favorites: Del.icio.us
Blog: Wordpress (self-hosted)
(I put everything online so I can access it everywhere)
Design
Sure, it looks pretty, but how does it work? It definitely captures the web 2.0 feel within the browser. The toolbars have a glossy appearance and the sidebars use thick gray and orange blocks. The Media Streams bar is a work of art in its self. Even the tabs looks better than other browsers.
The address bar expands on Firefox’s RSS feed icon and adds search engine and media detection icons, however they are always present and taking up space, unlike in Firefox.
On the left of the bookmarks toolbar is a tiny toolbar with tiny icons for the most important parts of the browser. It looks very slick, but I have to study the toolbar for a bit to figure out which one is which. I would have liked to be able to add these icons to the main toolbar.
Online Services
Adding online services you use is often as easy as signing into that service’s website, although this doesn’t always work and there is no obvious method to get around that – the sidebar just says to click and sign in. The only service I had a problem with was LiveJournal, which I added in the configuration options within the blog editor.
Search
I know the yahoo search integration with everything is to generate revenue, but couldn’t we at least choose between Yahoo or Google? Firefox gets money for every search using Google, why can’t Flock? If the site you’re looking for isn’t found, there’s a Yahoo search button, and only Yahoo. If you type a search term in the address bar and expect it to just go to the first search result, you’d be wrong. You are presented with a Yahoo search page. Even the ajax-style search in the search box right of the address bar is powered by Yahoo, although I think Yahoo has better web services. All of these Yahoo searches completely disregard the default search engine option.
Favorites
Two things I like about Flock’s favorites: there’s a wonderful feature in the small search box in the top right that not only searches the web as you type, but also your favorites and history, and it also keeps your online favorites in del.icio.us separate from favorites stored on your computer.
The previous version of Flock had limited del.icio.us integration – it let you tag and organize into collections which showed up in the toolbar. The new Flock is better, but can’t beat the plugin from Yahoo. When I click on favorites, all my del.icio.us tags are there with the bookmarks under the tags – problem is all tags are expanded (and I have a lot of tags). Doing a search narrows down the list but if a favorite has multiple tags, it will show up multiple times, making the list much longer than it needs to be. There also isn’t a way of sorting del.icio.us bookmarks by when they were added, which is a feature I use all the time.
Even the adding favorites pop-up has some issues. On a mac, the pop-up isn’t wide enough and I can barely see the “add” button which is cut off. There is also no tag suggestions like with the Yahoo plugin or the bookmarklet.
In Flock 0.7, I kept hoping they would allow the collections in the toolbar to use a tag in del.icio.us. That way I could add a bookmark at work and my toolbar at home would show that bookmark. The solution in Flock 0.9 is to remove del.icio.us from the toolbar altogether. Ok then.
News (RSS)
I have 110 feeds I monitor, and I like to organize those into folders like most people would. I don’t mind having to use folders instead of tags like the Google Reader I’m used to. I like the clean layout the news is presented in, and when the bugs are cleaned up, I might actually consider switching.
Folder organization has some bugs which I would hope are fixed before this leaves beta – mainly, folders don’t like to stay closed. They also implemented a cool feature that automatically marks items as read when you scroll past or read them, but that’s also buggy and misses items sometimes in 2-column view.
One thing I think they really need to add with this is a new posts filter. With the scrolling bug, I’ll go through everything and still have 20 items marked unread. Without a filter, I don’t know if its actually a new item or if it just neglected to mark it as I scrolled past.
Another thing that bugs me: you click on the news icon because there are new items. Then you click on a folder to see what’s new and instead of opening a new tab, it replaces the site you were browsing.
I do like the way the posts are displayed, but again, it needs some tweaking. A bold heading is the only sign an item is unread until you get to the bottom of it, and all images are resized whether you like it or not. I also had issues with some advertising script in every post of a feed – I’d be glad if it was hidden instead of 20 lines of code attached to every post.
Blogging
Blogging in Flock is so close to being good, but its limited to small personal blogs without the ability to categorize posts or set other options. I know its not supposed to take over for desktop blogging clients, but the Web Clipboard looks so useful for blogging. Think of it as “Blogging for dummies”. Drag the content you want to steal into the Web Clipboard, drag it into your post later, type “look what I made”, and click Publish.
Media
I love Flickr, and I love the Media Streams bar. It just keeps getting better now that YouTube is integrated with it. Its like a Web 2.0 filmstrip of goodness.
Turn on the advanced options and there’s even titles now, and dates the photos were uploaded. It keeps track of new content in your favorite “streams” so you know when your contacts post new photos and such. There’s even back/forward buttons for the media you browse, independent of the browser.
I just wish they hadn’t made one drop-down menu with everything in it. Its now an exercise in navigation to find a contact’s photos instead of just a drop-down like they had before.
The other thing is when you hover over a photo from a supported service, a flock tag appears so you can share the photo or view it in the MediaStream bar. This used to be a small icon in the bottom corner. Now its a massive icon which can make adding notes in Flickr difficult. Maybe there’s a hidden configuration option somewhere to just turn this thing off.
The photo uploader is still as great as it was in Flock 0.7, I actually use it over all other uploaders for Flickr.
Conclusion
For my needs, Flock looks pretty but doesn’t quite make it. The blogging component is very basic, the news sidebar needs some raid, and favorites doesn’t feel finished. As this is a beta, I was expecting some bugs, but I don’t quite feel comfortable with it yet. Flock 0.9 is perfect for the average user without many needs – the people who don’t want anything complicated. I’ll continue using Flock for browsing media and uploading to Flickr, but I’m back in Firefox for now.
Tags: Freeware, mac, Software, Web Apps 2.0
