Flock: Social Web Browsing

I blogged about this a while ago, but doesn't it seem that flock is just a whole bunch of web 2.0 keywords piled on top of each other? I'm looking forward to trying it out just as much as the next guy, but it's the surefire win in keyword bingo.

"I think that speaks to how well Netscape has been doing of late..." Scott, I heard that Netscape was abandoning its Mac browser. Is this true? IMHO, Netscape lost their way when the decided to try to beat Microsoft in the courts (and to try to out money them) instead of developing a browser that blew IE 3& 4 out of the water. I liked Communicator 4, but it seemed as if every release after that got weaker and weaker.

I signed up for the beta list, but I doubt that means I'll get in on it.

Does this differentiate enough to merit a complete new browser... instead of a suite of extensions? Martin Tibbitts

Sadly, I am still not on the beta list, so even if I wanted to I couldn't post a bigger screenshot (though I couldn't post a screenshot since I am sure they don't want people posting screenshots of their beta).

Flock is Firefox only specialized I believe. So if your pages work in Firefox they should work fine in Flock. But what I really want is a bigger screenshot! Don't tease with that little one. Bigger please!

Paul, keep in mind that we're using Firefox 1.5 as our foundation. We're not forking. This means that if it works in Firefox 1.5, it'll work in Flock. Trust me, in my former life I was a web developer -- and I don't need another browser to design against! The good news is that we're basing our browser on an *awesome* product that supports web standards. And in addition, we're building tools that will be smart about XHTML that it outputs -- using microformats and all that tasty web designer goodness. I wouldn't be working on this if that weren't the case. ;)

paul, I wholeheartedly agree. As a graphic designer who often gets charged with web tasks (I've actually been coding HTML longer than I've been designing), I've all but given up on getting everything to work everywhere. There was a point a couple years ago when it was easy. Now I code to standards and that's all. If the client's browser doesn't display it properly (because they're using IE usually), then I'll get it to look right in their browser and call it quits.

I didn't mention Netscape or Mozilla because they slipped my mind! I think that speaks to how well Netscape has been doing of late...

Do we really need another browser? It sure make my life difficult as a web developer. They all have their own quirks. You shouldn't even mentione IE. It's so old now that no one should be using it. I'm curious, you didn't mention Netscape or Mozilla.