Filed under: Software
Flock: Social Web Browsing
As Mac users we have a wide choice of browsers: Safari, Firefox, Camino, Internet Explorer, Omniweb, Opera, Shiira, and even Lynx. Get ready to add one more browser to that list: Flock.It is currently in a closed beta (unlike Google products), but lots of people are getting excited about it. It takes the Firefox rendering engine and adds a dash of social bookmarking and a touch of a blog editing client to create a new browser for the power users out there.
As soon as I get my hands on a copy I will review it here (hint, hint to the Flock people, I want in on the beta!). Oh, and it will be released sometime in October for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
paul said 4:10PM on 9-15-2005
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.
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Scott McNulty said 4:42PM on 9-15-2005
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...
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Sean Flanagan said 5:04PM on 9-15-2005
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.
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Thomas said 6:19PM on 9-15-2005
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!
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Chris Messina said 6:24PM on 9-15-2005
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. ;)
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Scott McNulty said 7:17PM on 9-15-2005
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).
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Martin Tibbitts said 9:10PM on 9-15-2005
Does this differentiate enough to merit a complete new browser... instead of a suite of extensions?
Martin Tibbitts
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Brad said 10:44PM on 9-15-2005
I signed up for the beta list, but I doubt that means I'll get in on it.
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Wheels said 11:41PM on 9-15-2005
"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.
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Sam C said 2:41AM on 9-16-2005
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.
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