Firefox-based Social Browser Flock Launches

daria42 writes "The much-hyped Flock, a new browser based on Mozilla Firefox and integrating features like RSS feeds, blogging tools, the del.icio.us social bookmarking and Flickr photo sharing services has just launched a public developer preview to the world. Flock is being driven by a team of developers being led by Bart Decrem, a well-known open source developer who co-founded the ill-fated Eazel project back in 1999 and has been involved with both the Mozilla and GNOME foundations. On his blog this week he says Flock won't be forking the Firefox codebase."

Comments

Browser UI

[afree87]

Hmm... it has gradients... it has shadows... why, this must be Web 2.0!

Re:Browser UI

[Seumas]

What do you expect? It's obviously designed to appeal to clueless young people who see the web and internet as nothing more than an updated version of the old $2.99/minute local party line. It's the browser for those who like cliques and get off browsing through countless meaningless photos of people you've never met in person while sharing bookmarks with random people and reading about some random person's love-live - in all their failing grammatical glory and self infatuation.

Re:Browser UI

[CyricZ]

There are a lot of kids like that. It's not a bad market to tap, from a financial standpoint.

Re:Browser UI

[geminidomino]

Yep. How dare those people use the internet for Communicating! Everyone knows it was created with the sole purpose of COMMERCE!

Re:Browser UI

[xgadflyx]

dude totally. dis be myspace wit mo buttons! sweet....

Re:Browser UI

[fireman sam]

You spell it prOn

Re:Browser UI

[Jekler]

I don't know why the parent is modded a troll. I happen to agree that the vision of the internet falls short of its potential. In my opinion, Web 2.0 means a whole new paradigm, a revolution. Not the sort of thing that comes with fancier graphics, but the kind of thing where you suddenly realize there would have been no way to accomplish this with the previous version of the Web. It's like the day you realize that you use the internet every day, that the whole internet thing has become more than a luxury. Having an internet connected computer is as essential to relating to the modern world as having a TV was in the 80s and 90s. Web 2.0 will be the day where you go online and think "Wow, this is just amazing, I can do x, y, and z... none of that was even possible back with the first Web!"

It'll take a lot more than a slew of fancier looking applications with built-in-but-already-existing functions. I'm thinking a new protocol, new data compression methods, faster code. The kind of stuff you see on Firefly or Star Trek.

Re:Browser UI

[porneL]

C'mon, there is no Web 2.0. There are some new services and webmasters finally figured out how to do some things better, but that's evolution, not revolution.

And all of "Web 2.0" - which works in IE - was possible 4-5 years ago, when "Web 1.0" was around.

Re:Browser UI

[ratpack91]

no, you spell it pr0n.

Re:Browser UI

[danbeck]

I bet you are a fun one at parties, aren't ya? You need a hug.

The greatest feature...

[brian0918]

The "Go back" and "Go forward" buttons have merged into an all powerful "stay here" button.

Re:The greatest feature...

[CyricZ]

To me it looks like a pair of breasts. A pair of breasts with pointy nipples. Pointy nipples pointing sideways.

Re:The greatest feature...

[brian0918]

" To me it looks like a pair of breasts. A pair of breasts with pointy nipples."

So is the refresh button a titty twister?

Social Browser?

[connah0047]

A social browser is what you contract from visiting too many websites.

Re:Social Browser?

[andrewbillits]

Actually yes. They teach us to diversify, all the youngsters are taught to save atleast a little time for porn.

Extra! Extra!

[evil agent]

They've upgraded their 4th rate website to a 3rd rate website. Clearly, we are witnessing the future.

Re:Extra! Extra!

[CyricZ]

At least the HTML of their page is standards compliant:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.flock .com

Unlike that of Microsoft's Internet Explorer site:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.micro soft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx

But then again, that's not surprising.

cutting edge?

[dioscaido]

Web 2.0? It's just firefox with a few extensions and a different skin...

Re:cutting edge?

[TeacherOfHeroes]

Every once in a while someone makes a +5 Insightful comment about how there should be a version of Firefox with the more popular extentions built in so that the average user gets more functionality and doesn't have to do all the work themselves.

Finally someone does it, and people are quick to start belittling it for not being something fantastic and earth shattering. It said straight up that it was based on Firefox.

It's not doing anything nasty like Netscape did, so this just means that there are more alternatives out there. Last time I checked, that was considered to be good around here.

Re:cutting edge?

[phUnBalanced]

I fully agree. I was expecting a lot more from this. I've used extensions that do almost all of these things.

In my book, you don't get points for redesigning a browser that was already written with a front end for a bookmarking system that was already written.

Yes, I know there are other features. See paragraph 1.

Re:cutting edge?

[Eideewt]

Are you sure they built in some of the more popular extensions? The impression I got was that they added new stuff but didn't bundle anything. I thought that was why they had a bunch of links to popular extensions on their site.

Re:cutting edge?

[Threni]

>Finally someone does it, and people are quick to start belittling it for not being
>something fantastic and earth shattering. It said straight up that it was based on
>Firefox.

Because it's different people doing the suggesting and the belittling?

What I need.....

[Anonymous Coward]

...is an anti-social browser.

Re:What I need.....

[grasshoppa]

...is an anti-social browser.

So a browser that hates you enough to try to kill you, or failing that, your computer at every turn? One that does it's own thing, regardless of what you tell it to do, and when you finally manage to get it to do what you want, it does it half assed?

Wait...I think I just described IE.

Re:What I need.....

[Stevyn]

na, IE is like the village whore. After a few hours she's got tons of viruses.

It usually helps...

[CanSpice]

...to link to the web browser in question.

The User-Agent string.

[CyricZ]

Just so web developers know, the User-Agent string of this browser (under Linux) is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051019 Flock/0.4 Firefox/1.0+

So if you see it in your server logs, it's because the user is using Flock. If you do see it, please post here so we can gauge the spread of this browser.

Re:The User-Agent string.

[BarryNorton]

Sorry, I thought that in order to karma whore we could just post any old crap and get modded up...

Prediction

[nmb3000]

I'm going to predict this will pretty much get a bit of hype, then slowly (or not so slowly) fade away into the mists of the Interweb.

Seriously. If there's one thing I think most people can agree on, it's that the number of successful web browsers seems bounded pretty low. You've pretty much got IE, Firefox/Mozilla, Opera, and Safari. I imagine that those are the only browsers showing up with at least 5% in server logs, but in the past there have been many more, some getting more attention than others.

People want to use mainstream browsers. Giving me quick access to something like a blog or Flickr isn't "innovative". A bookmark/favorite does the same thing with less overhead. I can get all sorts of functionality with Firefox and IE using extensions and ActiveX. If Flock is based on Firefox, but they don't plan to fork the codebase or do anything more than GUI changes and extension-cabable add-ons, then what's the point?

The Internet public has a way of weeding out browsers. The mainstream ones stay put (unless they get screwed by major corporations, *cough* Netscape 6 *cough*) and these amazing "new" ones go the way of the dodo. This one will be no different.

Re:Prediction

[jalefkowit]

Giving me quick access to something like a blog or Flickr isn't "innovative". A bookmark/favorite does the same thing with less overhead.

I thought the same thing until I actually tried the Flock Developer Preview that was just released. (I'm posting this from it now.)

I was all set to be unimpressed but I have to tell you, it's pretty impressive if you have a blog how easy they have made posting Web content to it. There's a "shelf" tool, for starters, that you use by just highlighting any text on a page and dragging-and-dropping it into the Shelf. Then, when you want to post about that text, you just click the "Blog this" button on the toolbar; this opens a new post (Flock autodetects the settings for your blog, so there's no configuration if you use most popular packages) in a WYSIWYG editor. Drag the text from the shelf into the editor and it pops the text in, encloses it in BLOCKQUOTE tags, and adds the cite="" attribute with the URL from the original page.

Revolutionary? Maybe not. But it's so damn slick! Currently when I blog something I copy it from Firefox into an HTML editor (Movable Type's built in editor sucks), mark it up there, log into the admin screen for my blog, then paste the marked-up text into a new post. Oh, and then I have to go back and find the original URL, copy it, and paste it in the appropriate pages. That's a lot of back and forth that Flock eliminates.

Some people use a tool like MarsEdit or wBloggar to combine the "markup" and "posting" steps together in one place. But Flock puts all the features of those products right in my browser -- no switching between programs, no copy/paste gymnastics. There's a market for those products, so it's not a big leap to imagine a market for Flock, either (albeit a small one).

It'll be interesting to see how well Flock holds up to ongoing use over time. But my first impressions are better than I expected them to be. You might want to try it too before you pass judgement...

(Random other observation: Flock changes the default engine for the Firefox search box from Google to Yahoo! A political statement? Is Yahoo! connected to Flock somehow? Veeery interesting...)

Re:Prediction

[nine-times]

I'm going to predict this will pretty much get a bit of hype, then slowly (or not so slowly) fade away into the mists of the Interweb.

Seriously. If there's one thing I think most people can agree on, it's that the number of successful web browsers seems bounded pretty low. You've pretty much got IE, Firefox/Mozilla, Opera, and Safari. I imagine that those are the only browsers showing up with at least 5% in server logs, but in the past there have been many more, some getting more attention than others.

I don't think it's just a problem of, we have too many browsers, or that this new browser doesn't add any nice features. I think the real question is, is it clear enough what the benefit of using "Flock" is?

I think most people right now think of there being two kinds of browsers: IE, that feature-poor default browser that gets blamed for all the security problems-- and then just "everything else". Firefox, Safari, Camino, and Opera all fit into the "everything else" category, and though they may be different from each other, they all offer the advantages of tabs, pop-up blocking, RSS feeds, and not-being-IE. Everyone has their favorite, but I don't think, for the most part, any of them distinguish themselves greatly enough to be much more than a matter of preference. None of them quite make it to be THE browser to use.

So I think the question might be something like: Are the benefits of Flock clear enough to distinguish itself as THE browser to use, or will Flock become just another on the list of maybes. I think if it sticks on the list of maybes, inertia alone will keep it from displacing any of the other bigger browsers very much.

I'm not talking about whether Flock is good or not, but are the benefits going to be clear to joe-schmoe. With tabs and pop-up blockers, it's rather easy to show those things to my parents and explain, this is why you want this browser. Are the benefits that clear with Flock? I'll tell you, I'm not even sure I understand what's supposed to be good about this new browser yet.

If they can't answer that question, I'd say they'll be trapped with a bit of a marketing problem. There's the niche of technical people who use flickr and blog alot who might appreciate the features, but they can be a tough crowd to hold on to en masse. Without capturing the imagination of a larger audience, I don't know if they'll be able to reach critical mass.

Re:Prediction

[RoboPimp_3000]

Flock will encourage people to create more blogs... and this is a good thing?

Re:Prediction

[zootm]

That said, I'd be much more receptive to this if the features were developed as a FF Extension rather than a full-on browser distro, so I didn't have to make the "total switch" commitment. Of course, maybe the features run deeper... I haven't really looked into it.

The main problem I see with that is that a lot of features integrate with each other, and replace functionality in Firefox, rather than just augmenting it. The favourites system, for example, is completely replaced. Removing existing functionality in Firefox extensions is very difficult, so this replacement would be difficult.

That said though, it seems to support most existing well-made Firefox extensions with very little effort, so the "total switch" isn't quite all that it seems. :)

Re:Prediction

[Dan Nordquist]

And, while it's totally 100% Firefox, it's not compatible with AdBlock... sneaky.

New spam and phishing grounds

[G4from128k]

Social bookmarking would seem to be an ideal target for spammers and other malefactors of the net. How do systems such as Flock keep spammers from touting commercial links?

These systems would also make ideal phishing grounds. Posting a fake "eBay" link ("look at this cool auction!!!") would take the target person to a faked eBay auction page (e.g with an IDN exploit) or just a scam domain (ebbay.com, etc.) that then asks for a eBay or Paypal password. Since many of the people that would follow a socially bookmarked eBay link are eBay/Paypal users the phisher would get a high hit rate.

Even if the system relies on some form of accumulated reputation or trust networks, its still possible for someone to cultivate a great reputation before abusing the system with spam or phishing.

Re:New spam and phishing grounds

[raarky]

Thats where a homeostatic feedback system can really help.

Currently the web is a sort of one way medium. With flock, it can help it to become a 2 way medium much easier.
Agents in this sort of system (People will then be able to filter out the data for the masses to consume.

Have a look at reddit.com
Its a great example of how the wider community filters out the bad stuff.

Another is to take a look a slashdot.
Its a two way system. You post, someone moderates.
Overall it creates a collective emergent intelligence which filters out the bad stuff and leaves in information you desire.
The higher the score, the better this system works.

The key part is of course the identity of an agent.
I'm pretty sure someone isn't going to spend lots of time manually building up their karma just to get banned in one fell swoop by posting up a few ads. Its simply not cost effective.

Re:New spam and phishing grounds

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Slashdot is the perfect example of why this is bad. Or everything2. Or wikipedia.

Large masses with moderation powers leads to centerist bullshit that tries to please everyone rather than being factually accurate. You post what everyone can easily agree with (We need to protect our children, microsoft is bad, firefly is good, apple and google are gods who can do no evil, etc) and you get modded up. You post something accurate that pisses people off, and you get modded down.

Re:New spam and phishing grounds

[raarky]

Thats a matter of opinion and subject.

In the arena of slashdot, sure its a sort of democratic system that brings out a specific view point or weighs in heavily of a specific subject matter but thats what this system is about. Finding out what the masses are in favour for. Yes is tramples all over minorities which means there is a gap left that could be exploited if someone can come up with a system that fixes it.
Also, remember that all these opinions are of ONE demographic. I bet you slashdot would start leaning in a different direction if the target market wasnt linux zealot ms bashing computer geeks :)

remember, this is a comments system made specifically for bringing one persons viewpoint across. Sadly the masses want to hear ms bashing.

If you wanted to hear it from a different angle, try another site.

In the end, the world is what you perceive it to be. If you get stuck in one corner with only certain feedback getting to you, you perceive it to be a place entirely different than someone who manages to roam around and process feedback from a multitude of sources.

I for one have stopped turning on the 6 o'clock news. Suddenly my world has become less depressing and my perception of how much violence is around is at an all time low

Re:New spam and phishing grounds

[cgenman]

Oddly enough, I'd have to disagree.

Moderators on Slashdot have gotten a lot better about modding down opinions they disagree with, and instead have taken to just posting disagreements. You'll notice the number of pro-Microsoft comments that get modded up in any Microsoft-is-evil story.

As one guy who posts more than he probably should, Modders seem to respond these days to forcefully held opinions part of which they personally, individually agree with. Therefore the best way to get modded up is to agressively defend a lot of little positions that will appeal to several subgroups, especially underrepresented ones. For example, "It is clear that the furry community of Canada have become THE mainstream SkyOS users of choice, but not all of the time." Don't do it all in one sentence, of course, and don't get fur into your keyboard. Defending two fundamentally opposite but technically non-conflicting viewpoints also helps get mod points. If the "Microsoft is a convicted monopolist" half of your post doesn't get a particular moderator, the "but Microsoft has done a lot of good things" half will.

Changing your subject line seems to reduce your chances of getting modded up, strangely enough. Also swear once, and only once. This proves just how muck you fucking believe what you're posting. Real people swear.

All of that is only if you don't have anything to say. These days, the other good way to get modded up is to know your stuff and have something to actually say. If it is an article about Unix Microsoft, and you happened to sit in on a few dozen meetings with MS about it, post. It will be moderated up. If it is about the Free Software Federation of Florence, and you happen to be a member of Love, Linux, and Linguine, post.

While it can be gamed, the Slashdot moderating system seems to work. I hardly ever see posts modded to 0 which don't deserve it, or posts at +5 which really, really shouldn't be. Really, the only major problem is that there aren't enough genuinely good posts. But that's not a fault of the moderation system, just a sign that people have things to do with their lives.

As someone that has worked with user-created content professionally, I'd have to say that Slashdot is a shining example of what's possible. You have hundreds of comments on a story, 10 of which are worth reading. But those 10 are of the quality of journalism you would find at News.com, the Register.co.uk, and the New York Times... You know, the "I'm professional, really" rags. And there are whole threads of interesting discussions that haven't degraded to usenet-level postings. All of this by volunteers who probably should be doing something else.

And if you want to see what's possible, try browsing with everything turned down except "funny" mods up +5.

I'm really looking forward to Flickr. Collaborative content, collaborative filtering, and multi-direction communication seems to be driving the internet forward these days. And it's about time... TNINTV.

Well, browsers happen...

[zappepcs]

Despite the dour response that will happen on /., I believe that it is necessary that such things as this happen. Forget your toolbar crap, get an entire browser based on the things that you want to do on the web. This is just the other side of the coin when you look at web based software business... a web browser that completes your business needs.. look for more of the same, and some of them actually being exciting!

Note to developers

[toupsie]

I want my web browser to browse the web. Quit trying to bloat it out with k-k00l web 2.0 features. Just make it stable, secure and fast. About the best thing you can do is add a spell checker to the TextArea and Input fields of forms like Safari. Plus if I want to flickr my firefox, I will hunt down an extension.

Have a nice day and enjoy the VC money. Foosball rox!

Re:Note to developers

[CyricZ]

If you want a lightweight browser, then you could always use Konqueror or Opera. They have nowhere near the bloat of Mozilla-based browsers, yet still offer all of the features expected from a modern browser.

For our Arabic friends

[CrimsonScythe]

...led by Bart Decrem...

That should be Badr Decrem.

They're doing what Linux distros do.

[CyricZ]

They're doing much what most Linux distributions do. Except in this case the kernel is Firefox, and the supporting applications are the plugins. They're integrating all of these projects so that average users don't have to.

A new record....

[telstar]

From installation to uninstallation in 10 minutes...
Yeah, I've already got a browser that works for me. Thanks anyway flockers...

Re:Wonderful.

[Anonymous Coward]

hey! wots ur probablem. i think its cool that theres a browser for peeps my age. our needs are different from yours and this browser addresses it. if you dont like it the use something else! its not like u have any friends anyways. i gonna tell all my friends at school about this and get them to download it! social browsing will let us share pics, stories, and news thats important to us. and thats wot the internet is all about -- sharing! its not like its targetted towards fat smelly hippies anyways.
peace out

Re:Wonderful.

[raarky]

I was just having a lunch discussion about this sort of thing. One of our engineers was telling me how he couldn't care less about all this blogging social sharing fandangle.

Which is fair enough.

This web 2.0 is rather new. It's still trying to be defined. What we are seeing at this stage is new technologies that allow for a greater social interaction. Meanwhile the underlying systems are creating an emergent intelligence that can provide you with a greater experience.

It's a new technology and who else is better than understanding new technology than youngsters?

I still recall the time when cellphones were starting to become the mainstream. The older folk kept on asking why anyone would want such a device. Turn the clock forward and pretty much the entire younger generation at that time now has a cellphone. They identified the capability and found new uses for the technology.

This web 2.0 buzz is simply that cycle repeating. No one has anything against you not giving a care about these new systems. but. what you should do is stand aside while the people that embrace that "moved cheese" start to live a better and fully life using the technologies designed specifically for this purpose

Re:some cool features for bloggers

[raarky]

agreed.
I just tested it out myself and nothing major or life changing in it.

what it will be good for is getting firefox to the masses of people who ARE NOT computer geeks and know all about which plugins are what and how to go about installing these things.

Users in the end want simplicity. An analogy would be that I would consider this browser like a holiday package.
Sure you can go out and buy a plane ticket, sort out the best value hotel, fix up transfers etc etc but for the 90% of the people who simply want a "holiday", the package is a great option. Its a no brainer to simply buy it.

Flock to me, is simply that. Everything you need to have a "social networking" expereince all rolled up into a good browser that so many zealots here promote.

Re:Wonderful.

[MikeFM]

To me, sharing bookmarks with myself across multiple computers is the main attraction of Flock. It's favorites feature also is an improvement over Firefox's classic-style of bookmarks which is just impossible to use when you get into hundreds of bookmarks. I like being able to tag bookmarks and search/browse them by tags.

As for community features. I'm not sure they belong merged into the browser but I'm not sure they don't either so it's a worthy experiment. I'm sure the better parts will get merged backwards into Firefox. Community sites shouldn't be a replacement for a social life but they can provide an extension of a social life. Obviously you're using Slashdot so you have no room to make fun of users of community sites.

Re:Wonderful.

[Mikey-San]

Anyone using IE is a prime demographic, and these are the kinds of features that can entice wouldn't-be users into checking out something other than IE. To be honest, you sound like an elitist prick, and that's precisely the attitude that turns people off from open source software.

If the giggling teenage masses switch to better browsers, everyone prospers.

As if...

[DrIdiot]

As if we really needed more bloggers in the world...

Re:Wonderful.

[MikeFM]

Not 'getting' the Web 2.0 is dangerous for an engineer if they work in the web business or anything remotely related. It'd be like having been in the software business in 1994 and not seeing the big deal of that new thing called the web.

Enabling anyone to create, edit, and share is one of the defining premises of the web and it's only this premise that is deepening that really defines the new generation of web apps. I fully expect to see every kind of human-computer interaction pick up community features in the near future and become merged into the web browser.

A lot is made of the UI changes in the Web 2.0 (or AJAX, or whatever) and those are important but they are really only important so much as they improve the ability to communicate more complex things with more people quickly.

Not a good thing to ignore if you're job involves software, communications, or media.

Flock'd!

[CyricZ]

I totally just came up with a new word that emo teen freaks can use: flock'd! It's when your blog is innundated with hits from other Flock-using emo punks because your woe-is-me blog just hit 3rd place on the Flock Top Ten Blogs list.

That, or when you're playing football and you get cleats square in your gonads. You're flock'd then, too.

My thoughts

[Chrax]

I got a copy of Flock, so here are my thoughts.

What I like:

The default theme is much prettier than any Firefox theme I've seen. Not a big deal, but it is nice to not have to search through a ton of themes to get one that's aesthetically pleasing.

At the right side of the bookmark toolbar is a drop down menu, where you select don't make me weak at the kneesthe folder to view, and that folder's contents show up in the bar. Sure not one of the great innovations of our time, but I love it. Already I use it more than I ever used the bookmark menu. I would be delighted if Mozilla merged this into Firefox.

Another thing that Firefox has been missing is searchbar history. It's one of those small things that can really make the difference in your user experience.

They also have the option to bring back the find as you type bit, and I've only had one instance where it tries to start searching when I'm typing in a textbox.

Things that I'm neutral towards or dislike:

I'm not a big blogger or del.icio.us user, so those features don't excite me overmuch.

That said, the built-in interface to Blogger simply doesn't work. You try to open an old post and supposedly all the text in it is "2005".

When playing with the blogging applet, at times I would get CPU usage of ~98%.

Beyond the bookmark toolbar, the rest of the favorites interface is cluttered and stuff that I would never use.

The CSS implementation is a bit sketchy (though still better than IE, in my opinion).

But hey, they gave fair warning that there are some major bugs. Hopefully most of these will be fixed up by 1.0.

Some gems embedded in poo.

[Visceral Monkey]

There are some good ideas here, especially the delicious intergration, "clip board" thingie and blog intergration.

And all of it could be done in FF extensions in just a few weeks (and hopefully will).

The rest of it is just a huge mess of poo with a few good ideas plopped into it. I think everyone should try it out, see what they did right and what they did wrong, and write some FF extensions for the rest of us to use. I can't beleive they got VC money for this, sorry guys. PS- I love the ability to switch collections on the toolbar, but can't figure out for the life of me why I cant open multiple tabs by middle clicking.

for me, 'tis useful

[kevin_osborne]

I have a del.icio.us account, which I use so I can see my bookmarks on each of the four boxen (work, laptop, games, web) I work with. I _need_ my bookmarks; my memory is shite and I'm programming 10 different things every week so I need an easy way to access my knowlegdebase. Before that I was moving around a huge bookmarks toolbar folder from fox to fox, which sucked. I also run dual/triple boot on pretty each machine, so suddenly that's 10 installs I have to sync bookmarks to. So del.icio.us rocks, right? And I've never gotten foxylicious to work successfully (i.e. at all) so after flock _just worked_ I'm pretty happy.

I also have a flickr account - hey look flock just got more useful for me.

I need to start a weblog as well; I'm an uncommunicative bastard who doesn't call his family so it should be an easy (i.e. one button) way to keep people up to date. and yes, I have issues with the blog concept as much as the next guy but I need to get over it and join the 21st century. A few blogs (kottke,waxy,idlewords,girlyounasty) are a genuine source of goodness for me. that and the technical blogs which are more necessary than even now that google has butchered usenet.

I'm also a news junkie, and my google.com.ig page is packed with feeds. one more tick for the flockster

flock should hopefully make all this easier... and if not what did I lose apart from the oppurtunity to whine like a bitch about how I'm incapable of embracing technological progress?

This is ridiculous

[Chrax]

Fucking christ. Most of the posts are just smug tech elitists whining about how it caters to "emo teens" or saying something like "Just what we need, more bloggers". The web is fucking huge, and I'd be surprised if there are twenty Slashdotters that haven't developed excellent crapflood filters by now. You don't read the Xangas and LiveJournals and Bloggers, so why are you complaining?

Someone went and turned a browser from a window through which you can view the web to an application where you interact with parts of it (among the most popular parts these days) more intuitively. And you look beyond how neat that is because you want to look down your noses at the emo teens. Fucking class act.

Re:Wonderful.

[koliebo]

You know, not all teenage girls are complete idiots who TaLk LiEk tHiS all the time.

Just thought I should point that out...

</off-topic>

13 new things in flock

[bartdecrem]

for those of you asking what the hype is all about. here's what we've got so far that's different in Flock:

1. replaces old-school bookmarks with one-click social bookmarking to Del.icio.us
2. tagging is there if you want to do two-click bookmarking and tag
3. a new bookmarks manager with an integrated rss reader
4. built in search engine that indexes every page you visit and has a Spotlight-style as-you-type UI
5. keeps a list of the sites you visit most frequently
6. multiple bookmarks toolbar (one for work, one for play etc.)
7. finds feeds, lets you view them
8. caches the feeds so you can read them on the train
9. aggregated RSS view for all of your bookmarks folders
10. integrated blog editor (support wordpress, movable type, blogger)
11. one click 'blog this' feature (it does the blockquotes, citations and all that stuff for you)
12. Flickr integration (drag and drop pix into blogs)
13. shelf: a web scrapbook that helps you organizae stuff you want to blog

and of course it's open source and cross platform.

details at http://www.flock.com/fiveways/togetstarted/13.php

For geeks and nerds only

[TintinX]

One of the biggest traps I have ever seen a geeky developer (and I use the term endearingly) fall into is that the whole world is going to love your product as much as you do.

It just doesn't happen that way unfortunately.

Firefox is probably close to market saturation because anyone who actually cares about their computer and likes to tinker with extension and RSS feeds is using it, but everyone else *just isn't concerned* and it totally passes them by.

Flock is just several orders of magnitude higher up the 'niche' market than that. By reading /. and similar boards all day, it may seem that the world is occupied by similarly minded geeks, but the sad truth is that it isn't.

The vast, vast, VAST majority of people are happy to buy a computer, turn it on and then double-click the icon on the desktop that mentions 'internet' and that is all they will ever do.

Saying that, I probably assume that the Flock developers don't realise that. Maybe they do and yet they still wish to develop a niche product. If that's the case then all power to them!

Are we going full circle?

[swb]

Forget your toolbar crap, get an entire browser based on the things that you want to do on the web.

Are we going full circle and just reinventing AOL or other online services applications? We're coming back to the "online service application" -- the one program used for email, viewing information, "everything" you can do online....

Lots of hype.

[RoboPimp_3000]

Web 2.0 = Coke 2.0

Re:Wonderful.

[FLEB]

All well and good, but could we cut it out with the "Web 2.0"? It's like calling things "modern" back in the 1940s and '50s. It's all going to look quite silly when we wake up from it tomorrow.

Outfoxed

[archeopterix]

There is already a social bookmarking/site rating system for Firefox. It is called Outfoxed . Definitely worth a try.

Firefox + skin + RSS ext+pupular Blogs ext = Flock

[Elixon]

The RSS pane is almost one third of the whole browser. I can imagine that in the version 4.0 the classical browsing window will be removed and all we will ever need is the SUPERHEAVY support for RSS and shopping cart + one input field for your favorite RSS search engine :-)

Is the time of "death of classical web pages" near? Will everything in the future be just the XML/RSSv8.1/XMLShopping Protocol/... resources and the rest (displaying, stylizing, aggregating) is left up to your browser?

Maybe. We'll see.

(But I still and always will love to design my own unique webs no matter what...)

Why an additional browser?

[dhoughal]

I've downloaded Flock and played with it. I'm wondering why they don't implement all those neat functions as Firefox extensions instead of a seperate browser application. Imagine you have both (Firefox and Flock) on your local machine and security updates must be installed, then you have to install them for both.

D.

Re:Wonderful.

[MikeFM]

Umm no. You may as well say that moving from command-line batch processed software to GUI multi-tasking enviroments is about distributing content in a profitable manner. I'm sure that both these changes were hoped to be profitable but that is not the reason users care about them. As with anything you always have what the suits hope to get from the changes (which never changes.. greedy bastards) but that is not really the fundamental driving force behind those changes. The only reason those changes can be profitable is if they are delivering what end users are willing to pay to get.

End-users want the web to be more responsive, look nicer, offer more content, and make communicating easier and more fun. Delivering those things CAN make a profit but only because users are looking for those features.

Re:Wonderful.

[noamsml]

Um, I think that del.icio.us is great in order to find out about sites, in order to recomment them to people, as well as a backup mechanism.

Besides, you obviously don't read many blogs. Many blogs, mine included, are for interesting stories, thoughts and ideas, as well as cool links and interesting net news. No real "depressing emo life". I keep my depresssion to myself, thank you very much.

iMac

[PGC]

although I doubted the usefullness of this browser at first, I have to say the search functions, bookmarking methods, tags etc are very nicely intergrated.

The browser has a clear purpose. If you are merely interested in aggregating information from sites, than this might well be your browser.

It kinda feels like an iMac among browsers...in alpha stage then... but a step in the right direction nonetheless.

Re:For Everybody's Information:

[mgkimsal2]

you go there and browse the page and when you find what you want, it is literally a one-click download-and-install

It's a bad user experience on several levels.

1. 'extensions' brings up a small window with 3 buttons and a link - the link is the different one (smallest visual appearance) that brings you to an extension place.

2. The procedure isn't one click, as I get a fairly scary warning box saying to not install software from places I don't trust. Should I trust the extension? Pretty much every extension out there is 'unsigned' (probably because learning how to sign things is a big PITA, and is going to cost people some $ as well)

3. People looking for extensions may also wind up on mozdev, and the popup blocker in firefox blocks pretty much every attempt at installing an extension that way because it's a new popup and you have to grant popup permissions to that URL.

Having many 'standard' plugins focused on serving a particular market bundled in to a browser is a great idea.

2 other things I'd like to see are file upload progress meters standard (and big and visible) and a built-in media capture (sound recorder) which would allow forms to capture sound for forum posting attachments.

What is it about blogs?

[Infonaut]

OK, the name "blog" is pretty pathetic. But a blog can be many things. It can be Daring Fireball or GrokLaw or Gelf Magazine. Sure, there are thousands of blogs of no interest to anyone but their creators, but really, is there anything wrong with that? I thought the Slashdot ethos encompassed the notion that diversity is a good thing. Or is that true only of technology, but not expression of thought?

Seriously, every time someone bashes on "blogs" it sounds to me like people bashing on television. Fine. Don't watch television. Or watch only the three or four shows you want to watch. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. The same thing is true of blogs. Don't want to see all of that trite bullshit that bothers you so much? Then don't read it!

Re:Wonderful.

[MikeFM]

I live in Las Vegas. If I based all my understandings on technology from conferences then of course I'd think that gold would rain from the sky, we'd all have hot model chicks wearing skimpy alien outfits and porting iPods as girlfriends, and all technology would be rather boring and useless other than as yet another means for suits to make endless gobs of money. Conferences and tradeshows do not define technology and they certainly don't pass along good technical information. They're more like the mold that grows around technology. All these terms (Web 2.0, AJAX, etc) are rather silly in general and are in the end just buzzwords. Despite that there is a real change in how web design is done taking place. Call it whatever you want. I like the version numbers as it most clearly states an improved, more feature rich, version of the existing web. That more functional web is what most people mean when they say Web 2.0, AJAX, etc. For all the difference it makes the marketing creeps could call it Bob.. it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft tried that.

Ads are nothing new on the web. I don't see that as being a defining point of any new web features.

I didn't catch any statement from Gates (as I mostly ignore the idiot) but you should realize that Bill Gates wouldn't know the future even if he spent a billion dollars to hire the world's experts to tell it to him. Ever read The Road Ahead? What a laugh. He is a copycat and not an innovator. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are both foolish ideas that are going to do naught but help the entertainment industry drive more nails in it's own coffin. Physical media is no longer needed and if it's prices stay high even as they take features (like the ability to backup my own property) away and ask us to buy expensive equipment to enable all this then many people will switch to something else. Hollywood style force fed entertainment is a failing idea. Collabortive entertainment is the way things will go. Enable end users to produce and share high-quality movies of their own and you'll have a winning product.

If you're just saying that you don't give a rats ass about Microsoft's (and other retarded companies) lame ass vision of what Web 2.0 is then I can agree with that. Writing it off as all marketing hype and money making schemes is a bit short sighted though. The first wave of the web was full of hype and crap but it still managed to make a serious change to our culture.

Re:Why not just extensions?

[mizidymizark]

That is exactly what this is, Firefox with a bunch of extensions and plugins packaged together. I am using it now and while there is nothing mind-blowing, (although the on the fly history search is pretty F'ng sweet) it also doesn't have anything that would make me get rid of it right away. I think they have a decent idea of "Here is a version of Firefox that we prettied up and threw in some features." Even if you never use any of the other features, you still have a pleasant looking Firefox, so what is the harm in that?

A required feature of web 2.0: hype?

[superultra]

One of defining features of each "web 2.0" application has been that it has done a good job of hype, either by creating "invites" (gmail) or merely letting the web equivalent of word of mouth spread use around (del.icio.us).

I've been following Flock ever since the site launched. I read preview after preview from web 2.0 people who claimed Flock would be God's gift to the modern age, better than parasols or flying airships or rockets to the moon. So, of course, I downloaded it with great haste yesterday only to discover . . .
. . . that it is little more than an AJAX-esque skin for Firefox with some "fancy" extensions, fancy meaning slow and unworkable. Marshall McLuhan, media genius and internet saint, said that hot media burns fast and clear, shining for only a moment and then gone. Well, friends, Flock is hot in the McLuhan sense. It was best experienced as an anticipation, not as something that has actually arrived. The reality is that Flock is flying lame.

What the Flock people should have done is release it quietly to a few developers, let them test it under promise of silence, and then when they had something worth screaming about - screamed then, and only then. Instead, they screamed before they had anything, in the sense that they posted flickr screenshots, and whipped up the blogosphere in orgasmic anticipation.

I felt cheated trying Flock, and vindicated when I uninstalled it. I've been very impressed with Web 2.0 so far, or whatever it is they're calling webpages on the internet that are well coded, but if Flock is the future I want out.

No, Barry. It doesn't work that way.

[CyricZ]

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