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Flock Delivers On Promises Post 1.0
Linux.com has a quick look back at the social web browser Flock, now that it has passed the 1.0 hurdle. The main complaint seems to be sensory overload, but there are definitely some interesting tidbits in there. "Version 1.1 really shines in its enhancements to the MyWorld page, including the Friend Activity Feed. Once you've logged into all your social networking services, you can drag and drop messages from one friend to another. For example, if Sally makes a good restaurant suggestion via Twitter, I can drag that message to John's Twitter icon in my sidebar and he'll receive a link to view Sally's message. If a particularly interesting picture comes across my Flickr feed, I can drag it over to a contact on Facebook, and he'll receive a notification to view the image."
I like Flock, largely because of Flickr integration and the Interestingness media bar, that's pretty addictive.
The main thing that keeps me from using Flock or Firefox full-time is the in-page search. Safari just blows everything away on that, and I don't think it would be terribly hard to add to FF/Flock. Add a total match count, and highlight all by default, and I'm there.
Flock has come quite a way in the last year though, I'll have to give them that, it's not quite as "slap you in the face with every social network ever" as I seem to recall it being, and it's relatively easy to switch from one network view to the next.
I like music
Cross-application drag and drop works even? My experience is in Windows, but I'm pretty sure I still can't drag an image from a webpage into a new Gmail email and have it actually embed the image into the email. I don't know if it converts to a link to the image or what. In my experience dragging and dropping media into other apps usually only works well for desktop apps. Dragging media into chat might work....I can't say I've tried it in a long time in Pidgin, but I want to say it would automatically upload an image from my desktop into the chat. Again, I don't know how it works now with trying to drag online media to an app....
Flock's own extension library has dozens of plugins to choose from, and most resemble standard Firefox plugin fare. Again, I tried about 10, and they worked just fine. The only one that really raised my ire was Me.dium's privacy policy, the company watches too -- and collects, saves, and aggregates your data). I willingly installed the plugin so my beef isn't with its purpose, just with its method. When I installed the plugin, it also installed itself on my Firefox browser as well -- without asking -- and defaulted to on. Privacy lovers, this is not the extension for you.
I'd say that's pretty damn rude of them.
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