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Flock Switches To Chromium For New Beta
An anonymous reader writes "Flock, the social networking browser, has moved from Firefox open source code to Chromium in its latest beta. The new Flock is essentially a combination of Chrome and TweetDeck, as you can sign in to Twitter and Facebook accounts and look at a single feed that incorporates updates from both. Currently, the beta is only available on Windows, but a Mac version is slated for later this year."
Exactly. (I'm one of the Flock devs.)
Chromium is much more than just WebKit, and Flock is reusing most of that. Their UI was very well thought-out, and their V8 JavaScript engine is incredibly fast -- making it a perfect platform for Flock's application layer code which is almost entirely JavaScript.
BTW, since the original article doesn't contain links, here's the site where you can grab the beta if you're so inclined:
beta.flock.com
Mac version is in the works.
Why not just release them as pure Chrome extensions and call it a day? What is the benefit of calling it a separate browser?
Chrome extensions don't allow for the UI we added in Flock. No sidebars, etc...
Also, extensions are much harder to monetize than browsers, so it would be a lot harder to make a successful business out of it that way.
Third, we're going for mass market rather than niche. Extensions are cool and all, but most web users out there don't have a clue what an extension is, let alone a browser.
The new Flock will be Windows/Mac at least. Linux is still a possibility too. We think the new version offers an improved experience for most users. Not quite as feature-full as the old version, true, but it's much faster and simpler which is a good trade-off for most users.