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RockMelt: Google Chrome, Only Better
Barence writes "PC Pro has an in-depth review of RockMelt, a new browser which it claims is better than Google Chrome. RockMelt is built on the same Chromium core as Google's browser, but adds a host of social networking, news feed and search features that elevate it above Chrome. The App Edge, for example, 'allows you to set up feeds for anything from your Twitter or Gmail accounts to your favourite news sites, and get a little iPhone-style numeric reminder of the number of items awaiting your attention.' It does, however, lack Chrome's built-in Flash, PDF and audio players."
It lacks features that would make it a better browser (like the awesome PDF reader), and adds social networking an an RSS reader, which I can just get by going to the appropriate websites on any browser. Great.
Everyone wants to be as good as or better than Chrome. Way to go Google!
How does RockMelt deal with the whole Chrome botnet "feature"? Is it removed?
Social media integration was such a great idea, and worked so well for Flock, I don't see why these guys could possibly fail.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Flock is dead.... short live the Rockmelt!
They haven't learned the lesson from Flock, have they?
I just want a goddamn browser, without any of the facebook twitter buttons and toolbars and shit. When I want to update my facebook status, I will get there.
I'm legitimately curious, are there people out there that are so awfully busy that they need a browser to check the news and Facebook for them? Did it suddenly become old-fashioned to actually type "cnn.com" in the address bar? I'm all for social networking and most everything that's happened in this field for the past few years. But at what point is it taken too far?
A company will send out press releases to media outlets (magazines, newspapers, tv shows / stations, bloggers) to inform them of new products or offerings.
In some cases, marketing people will directly contact the magazine or newspaper by calling up and pitching a story based on their product or offering.
Depending on the media outlet, thinly veiled advertising is achieved by the marketing person making a good impression on the media outlet, or by offering a free unit, and in some cases gifts. In some seedier situations money is exchanged so that the media outlet will portray the product in a favorable light, so that the reader's distrust of direct advertising can be circumvented through the illusion of new or useful information.
And while I certainly don't mean to suggest that RockMelt paid off PC Pro for this story, more-so, I'd posit that PC Pro is just happy to get the hits.
I don't understand the need to have my whereabouts, my surfing history, my current status posted to all the social media sites. If you see the other browsers are attempting to make surfing "anonymous", it seems Mr. Andreesen is behind the times here, and should have sobered up before actually producing this product.
A screencap FTFA shows that RockMelt certainly has more icons (everywhere) than Chrome. This degradation of aesthetics does not make me want to change my default from Chromium (on a Windows box), as a browser's aesthetics go a long way in connecting me to the pages with which I am interacting.
I would be happier to learn that I had less choices in browsers. But that is the developer bias. Still, it seems to me that you really have to raise the bar if you want to be taken seriously, not just be Chrome+1. And I'm resistant to features which are tied in to services offered by certain companies (Facebook, Twitter) instead of just standardized services (RSS, FTP).
Larger question... would we not be better served if we started treating the browser more like a commodity item? Basic, standard features in an unglamorous browser, and... that's it. And then with a nice stable development platform that doesn't change around every 2 weeks, the real interesting features can start arriving at the web application layer. Standardize the browsers so we can forget about their individual features.
that is so lame.
Not that I am a big fan of either Rockmelt or Flock but it's been available for several months now - why is this "new" news now?
I just tested Rockmelt for a week or two and besides the fact that there is not Linux version yet, I love it. Just don't judge it on the "Social Browser" thing, the best feature is clearly the embed RSS reader it has which is absolutely perfect when you wanna check tons of news websites. besides, the UI design is really well made(and the embed google search makes it even smoother) and most of all, it's compatible with all chrome/chromium extensions. In my opinion its more chromium++ than a totally new browser, but since chromium is great, it's even better. Well that just what i think: go try it shashdot, it's worth it.
It bears repeating.
but adds a host of social networking, news feed and search features that make it a pile of dog crap compared to Google's Chrome
Fixed that for you. There's a reason I switched to Firebird from IE and old school Mozilla back in the day. It was sleek; it was fast; it didn't have a bunch of crap bloat thrown into it like IE and Mozilla.
There's a reason I switched to Chrome from Firefox. Chrome is sleek; it's fast; it doesn't have a bunch of crap bloat thrown into it like Firefox.
There's a reason I'll switch from Chrome to the next usable browser; it'll be sleek; fast; and not have the bunch of crap bloat that Google will eventually throw into Chrome, because all browser producers are stupid and sooner or later think shiny bullshit is more important than speed and stability.
Wouldn't the features described be more suited to a Chrome plugin (would that be feasible?) rather than a completely new browser?
unfortunately, their browser did not work on Linux :(
To the Asperger's commenter mobile!
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/11/12/226250/RockMelt-mdash-Right-Browser-Wrong-Platform
"RockMelt browser is a labor-saver for heavy users of the desktop social Web, but it doesn't fully deliver on the startup's promise to build a browser 'designed around you and how you use the Web.' That's because the social Web is less and less about the PC desktop, and more about mobile platforms and appliances like smartphones, tablets, and Internet-connected TVs."
FTFY
It does, however, lack Chrome's built-in Flash, PDF and audio players."
"also, it lacks support for html but we are working on it..."
Can't this just be accomplished with extensions? Does it really need to be a custom browser?
Welcome to the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, too; and the twelve year old girls are FBI agents.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Move along. There's nothing to see here. Closed source crap built on top of open source is useless to me.
I've made it a point to stop using programs designed to only run on Winblows unless there is no other viable alternative. Chrome is a viable alternative.
This sounds like hipster malware adware garbage for tweens.
Didn't this thing come out months ago? As I recall, it was a pile of ass and proprietary nonsense.
sic transit gloria mundi
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Another version of Chrome that forces a choice between having bookmarks visible all the time or having them several mouse clicks away in a window/tab/panel that needs to be closed. It's like having a smart phone that has a scrollable contact list as your homescreen and a rotary dial; one you don't want open all the time and the other is clunky.
Every program has drop down menus for selecting from lists of items because they work better than everything else that's been tried. Bookmarks are probably the best use cases for a drop down menu, you just want to make a selection and have the menu go away.
Also, how did non-scrollable tabs make it through the first alpha version? After 10 tabs are smashed together, you can't really tell which is which and after about 20, they're just blank nubs. How is that useful?
This sentence no verb.
So they took out the good parts of a browser, and tacked on a bunch of bits I don't need, and call it better? I don't think so.
I started messing around with RockMelt six months ago after receiving an invite. It's ok, but I have yet to find a real compelling reason to use it over Chrome, especially since, as the article mentions, it only sort-of supports Chrome extensions, which means I can only sort-of do things that I rely on Chrome for.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
If you hadn't noticed the collapse of the world economy came at the same time as the rise of farce-book and social media. Trillions of man-hours wasted on no productive activity for things no one will ever see. Yes, I am saying that the crack that is farce-book is the cause of the economic collapse and we will not recover until there is a prohibition on social medial. Then people will go to internet speak-easies and spend large amounts of money to get their social media fix.. Only when social media is illegal, underground and expensive will the economy recover.. natch.
Have been testing it out for the past 3-4 days. Kind of feeling like it's completely pointless. The side bars really seem distracting no matter WHAT I'm doing, even if it is social networking-related. It's basically a child's version of chrome, if children had a need for social networking tools.
I think you're better off just getting chrome and customizing it through plug-ins that way if you want something less intrusive. This thing was just designed to make your life more difficult to customize to fit to your needs.
Can somebody please tell me what the fuck the "rock me it" means, and why the fuck it'd be used as the name of a web browser?
yeah but does it do print preview?
Moo.
The only Chrome build on my system is Iron:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SRWare_Iron
Like Chrome but without the call home/tracking info.
I just raise an eyebrow and wonder when something this simple will become an addon for firefox :P
It's the same browser as Chromium with a few options being hardcoded instead of being user-selectable. http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam
I am excited again about the time when ActiveDesktop and PointCast channels were announced!
It does, however, lack Chrome's built-in Flash, PDF and audio players.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
> but adds a host of social networking
Yep, better.
In related news, Konqueror has been able to embedd PDF an incredible PDF viewer, has been running flash in a separate process, has had customizable web shortcuts, and the only decent password and cookie management for almost a decade, now. Oh, and their HTML engine is what Webkit came from.
tl;dr: Try Konqueror today.
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apparently racist browsers are ok too
www.blackbirdhome.com
So, they are simply converting Google's browser into something resembling the average IE installation.
There already is a good browser into which they've crammed a ton of bling and other unimportant crap that should have been banished into optional add-ons. It's called Firefox!
Here's what became of the last Chromium-based "social browser":
Take one of the leanest fastest browsers and bloat it to hell! Surefire trail to success.
Yeah, for the x86 chips only! Or are you forgetting about the vast number of browsers on cell phones, tablets, etc. that are running on an ARM processor?
Yeah, the world totally needs yet another web browser.
Tell you what, you release a browser that frees developers from the html/js/css hell that's been foisted on them and THEN get back to us.
I'm sick and tired of having to visit crappy websites to be annoyed by something, I'm glad somebody made a browser that brings the annoyances straight to you without needed to do anything.
Lean browser bloated with bloatware.....