A very important recommendation from MellyStu
I have mentioned this before, but only briefly and not in a lot of detail. Flock has released the beta of the next version of their browser. I started using it when it release version 7, and I have been playing with nightly builds for a long while. I haven’t been this excited about a software release in a long time. Here is my summary of what it will do:
Based off of Firefox, Flock is an integrated social web browser. It allows you to upload pictures or video to Flickr, Photobucket or YouTube, you can blog about that media or any site you are browsing with your configured blog of choice. Right now they support Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, WordPress.com and Xanga. There is an option to configure your own hosted blog, which I’m assuming will support MovableType and WordPress since the apis are represented in the hosted blog list. It also integrates with online bookmark sites del.icio.us and Magnolia, so when you add a site to your favorites, it automatically adds it there–although I didn’t see a tagging/security feature available. It is your integrated rss reader. If you come to a site that has a search option that you can add to your search box in your browser, it will notify you and give you the option to add it. If there is a feed available when you browse to a site, it will alert you and give you the option to add it. You can also configure to use a variety of feed readers, so if you don’t want to use Flock’s, you can use Live Bookmarks, or my preference–Google Reader.
The weakest part of this release is the blogging interface. The blogging interface in 0.7 was very simplistic, and it still seems simplistic, but since it is an interface to many blogs, it appears to only have the items that work in all blogs. There is a tag section, Title and the post body. It does allow you to save posts and reopen them later. WYSIWYG is simplistic, but I never use that anyhow, but for some, that may be a down point. There are standard font options, unordered and ordered lists, indention and inserting links and images with minimal formattng options in the image import dialog. There is access to your web clipboard, so save an image or text there from another site, you can later choose it from the clipboard to include in your blog post. I used both the WYSIWYG and Web Clipboard to format and include the Flock image in this post. As most WYSIWYGs, it puts a whole lot of crap in the source that isn’t needed–but for the average user, I don’t suspect they will care. I do, which is why I don’t use them. I also had to edit the source to add css to get the image to float to the left and put in a small margin. Again, for the average user, this may be a PITA. For me, not so much. However, there are a lot of good pluggable WYSIWYG editors out there that I think Flock should look into using one a little more robust to attract the “please just let me click on things” audience. You also won’t get a WYSIWYG blog specific tags, such as an LJ-cut or a link to a LJ-user. You will have to know them and edit the source if you are just posting to LJ. And since I’m cross-posting this, I’m leaving LJ tags out because MovableType won’t know what to do with them, so this will be a long-winded, non lj-cut post. As soon as you decide to publish, a dialog comes up to pick which of your configured blogs to post to and options for your configured blogs. For LJ, it will let you pick security level and whether you want it to be a new post or to replace an existing post. It doesn’t let you pick an icon or set any other of LJ’s features such as mood and music. For MovableType/Typepad, it lets you choose from your configured categories. It also gives you the option to visit your blog right after posting, so as soon as the page opens, I can edit the LJ post and add cut tags if I desire.
The strongest part, and this feature is what made me download Flock to begin with, is the photo uploader. I love this interface to Flickr, and with all the kids photos that I have to upload, tag, add descriptions and so on, this batch interface is pretty sweet. It also includes views of your recently uploaded photos as well as recently uploaded photos from your contact list. I don’t have a Photobucket account, so I can’t comment on that.
Lastly, the new addition is the “My World” view, which is basically a portal to all the configurable social sites within Flock.
Version 0.9 has improved a lot over 0.7, and I really hope there is enough support and popularity for Flock to keep the development of this application of open source and open api software. I wish I had time to contribute because I would get the code and dig into that blogging interface. I will keep tabs on nightly builds to see what improvements are being made.
It may not be ready for you to replace all your various clients to your favorite social sites, but it is definitely worth replacing Firefox (well, it is still Mozilla underneath, so “replacing” may not be the best choice of words) for more integrated social web experience. Download Flock 0.9 Beta
Tags: flock, social browsing
