Flock - The Other Browser

I like trying different tools, partly in look out for productivity and party to feed my curiosity. Also I pride myself in being skillfully portalbe across various tools and platforms. When it comes to browsers, I have a long list - Firefox, Konqueror, IE, Maxthon and then the other browser - Flock.

It has always been my second browser, never the first. Do not get me wrong, I think it is a really good piece of software, but it never drives me all the way to accept it without any doubt. For example, I like the fact that my blogging tools like blog editor, the feed reader, a photo uploader and of course the browser are all integrated. I like that with a single click I can interact with so many disparate services and in the end bring them all together. It is really sophisticated.

It is even usable, but probably not productive, because it solves my problems partially. Here’s why -

• The blog editor is great, but does not ask for the title attribute for inserting anchors, which has accessibility implications. Secondly there is no way of inserting abbreviations and acronyms.
• There is no way of inserting images and uploading them through the post.
• I cannot upload the post to my blog as a draft or a private, I can only publish it. This is important especially because I cannot insert images through this. I could write, upload and save as draft and then edit it to insert images.
• This is a bit too much to ask, but at the same time, this is what I do. I sometimes assign CSS IDs to certain elements for various reasons.

For any of the above tasks I have to go back to the source view to type HTML. I end up composing my post in parts with blanks which I fill in later. Instead of this I like the default editor I get with Wordpress or vim. I also feel that WYSIWYM will be the future for editors as they will play the role of creating content in the whole content-style separation paradigm.

Similarly, the photo integration works only for Flickr and Photobucket. However I use Flickr and Zooomr both, again Flock solves my problem partially. jUploadr solves this problem for me.

The feed reader is great, but not as efficient as Bloglines or Google Reader. Yes, the difference is keyboard support to navigate through the feeds. I simply take too much time to read using Flock’s feed reader. Flock should do what Firefox does here, it lets me configure my favorite feed reader for subscribing.

I do not use social bookmarks much, I use my blog to build an archive for future reference.

So, though I like using Flock, I end up just installing it and keeping it as the other browser on my machine. It is great for simple things, not to do something more. I understand that it is still in beta and a lot of features are being worked on. There are also some quirks like the editor enters a HTML break at end of paragraphs, which I have not been able to determine when. But these can be excused in the beta versions. Also, there are some good reviews out there. More importantly I feel that Flock needs to address a concern to full length. And I hope that it will because I will definitely keep a watch on it. It has real good performance, has been able to simplify the feed subscription for users and even interaction with the services. That is the reason I shoot it up once in a while and use it for a whole day and blog using it, which I am doing currently. Unfortunately it also reminds me why it is still my other browser. I am keen for its release.

Blogged with Flock