Flock browser: Is it worth the switch?

Updated to add: Once you hit the publish button, Flock takes an awful long time to exit the “Publishing your post” dialog. The post publishes very quickly. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the dialog box.

Flock recently released a beta version of its browser. I downloaded their developer preview a while back, but I didn’t use it much. It seemed promising, but caught a lot of flack from around the web for offering a less-than-thrilling user experience.

“What’s Flock,” you ask? Flock is a web browser built on Mozilla code with added features for blogging, photo sharing (via Flickr or Photobucket) and RSS reading. There’s also a ‘Favorites Sharing’ feature that allows you to publish your to del.icio.us and Shadows accounts.

How does Flock measure up after about two hours of heavy use? My thoughts are below.

Overall impressions

Pros:

• Nice interface.
• Uses standard Firefox key commands. Not too much to get used to besides the blue icons.
  
• Easy installation.
• Can import bookmarks from Firefox, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer (known as “favorites”).
• Extra nifty ability to tag bookmarks and organize them in multiple categories.
  
• Ability to automatically share a bookmark/favorite via del.icio.us or Shadows when you add it.
• Dynamic search interface searches as you type.
• Searches for local favorites and history.
  
• Range of search engines available.
  

Cons:

• Obnoxious window management. Clicking doesn’t bring the browser window to the forefront when a blog post or photo upload window is open. Need to minimize the blog post window first.
• Options / preferences is split into “Accounts and Services” where you manage news, blogging, favorites sharing and photo sharing and Options where you manage actual browser settings. Why two interfaces?
• Themes are enabled, but not available.
  

Neutral, but possibly important:

• Yahoo! search is the default engine, but you can change this easily in the “Tools > Accounts and Services” dialog.
  

As a photo sharing tool (used with Flickr)

With a few keystrokes, you can grant Flock access to your Flickr account, import your Flickr contacts, and browse public photos.

Pros:

• Can view photos from your contacts (organized by person)
• Can drag-and-drop images from your computer, crop, rotate, describe and tag them, and upload them to Flickr.
• Can upload multiple photos at once
• Can resize photos during upload.
• Can add photos to a new album
• Monitors Flickr upload usage
  

Cons:

• None noted thus far.

As a blogging interface

Pros:

• Fairly easy to use. Mimics other browser-based WYSIWYG editors
• WYSIWYG editor means that you don’t have to know HTML.
• Can save blog post drafts locally.
• Ability to edit HTML source code for your blog posts
  
• Can drag-and-drop images, text or code from the web or your computer into a ‘web snippets’ tray, then drag and drop into your blog post.
• Pre-set to ping Technorati.com when you post a new blog entry. Can configure to add others.
• Built-in spell-checker.
• Ability to publish to a specific category on your blog
• Ability to overwrite an exisiting post with your new or updated entry.
• Can tag posts as you publish them.
  

Cons:

• Blogging tool produces awful code.
  
• Too many <br /> tags and <p> tags in wrong places. View the source of this post to see what I mean (It was posted via Flock).
  
• Rewrites code that was manually entered in a style that is incompatible with XHTML (my <h3> tags were translated to <H3>, which is invalid XHTML).
• Uses <i> instead of <em>
  
• Can’t save blog drafts to your blog server for later editing from another computer.
  
• Can’t use ‘Ctrl + S’ to save your draft post. ‘Save this post on your computer’ button doesn’t seem to work.
  
• WYSIWYG editor isn’t advanced enough. If you want to add headings (h1, h2, h3) or change text color, you have to edit the source code (or use the bold button).
• Doesn’t integrate tightly enough with blogging software. I can’t, for example, schedule a post.
• What? No place to enter a Trackback URL?
• Categories are not check-able. Have to hold down the Ctrl key to select more than one category.
  

As a feed reader

Pros:

• Fairly easy to subscribe to sites that have discoverable feeds.
• Feeds are beautifully displayed as HTML.
• Can mark a post as ‘Viewed’ by checking the box.
• Can easily save an article to read later by clicking the star.
• Click the ‘blog‘ link, and you will get another blog post window.
• Can view full posts, excerpts or headlines in a single column or in double columns.

Cons:

• Subscription process could be easier, in my opinion

Overall, I think Flock is a solid browser, particularly for those who do a lot of photo sharing and blogging. If you’re a code purist, however, the generated stuff that Flock produces will bring you to tears.

Is it enough to make me switch? Er, that I’m less sure of. The advantage of Flickr and Bloglines is that you have access to your photos and feeds from any computer. Flock takes your blog post drafts and favorites and onto a local drive. I’m prefer that patchwork of sites over the Cool Factor of being able to blog and upload photos through my browser. (If this paragraph doesn’t make sense, it’s because it’s WAY past my bed time, and brain is chucking a wobbly.)

Have you tried Flock? What are your impressions?

Related, from TechCrunch: Flock Raises New Venture Round, Launches Public Beta

technorati tags:flock, browser, mozilla

Blogged with Flock