What’s so great about blogging with this “Firefox with a twist”? In general, it’s the simplicity and the WYSIWYG editing environment. A novice without any clue of HTML would greatly appreciate it.

“So what?” you might think, “big deal, Windows Live Writer also has it”. Yes, but non-Windows users have been longing for this feature for so long. And even for Windows users, Flock would make a worthy alternative blogging tool because of other nice features, such as:

• adding media – picture, sound, video to the blog is dead simple in Flock. As simple as drag and drop.
• quoting, re-blogging and sharing a blog post that you like via your own blog is just a matter of highlighting the material(s) and click.

Integrating Your Blog to Flock

To start using Flock to blog, you have to integrate Flock with your blog. Click the “Key” logo on the toolbar under the “Home” button and the “Accounts and Services” sidebar will be opened.

Scroll the panel below to the bottom and you will find the “Blogging” section. Choose and click the appropriate account and you will be asked to fill out the required information.  Follow the steps and your account will be ready in no time.

After adding your blog, it’s still possible to modify the account by clicking “Blog Settings”, or to delete it by clicking “Forget Account” under the blog name on the above panel.

Quick Blog

Anytime you find interesting information on the net that you think is worth to share via your blog, just highlight the text (and/or the picture, audio, video) then right click and choose “Blog This” from the pop-up menu. The blog editor will then open with the selected materials as a quote.

Alternatively, if the materials for your blog post come from several different sources, you can utilize the “Web Clipboard” sidebar. Open it by clicking the “Clipboard” logo under the “Star” button. Then you can drag and drop any item from web pages to the clipboard.

Then open the blog editor, the clipboard materials are ready on the left bar to be re-dragged and re-dropped onto the blog post. Standard editing tools are available to enrich your post.

There are three tabs from the editing windows for users to choose from:

• Editor – this one is the WYSIWYG environment.
• Source – this one is for those who understand HTML and want to add some code.
• Preview – if you want to see what your post will look like, choose this. No editing is possible here.

After you’ve finished babbling and yapping (and adding tags if necessary), click the “Publish” button on the bottom right corner of the windows.

There’s still a few more steps to do before your post is really “published”.

• You have to choose which one of your blogs this post belongs to from the drop down menu above. (or add a new one)
• Choose the categories.
• Decide whether this one is a new post or a replacement for a specific post.
• Tick the options to help promote Flock if you want.
• Also decide whether you want to visit the site after the post has been posted.

Then you can safely click “Publish”.

If you are offline, you can save the writing to be posted later.

Another use of Flock’s blog editor is to “peek” at the HTML code. I’m not a code geek and I don’t know too many of the combinations. I’m lost beyond “bold”, “italic” and “link”. But many of my blogging assignments require me to write in a HTML environment. So what I do is I write normally in Flock’s WYSIWYG blog editor, then switch to the “source” tab to get the HTML-ish text, then copy and paste the text to be used in my assignments.

And for the minus…

I couldn’t find any easy way to upload my own pictures to my blog storage without uploading them first manually to my blog then attach them (also manually) via the editor’s source tab. If that’s the case, I might as well use the online blog editor instead of Flock’s.

The available easy options are either link the pictures from the original source or upload the picture to an image sharing service then link the picture from it. If you like this kind of arrangement, then it’s fine. But I know many bloggers who prefer to keep their own media in their own place. So, it’s all down to personal choice.

So the conclusion: Flock is, and will still be, my favorite tools for quick blogging – quoting from here and there, for offline blog writing, and for editing existing blog posts. But for posts that require me to upload the media to the server, I prefer to log into the blog account and do the blogging from there.

What about you? Do you (or will you) use Flock to blog? What’s your favorite ways to blog?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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By using Flock you get stacks of features built right into the browser while retaining speed, performance and security which could potentially be compromised when installing so many extensions in Firefox. So jump in for my Flock review.

Cross-Platform

Like Firefox, Flock is compatible across all three major platforms, Mac, Windows and Linux, which is great considering the number of students who use other platforms instead of Windows.

Social Networking

I’m going to assume just about every student is on either Facebook, MySpace or both, so the inclusion of them into the browser certainly makes life easier.

As well as these two, there are 20 other supported services which you can see these in the image below:

One glaring omission is Windows Live which has around 300 million users worldwide compared to Gmail’s 20 – 30 million. Considering the huge Windows Live update happening right now I would assume the Flock team is working on including all of this new functionality.

Blogging

Plenty of students have blogs and Flock is perhaps the best browser for making blogging easier – it includes a decent blogging editor and support for several blogging services such as Blogger, Wordpress.com, Blogsome, Xanga and LiveJournal as well as self-hosted Wordpress blogs.

Research

Now most students are required to do a fair amount of research and study and Flock is the perfect browser to do this.

Flock has a built in feature called the Web Clipboard which really is Flock’s most understated tool. This clipboard takes the form of a sidebar onto which you can drag just about anything, links, text and images for later.

What’s so great about it is that unlike favourites which require sorting and organizing, using the Clipboard just requires the dumping of a whole stack of information while you research a topic.

There is one additional extension which I would recommend most of all and that is Zotero, the research extension for Firefox. All Firefox extensions usually work fine in Flock so you’ll have no problems there.

Zotero is fantastic for collecting a huge stack of online resources together for more careful reading and analysis later. I barely scrape the surface of its functionality in my own usage, but basically you can save webpages quickly for later (offline if you need it) reading. You can tag keywords, take notes and use various other ways of organization.

Also coming soon is Zotero sync for transferring notes between computers, a great addition to the tool.

Search Easier

Tell me, just how often do you Google something just to go straight to the Wikipedia entry? This extension modifies the Google search page so the most relevant Wikipedia result is shown along with search results.

WorldCat is a web service which can be used to locate books and journals in the nearest library to you. Add it to your browser from here.

Flock also includes instant results searching for many search engines like Yahoo, Google and Technorati. As you type in your search query the results are brought up instantly below the search box. I find it one of Flock’s handiest features.

This is what I use as my student browser, do any of you know of any other great research extensions?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Well, as I said in my last browser review, I use both Opera and Flock about equally – for no real reason apart from my inability to choose one over the other. Basically I use Opera for the speed, and Flock for all the great features.

Flock contains what would literally take hundreds of extensions in Firefox, and pulls it off without a huge performance hit or lack of stability.

That said, Flock 2.0 is a beta product so it goes without saying that you can expect a few more issues then normal.

Tina introduced Flock (version 1.1) on Make Use Of a couple of months ago. Since then Flock has released version 1.2 and two betas for Flock 2.0 as well.

With growing popularity (over 4 million downloads) Flock has a business model similar to Firefox and gets income from Yahoo based on the number of Flock users per year and for having Yahoo search as the default Flock search engine.

Flock 1.2 introduced a number of new features and enhancements but I noticed at this point that Flock was beginning to suffer a bit from successive releases continually adding more functionality without addressing usability.

I stopped using Flock for a while, mainly because of this. Not long afterwards however Flock 2.0 beta was released and in this release the Flock team had concentrated on the performance, interface and usability of Flock rather then adding any more features.

This review covers everything you can expect to find in Flock 2. Flock is built on top of Firefox and so can take advantage of all the Firefox 3.0 performance improvements and innovations, some admittedly inspired by Flock itself.

Supported Services

The purpose of Flock has been to make web services part of the browsing experience, rather then just something you use your browser to access. Of course given the sheer number of web services, the decisions on which to include in Flock could be quite controversial.

According to Evan Hamilton the decision making process involves the popularity of a service, the ease in which it can be integrated, whether or not an API is supplied and how well it will fit into the browser’s direction and focus.

As of version 1.2 and 2.0 Flock includes these services in these categories:

Features:

All the features themselves have largely all been reviewed by Tina in her review so I won’t go there.

Some of the new usability changes and enhancements include a slight improvement to the people sidebar. Previously the increasing number of services was overflowing the sidebar and resizing it resulted in concealing or hiding these.

Flock 2.0 makes some changes so icons relocate and fit the sidebar size. It could still do with some improvement, but it’s a lot better then before. You can see the before and after shots below:

The bookmarks and favourites manager has also been greatly improved and I would say it is the best browser bookmarking system I have seen.

Both local bookmarks, browser history and online bookmarks are stored together and can be sorted and managed together as well. Additionally the Firefox ‘Awesome Bar’ is part of Flock and gives even easier access to favourites and history. If that isn’t enough for you then you can do pretty much the same thing from the search panel next to the address bar which undoubtedly inspired the awesome bar.

The Media Bar also got a revamp, but as I don’t particularly use that feature I won’t comment on that.

Performance:

Performance improvements for Firefox are well documented, but unfortunately just about all the comparisons of Firefox 3 I have seen are with Firefox running with no extensions.

Comparing Flock to Firefox is ridiculous just like I mentioned above, it would take hundreds of extensions to get the functionality of Flock with Firefox.

If you fire Flock up and check the memory footprint you may be surprised to see it is actually larger than Flock 1.2, just as Firefox 3 is larger then Firefox 2. Don’t be alarmed, the footprint is bigger but the overall memory management is significantly improved so memory usage shouldn’t increase with time.

With the great new performance and memory management of Firefox, all the previous Flock features and some great interface enhancements Flock 2 is a must-have download. That said, it might be worth waiting a few weeks as beta 2 for Flock 2 seems to be a little unstable, more so then beta 1 in my experience.

What do you think? Are you a Flock fan? Or can nothing tear you away from Firefox or Opera?

(By) Laurence John was born naked, screaming and utterly helpless at some point in the last century. He currently blogs about heroic failures and the development of Windows 7.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Fortunately, that’s not all there is to tell. Flock is based on Mozilla Firefox and was first released in 2005. Back then it may have been a little bit ahead of its time since social web was only in its beginnings. Recently however, Flock has enjoyed very positive media coverage and its popularity virtually exploded in the beginning of this year, reaching close to three million downloads and increasing the number of active users by 135% [Source via Wikipedia].

So what’s this Flock about?

First of all, it’s a new word in my English vocabulary and maybe yours, too!

flock ['fläk] – as found on Merriam-Webster OnLine
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English flocc crowd, band; akin to Old Norse flokkr crowd, band
Date: 13th century
1: a group of animals (as birds or sheep) assembled or herded together
2: a group under the guidance of a leader; especially : a church congregation
3: a large number <a flock of tourists>

As the name suggests, Flock is a community tool, rather than a ordinary browser. It comes with a lot of built in features, tailored to instantly connect you to your Web 2.0 addictions.

Personally, I’m not a member of each and every social community. I refuse to set up half a dozen profiles and indulge in fake popularity, if any. It’s simply not my thing. If you’re like me, you’ll probably not feel tempted to try Flock in the first place, but you may change your mind, just as I did.

So let’s look at it in a bit more detail.

Getting Started

The installation holds no surprises. I had some issues with the Import Wizard tough, which seemed to take forever to copy my Firefox data. I quit and found that some of my Bookmarks (Favorites) and saved passwords actually made the transfer, but not all of them. I manually re-started the wizard, trying to copy just the Bookmarks, but it stalled again and I finally gave up. Google didn’t have any answers, thus I’ll assume it’s not a common issue. Needless to say I did close Firefox prior to starting the Import Wizard.

Anyways, once Flock is launched you can go ahead and use it like any other browser or inspect its characteristic features. If you’re familiar with Mozilla based browsers, you’ll feel comfortable using it right from the start. Assuming that you won’t have any trouble with the basics, I’ll introduce you to the Flock specifics only.

The menu bar in the upper left is where we’ll start. From left to right there are buttons to launch My World, People Sidebar, Media Bar, Feeds Sidebar, Favorite Sites Sidebar, Accounts and Services Sidebar, Web Clipboard Sidebar, Blog Editor, and Photo Uploader. That’s quite a lot. So what do all of these do?

My World

My World is Flock’s custom start page. It serves as a platform to keep you updated on any changes around the internet. Per default there are four widgets. With Friend Activity you can see what your friends on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or YouTube have been up to; just log into the respective accounts.



It’s easy to keep track of your Favorite Media and keep it right at your fingertips, I’ll explain how a little further down. You can of course follow your Favorite Feeds and see what your Favorite Sites, or rather your most recently viewed Favorites are.

People Sidebar

The People sidebar is the equivalent to the Friend Activity widget. Here you can interact with your friends on various social platforms, see messages, invites, your status, who’s on, and share media with them while you’re browsing the web.

Media Bar



The Open Media bar per default launches on top of your open pages, but can be moved to the bottom through >Media Streams >Settings.
Within the bar you can conveniently browse pictures and videos, look at the latest and most popular items, or search for something specific. Clicking on a picture or video will open it in a new window (Truveo) or the active tab (all others). So be sure to middle-click to launch in a new tab!

If there is something you want to follow up on, click the star symbol to add it to your Favorite Media and it will be listed on your My World start page. To remove a piece of Favorite Media, simply click the star again while looking at it.

Feeds Sidebar

Easy to configure haven for all your Feeds needs. Manually add, import or export Feeds. Sort them into folders, mark as read or delete through right-click menu.

What is displayed in the sidebar is only the name of the Feed and how many unread articles remain to be seen. The actual list opens in the active tab, unless you middle-click to open. From that list you can pick individual articles to read. Nothing revolutionary.

Favorite Sites Sidebar

Pretty much the same as Firefox’s Bookmarks sidebar. What seems different is the separation into Local and Online Favorites. Online Favorites represent your links collected in a social bookmarking account such as del.icio.us or Magnolia.

Accounts and Services Sidebar

This section contains a comprehensive list of supported services categorized into People, Media Sharing, Blogging, Online Favorites and Webmail. Your accounts are shown on top of the list.

Web Clipboard Sidebar

This, I must say, is the most adorable and useful feature of Flock, definitely my favorite!

Instead of adding each and every discovery right to your Favorites, you can drop them off at the Web Clipboard and sort through them later. The Web Clipboard was clearly designed with love for detail and many possible applications in mind. You can add links, images and even pieces of text, which is great for writers. The little thumbnail along with the title remind you of what is hiding behind each item in the list.

Items can be re-arranged via drag and drop. Moving the mouse over View will trigger a small preview window of the item, and clicking View will open it in a popup window, from where it can be copied or opened in a new tab. Items can be pre-sorted by adding folders. Being able to forward items via Email or directly add them to a blog post within Flock is just extra cool. And of course Delete is the best way to get rid of an item. Worth mentioning is that you can safely restart Flock without losing items parked at the Web Clipboard.
What is lacking is a way to bookmark items or, in the case of text snippets, their source directly, without having to open them.

Blog Editor

The included Blog Editor supports WYSIWYG, offline writing and publishing to Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, Blogsome, Xanga, and self-hosted blogs. It’s quite useful and nicely integrates with the Web Clipboard by allowing to open it as a sidebar within the editor window.

Photo Uploader

Submit content to Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa Web Albums straight from your browser. Easy to set up and use.

Why Flock?

Web 2.0 has produced so many awesome sites that it has become difficult to keep track of all your accounts. Flock attempts to solve this issue by integrating the most popular services in its browser interface. The solutions offered are straight forward and well thought out. There may be room for improvement, for example a more flexible configuration of the My World start page, however keeping it simple should be the main focus. More complicated features can always be added via extensions.

Taken together, if you’re an avid user of social platforms, you will love Flock. If you’re not, you might still find a useful feature that will get you hooked. In any case, you won’t have to abstain from your favorite Firefox extensions, since most of them are compatible with Flock.

Have you joined the Flock? What is your experience and what are your favorite Flock extensions? Please enlighten us through your comment!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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