Using Flock for blogging

November 8, 2005 By

I’ve been playing with Flock for blogging purposes lately. It’s a new browser based on Firefox. I’m interested in it because of the driving force that all the big Web businesses like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google, and many of the smaller sites too, like Craig’s List, are focused on: user generated content. It’s interesting, there’s some areas where it just isn’t as nice as IE (the font in the editor on my monitor is ultra tiny, for instance, gotta figure out how to change that) but I love the drag and drop editing of blog posts (I just did that on the previous eBay Stores post) but overall I like it better — the integration to Del.icio.us and Flickr and drag-and-drop blogging is real nice.

I wonder if this will be a trend of seeing specialized browsers be built for unique purposes? Or, will the world just stick with Firefox and IE and add components onto those? I wonder what the browser of 2007 will look like?

Update: One thing I notice is that my workflow has to change if I’m going to keep using Flock. With IE I just Shift-Click on a link and open a new instance of the browser. That’s one reason I never got too enthralled with tab browsing.

But when I do that in Flock my Web performance goes WAY down. I like separate Windows on a high res screen. But I’m weird, so you can ignore me. :-)

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Internet Explorer, Web
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  • http://lesliefranke.com/ Leslie Franke

    I have tried Flock but am not sure what to make of it. I cannot see the reason to switch from using Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. While Flock is pretty well designed and looks pretty, it really adds nothing to my browsing and/or work experience. As it is now, things like my WordPress adminstration panel are only one click away in my bookmarks toolbar.

    Flock most likely will find a niche in the marketplace, but will most likely never become mainstream. In many ways, Flock suffers from the same problem as Firefox does when convincing IE users to switch, but on a grander scale. I often hear, “IE works fine for my purposes, why should I change”. With Firefox you can point to issues such as tabbed browsing, security, extensions, etc. that some people agree with and make the change. With Flock I just cannot find what that reason to switch is. I think I first saw Paul Scrivens, of 9rules fame, talk about this. In its present form, Flock is a solution without a problem.

    Robert: Regarding the update to your post. Does not Flock work the same way (though I may have made some change in the setup and have forgot about it)? In Flock, or Firefox for that matter, I can Shift + Left Click on a link and that link will open up in a new browser window (Ctrl + Left Click will open up in a background tab).

  • http://lesliefranke.com Leslie Franke

    I have tried Flock but am not sure what to make of it. I cannot see the reason to switch from using Mozilla Firefox as my default browser. While Flock is pretty well designed and looks pretty, it really adds nothing to my browsing and/or work experience. As it is now, things like my WordPress adminstration panel are only one click away in my bookmarks toolbar.

    Flock most likely will find a niche in the marketplace, but will most likely never become mainstream. In many ways, Flock suffers from the same problem as Firefox does when convincing IE users to switch, but on a grander scale. I often hear, “IE works fine for my purposes, why should I change”. With Firefox you can point to issues such as tabbed browsing, security, extensions, etc. that some people agree with and make the change. With Flock I just cannot find what that reason to switch is. I think I first saw Paul Scrivens, of 9rules fame, talk about this. In its present form, Flock is a solution without a problem.

    Robert: Regarding the update to your post. Does not Flock work the same way (though I may have made some change in the setup and have forgot about it)? In Flock, or Firefox for that matter, I can Shift + Left Click on a link and that link will open up in a new browser window (Ctrl + Left Click will open up in a background tab).

  • http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost Manish

    Flock is nice but pretty basic for blogging. For a full-fledged blog editor, check out RocketPost (I designed it):

    http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost

  • http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost Manish

    Flock is nice but pretty basic for blogging. For a full-fledged blog editor, check out RocketPost (I designed it):

    http://www.anconia.com/rocketpost

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