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Flock, the Web 2.0 Browser?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jun 14, 2006 01:24 PM
from the little-more-hype-please dept.
from the little-more-hype-please dept.
escay writes "Cardinal, the Beta 1 version of Firefox-based browser Flock, was released Tuesday with many polished features. Some of the features include drag-and-drop photo uploading for Flickr and Photobucket, an in-built RSS aggregator, direct blogging tool, and shared favorites/bookmarks. In step with Web 2.0 philosophy, Flock provides a rich user-centric experience, making it easier to bring information to the user and vice versa. It is available for Linux/Mac/Windows, and you can download it here. (And for those of you trying to get Flash working in Firefox on an AMD64 Linux machine, try this and be pleasantly surprised!)"
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Firefox-based Social Browser Flock Launches 329 comments
daria42 writes "The much-hyped Flock, a new browser based on Mozilla Firefox and integrating features like RSS feeds, blogging tools, the del.icio.us social bookmarking and Flickr photo sharing services has just launched a public developer preview to the world. Flock is being driven by a team of developers being led by Bart Decrem, a well-known open source developer who co-founded the ill-fated Eazel project back in 1999 and has been involved with both the Mozilla and GNOME foundations. On his blog this week he says Flock won't be forking the Firefox codebase."
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Flock, the New Browser on the Block 380 comments
^tamago^ writes to tell us BusinessWeek Online is reporting that a new browser is stepping into the arena. This new competitor, Flock, hopes to change the face of web browsing by turning their's into the swiss army knife of browsers. From the article: "Flock's browser is built specifically for a new, emerging generation of Web users, one that isn't satisfied passively browsing media online. Flock hopes to turn the browser into a dashboard for collaborating, blogging, sharing photos, reveling in a raft of other group activities that have recently caught fire online"
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Flock, the Web 2.0 Browser?
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Re:Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday March 31 2006, @11:17AM)
Yes, folks, *most* of the functions I've read about so far on their site exist in some form as FF plugins. I think what they're doing is nifty...except that I have no use for it. The overhyped buzzword Web 2.0 is all about social networking, and frankly I just don't do much of that online any more. I'm too busy networking away from the internet to care about flickr and myspace.
Re:Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://photar.net/)
Re:Hmm, Sounds Like a Browsers... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://trolltalk.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday November 11, @07:43PM)
PFI_Optix [slashdot.org] wrote:
So I guess that "I'm too busy away from teh intarweb thingee" pose isn't working so well.
Different (key)strokes (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.hyperborea.org/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @05:30PM)
Judging by the general tone of this discussion, yes.
There are an awful lot of people on the web, and on Slashdot, who don't seem to make a distinction between "X is aimed at a different target audience" and "X is pointless." (There's also a large segment of the population for which demonstrating disdain for something is a way of demonstrating superiority, but that's another issue.)
Maybe someone needs to write a "people have different needs and tastes" tutorial. It would have to be in the form of a HOWTO or maybe a man page.
flash??? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday September 09 2006, @06:39PM)
Dropping into a seizure because of all the blinky lights and animated characters is more like it.
Web 2.0 Browser Eh... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Web 2.0 Browser Eh... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.scottgant.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 31 2006, @03:12PM)
I'm being left behind! What ISP's support Web 2.0?
I'm worried now!
(/sarcasm off)
Re:Flash on AMD64 (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://shaunwagner.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 19, @09:22PM)
It looks to me like they just give you the 32-bit Firefox with 32-bit Flash. That has always worked on 64-bit machines.
Flash! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
Get the Flock out of here! (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://photar.net/)
Re:Get the Flock out of here! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.efinke.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 29 2006, @03:30PM)
So, developers, check your extensions in Flock and once you have them working, add this to your install.rdf:
<!-- Flock -->
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{a463f10c-3994-11da-9945-000d60ca027b}</em
<em:minVersion>0.5.13.2</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>1.0</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>
Additionally, this site: http://outraged-artists.com/flockd/list.php converts FF extensions to work in Flock, which usually probably just consists of adding the above code to install.rdf.
Used since first Alpha (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://fak3r.com/)
For the target market I think this is just an excellent example of what can be done with Open Source, they basically found/created their own nitch, and filled it. Seems like a good company thus far, but now comes the hard part... 4) Profit???
File alongside: Songbird (with almost all the same comments from above)
Re:Used since first Alpha (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.ssinow.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 01, @02:25PM)
Like what?
Hype, hype, hype and even more hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone looking for blog features in Firefox should take a look at the Performancing extension instead.
http://performancing.com/firefox [performancing.com]
Re:Hype, hype, hype and even more hype (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.thekindbud.com/)
Ego 2.0? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/)
But seriously, anything that keeps teens out of the real world where they would be destroying things or taking jobs away from hard working illegal aliens, I'm 100% behind!
Go Flock yourself!
Target audience? (Score:5, Funny)
Emo kids, unite!
Flash works on AMD54/Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with AMD64 Linux, Firefox, and Flash, was that Firefox was compiled in 64-bit. The only available Flash plugin is only built in 32-bit mode, so the browser can not use it. You could then just use a 32-bit Firefox version to be able to use the Flash plugin. That's what I do on my 64-bit Linux system. So this "feature" offers nothing more than was already available.
Flash for Linux can be downloaded at http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.
Wow... it's already in Fedora!? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://gnuthought.com/)
flock (util-linux 2.13-pre7)
Usage: flock [-sxun][-w #] fd#
flock [-sxon][-w #] file [-c] command...
-s --shared Get a shared lock
-x --exclusive Get an exclusive lock
-u --unlock Remove a lock
-n --nonblock Fail rather than wait
-w --timeout Wait for a limited amount of time
-o --close Close file descriptor before running command
-c --command Run a single command string through the shell
-h --help Display this text
-V --version Display version
Re:Wow... it's already in Fedora!? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://supercheetah.livejournal.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 04 2005, @03:24AM)
Let me guess, you did the following:
$ man humor
No manual entry for humor
The only difference between... (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday January 06 2003, @10:36PM)
Web 2.0... (Score:4, Insightful)
People keep spouting off about all this innovation that makes up Web 2.0, but it looks like the same old stuff to me with the exception that the companies haven't run out of venture capital yet. That and what we used to call an AOL user, we now call a 'blogger'.
i thought this was hype too (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.bcpdd.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday February 24 2007, @06:21PM)
I will say this though, i used it in alpha. I used it in linux (Ubuntu 6.06, Fedora Core 5) and i used it on XP. And after applying all the same tweaks in about:config that i do to Firefox, it ran faster than Firefox. I got a good many of my favorite extensions to work (though not all, and hence why i'm back to FF as it is now).
The only thing i did learn to love though, is that not a single firefox skin actually feels natural at all. Flock is slick as hell and without being an eyesore. The blog publishing was very useful, i didn't like the bookmarking at all, but the photouploading was nice too. And frankly, no extensions really pulled off what flock has, at the quality that flock has.
So i really don't get the complaints, i found it useful, i found it faster than firefox. I just value all my FF extensions more than speed, otherwise i'd be using Opera. But what Flock did, it did very well and i intend to check out the beta.
How much of these features... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How much of these features... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.b-list.org/)
Well, del.icio.us, Flickr and blogging have all been going strong for longer than 12 months already, so... odds might not be so great that they'll just be "passing fads".
Web 2.0 Browser??? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.interreality.org/~reed)
Reed
Oh... FLOCK (Score:4, Funny)
(http://anomalyent.com/)
Needs Feeds (Score:4, Interesting)
It nearly does, but falls short. I can view full-text articles when viewing a single feed, but there's no way to view whole articles when looking at the complete list of subscribed feeds.
Why have only Safari's developers figured this one out?
This brings up privacy issues with related service (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://youtube.com/thedarkener)
Why not a new distro approach instead? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday November 29 2006, @12:18PM)
If you are a power user (hint: if you use del.icio.us or a news reader or if you visit Digg, that probably means you) and if you have decorated your browser with, oh, say, 20 extensions or more, Flock may not be for you. We like these services as much as you do, and we share the basic values of transparency and control that are an essential component of the participatory web. We are trying to bring these services to mere mortals.
It's all good, but why not just create a Firefox distribution package with the best of Firefox + Extensions, and just write extensions for the things that aren't yet available from others?
I know this sounds too simplistic. That's why I like the Colbert Report. It doesn't matter if I'm right (because I'm sure the experts will show me many ways in which my take isn't feasible, isn't the way development "actually" happens, etc.); but my way seems like it would be easier.
Grow up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you even TRIED the damn thing??
I probably will be modded down, but anyway, I just want to say this.
I really don't understand why a lot of the Slashdotters are reacting very VERY negative about anything that has to do with Web 2.0. I too hate the way marketing people are using this term, but we are definately experiencing a transition from the single sites based web to a web environment that is based on social interaction and sharing. Internet is just not the same as it was a couple of years ago. Or am I talking bullshit here?? Doesn't everything starts to become connected to everything?
Why does it irritate you when people start to see that big changes and name it Web 2.0? People are really over reacting here. Why??
flock of ...Segulls? (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 11 2004, @12:40PM)
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://ultima-inet.kicks-ass.org/~multima | Last Journal: Wednesday June 14 2006, @03:43PM)
Now, if you want a truly minimalist graphical browser, may I suggest Dillo [dillo.org]; while it isn't stated outright as one of the design goals, Dillo is definitely a very simple, compact program which does what it needs to, and does it well – but doesn't implement additional bloat. I suggest checking for one of the patched versions, because they add in nice features like tabs and anti-aliasing, but whichever Dillo version you choose, it's guaranteed a tiny little program for the real minimalist!
Re:Sounds to me like... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.hyperborea.org/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @05:30PM)
Actually, Flock is aimed at that 1%. And they're betting on that 1% growing.
Most of their target audience will be interested in the built-in feed reader, the drag-n-drop blogging, etc. Whether that's enough people to sustain a company (and whether Flock can collect enough revenue from partnership deals) remains to be seen. Certainly Opera's comparatively small marketshare, usually cited as less than 1% worldwide, has been plenty to sustain them for years,* so it's at least possible.
*Admittedly Opera's got more revenue streams than just partnerships, since they've got cell phone makers licensing their mobile browser, and they'll be selling the Nintendo DS and Wii versions, etc.
Re:don't get it (Score:4, Funny)