Flock Evaluation
Jul 6th, 2008 by Don Ray
This is not a technical evaluation as much as an evaluation of why I decided that Flock would not work for me. I intended to use it for a week, but after one day, I could see that I was more satisfied with Firefox.
There are two tool bars on Flock. One is the navigation tool bar and the second is the Flock tool bar.
First lets look at the graphical presentation of Flock. It is a very easy on the eyes layout. I like that. The navigation tool bar is nice. I may like it a little better than Firefox’s.
The second tool bar is the “Flock” tool bar and the one I will discuss now. It is organized with a lot of Flock features on the left side.
The first feature is is called “My World”. When you click on it a tab opens up with a possibility of the following four sections on one screen display:
- Favorite Feeds - Flock has a feed reader and thus will provide you with the latest from feeds you have selected to follow.
- Friend Activity - If you use Digg, Facebook, Flicker, Pownce, Twitter, and/or YouTube, then this will help you organize these areas.
- Favorite Media – If you use media sites, then this area will help.
- Favorite Sites – This lists the most visited sites based on your history.
Still in the “Flock” tool bar, the next three buttons fill the left side bar with the first three of the summary information above.
The next button is for email. You can choose one email such as live.com, yahoo.com, or gmail.com. If you have emails from all of those providers, it will only read one of them.
The next section of the “Flock” tool bar activates a Blog editor and Photo uploader for those that either blog or use sites like flicker.
The rest of the “Flock” tool bar is used like the bookmark tool bar of Firefox.
I have no problem with the Navigation tool bar. I do have problems with the Flock tool bar.
I will go through my problems one by one.
The “My worlds” button does nothing for me and you will see that as I discuss the following buttons.
Favorite People Button – If you use a lot of the social networks, this would help you. I don’t like the social networks and don’t need it.
Media button – If you want to know about the latest YouTube video, this might help you. I don’t need it.
Favorite Feeds button – I prefer the hierarchal structure that my Linux feed reader provides. If you are not using any feed reader, it might suit your needs. Feed readers can save a lot of time.
The same with the next three buttons. I don’t need them.
Now comes one that I thought might cause me to want Flicker. The blogging editor. It will allow you to write, edit and upload for all of the popular blogging software. One nice feature, that it is not in WordPress’s editor, is the ability to change fonts and the color of the font. However, it will not allow me to use the WordPress tag function and uses a a web based tag. For many that might be nice, but I have a populated my WordPress tag area and won’t switch now. Another thing I don’t like is that when you put a link in your blog, it will not assist you in making the link open on a new page. I have that with the WordPress editor and I won’t give it up.
Last is the Open Photo uploader. I don’t need it and don’t want it.
If I had an option, I would turn off all of these buttons on the left of the “Flock” tool bar, then I might use Flock. I can’t see any option. I can turn off the entire “Flock” tool bar, but then I lose the bookmark tool bar function. I will not go without that function.
Like all software that is based on another engine (this one is based of Mozilla) it is never as current with fixes as the original engine. Flock is currently based on Firefox 2. I am running Firefox 3.
This was the same problem I had with Linux Mint, which was based on UBUNTU. All updates were weeks to months later than what it was based on.
So I guess it didn’t really take me a week to decide if Flock would be more useful to me than Firefox. It isn’t and I have switched back. Sorry Omar.
Hi Don:
That’s O.K. Don. As they say, “the taste is in the pudding”. In my case, Flock fits like a glove.
Regards,
Omar.-
Hi Omar. That is why there are different products. If we all liked the same thing, then life would be boring.
I have been using Opera for years and find it the best overall browser. If you haven’t tried it take a look at it and see what you think. The nice thing about Opera is the speed and the mail option.
Rick
Hi Rick. I have Opera installed, but I have rarely used it. I may pull it out and dust it off and give it a shot. I do like the Speed Dial page that lets you go to one of 9 favorite pages. Thanks for jogging my memory and leaving a comment.
Hi Don,
First, let me thank you for talking about Flock. I hadn’t heard of it and decided to try it when you announced you were going to do so. However, after two hours I, too, decided it was not for me. It certainly would be good for anyone doing lots of social networking. But for blogging … well, first I tried Flock’s editor, which was extremely limited. Then I tried editing Wordpress from within Flock. I had previously found that Wordpress and Safari don’t work as well together as do Wordpress and Firefox. Now I see that Flock had many of the same glitches with Wordpress that Safari did. I missed the feature that you mentioned, about changing fonts and font color, but I don’t really want to mess with that. Not being a designer, I could easily do something that clashed horribly with my Wordpress theme.
Also, interface is a very personal thing, but I didn’t like the one in Flock - I thought it klunky-looking. I may go try Opera again, too, now that it’s under discussion. For me, I like the speed and simplicity of Safari (on Mac OS X) although its interface is getting a little long in the tooth, but I need to use Firefox for editing Wordpress. Maybe Opera will offer both speed and good editing so I can stop using two browsers.
Mary
Hi Mary. I am currently running Opera after it was suggested. I must admit that I like its appearance amd for some reason I like the screen that shows 9 of your most needed Internet locations. I had an old version on my PC and when I fired it up, it told me that a new version was available. It installed the new version without a hitch.
I have used Safari before, but have never been able to make myself like it. On my MAC I use Firefox.
However, this Opera browser does appear to have some possibilities. My friend Leena in Finland always likes Opera, but then that it where it is created, along with Linux.
In fact, unless I find something that doesn’t work with Opera, I think I will stick with it over Firefox. It is clean. Appears to be fast and I even like the widgets.
[...] other day I wrote about Flock and a reader responded that he used Opera and I decided to try it. I had loaded it in the past, but [...]