Spontaneous Monotony

Despite the MSM hype, Flock doesn’t really have any features that are worth abandoning the better-supported, more stable Firefox to obtain. Since Flock is based on the 1.0.x Firefox codebase, it uses an older version of the Gecko rendering engine than Firefox does. The bookmarks handling is simply defective (bookmarks that you can’t access without opening a separate webpage… nuce), the blogging tool is unable to support even basic features like Categories, and when you take out those two there really is nothing which Flock does and Firefox doesn’t. Unless the development team comes out with something spectacular in the next version or two, there is really no reason for this fork to exist – the Weblog Tools Collection has a less critical (but still not glowing) evaluation:

I believe that Flock is a good idea but the need is too fragmented. The number of people what would want the gamut of features that Flock offers from within their browser is not enough to employ 13 people (I think) on a full time basis.

That being said, I am sure that Flock and its team has a lot of talent and good ideas going for them. I would just need to be really razzled and dazzled for me to switch to another browser besides the Fox.

Basically, Flock is caught between the tech-savvy users (who want decent features and stability) and Flock’s professed target market – people who want their browser to be ‘social’ and don’t want to have to download Extensions to get such capabilities

The ‘header’ text (post titles etc.) is now set to use Bitstream Vera Sans where possible, but you obviously have to have the font installed – and since it doesn’t come with either Windoze or Office the chances are you don’t, but you can download it for free from gnome.org – it looks brilliant and I would strongly advise it.

The various versions of iPod have suffered from battery problems, lack of screen, easily-crackable screens and numerous other ailments. So when a company of Sony’s standing is outdone by Apple’s Plastic POS, there is something badly wrong. I bought a microphone accessory for my Sony Net-MD, and the audio quality was predictably brilliant. Only to find that the Sonicstage software is totally incapable of transferring my voice recordings from the minidisc to my laptop. I have absolutely no idea why – since they are stored in the same ATRAC format that music tracks are, and the later can (subject to DRM restrictions) be transferred without any problems. I’ve had to resort to using a minijack-minijack cable and my computer’s microphone slot, which (thanks to Audacity, hooray for OSS) at least allows me to record them using ordinary playback (guess how fun that is for an 80 minute disc?). Bearing in mind that my minidisc doesn’t have any output other than USB and minijack (headphone socket), if any readers have a better solution I’d be grateful!

I’ve just discovered (having been asked to complete one on another WP site) that the Spam Karma ‘captcha’ test also includes an alternative e-mail moderation, so there are no accessibility issues whatsoever.

I’ve downloaded the ‘developer preview’ (yes, its another one of these use-beta-as-an-excuse type of things) of Flock, which is a Firefox fork-that-isn’t-a-fork: contrast the claim on the Flock website with the Wikipedia definition

Flock is not interested in forking the Mozilla code-base. I have worked for the Mozilla project and know first-hand that the project has attracted some serious hacker talent. One of the most appealing aspects of building on the Mozilla platform is that we can build on top of a platform that is designed, developed, and maintained by top engineering talent at Mozilla, IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Google and hundreds of community volunteers. Flock is a small startup, and our business model is premised on being able to build on top of all that work. In architecting our software, build systems and engineering processes, we have given considerable thought to how our code will be able to evolve alongside the Mozilla code, without forking it. We are trying to pay particular attention to this in areas where we are doing things slightly different from Firefox. For example, in the area of bookmarks, we implemented on top of the Firefox bookmarks architecture, while integrating social bookmarks.

[Flock statement]

In software engineering, a project fork or branch happens when a developer (or a group of them) takes code from a project and starts to develop independently of the rest. The term is also used more loosely to represent a similar branching of any work (for example, there are several forks of the English-language Wikipedia).

[Wikipedia]

At the moment, it actually seems faster at pageloading than Firefox (not sure why, since they have only added to the Firefox code, which should make it slower) – bear in mind that this is not a scientific study with £3000 benchmarking software, just my impressions of various high-bandwidth sites I visit.

The fact that this is the first release is, unfortunately, painfully obvious. The Blog Editor tool (which is a brilliant idea) is missing some features – like Categories. Not plugins, or code validation, CATEGORIES. See the problem?

I’m also less than convinced about the ‘starring’ of favourites – and the take-it-or-leave it integration with del.icio.us (no support for the ‘private’ flag, so you either have to make all your bookmarks available to everyone or not use the online backup feature) adds to the half-assed feel of the whole Favourites system.

That said, it does have some notable features that make it a good idea (although why this code couldn’t simply have been submitted to the official Firefox project is beyond me) – in addition to the previously mentioned speed boost, it has proper RSS support in the browser – no need to use the ugly S.A.G.E. or the ad-infested Lektora any more, because this thing beats both of them with big sticks in functionality and looks.

It also includes the Shelf, which you can drag-and-drop stuff to and from sites you visit. Before you ask, yes this is better than copy-pasting because you can hold multiple things in it at a time, and it gives you the title etc. of them so you don’t get horrendously mixed up (memories of having 10 amazon urls in Notepad++, not having a bloody clue what any of them were!).

Overall, while it is officially a ‘developer preview’, with the exception of the flaws I’ve mentioned earlier there doesn’t seem to be any severe problems with it, and it’s build on the fairly solid Firefox 1.0.x code, so why not take a look? You can always go back to Firefox (which, btw, you should keep installed say the Flock devs) if you hate it!

Update: All of my favourite Firefox extensions have been recoded for Flock. It’s now my default browser.

• Adblock: deals with the non-popup advertising methods (Google Adwords, Image/flash-based etc.) to give you a pretty much ad-free experience (except for the pages used by Lamespy and CNET which load before you get to see the page you want)
• CustomiseGoogle: disable the tracking cookie, adwords and other such annoyances when using any Google site
• ForecastFox: displays weather forecasts in the statusbar at the bottom of the screen
• WebDeveloper: Toolbar with various buttons such as validator links which make web development much easier

There are some other ones as well – Gmail Notifier, Greasemonkey, Stumbleupon etc. but I haven’t used them yet