Flock is a browser I have tried, used, and stopped using. Although it does feature some of the greatest social network integrations - Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, etc. I never really liked it. Why? It is bloated. The features are a great addition, and the integration is as seamless as possible; however, something about the browser itself seemed bloated. Maybe it is because the renderring engine is based off of the monstrosity that is Firefox 2. After realizing that the Flock development team keeps up with Firefox renderring updates, I realized that there must be a version of Flock that uses the slimmer and faster Gecko 1.9 renderring engine. I found it. It's Flock's nightly builds of the 2.0 version dubbed Sulfur.
I immediately noticed the performance increase. How so? It's so fast compared to its previous version that they removed the splash screen. The cold start times were improved by almost 3 seconds. Its start times rival that of Firefox 3, but are obviously slightly slower due to the alpha stage of development and a rather boastful featureset.
Its blog features do not compare on an even level when taking into consideration the massive amount of free desktop blogging tools available. However, the small and lightweight blogging tool does serve its purpose as a way of quicly quoting a web page and including a small snippet of text or rich media through its intuitive Web Clipboard feature. The Web Clipboard functions similar to its name. It is a small sidebar which allows you to drag and drop highlighted parts of a page and saves them automatically for future use. This feature also integrates with the blogging editor sidebar for convenience. The blogging features support Blogger, Typepad, Blogsome, Livejournal, Wordpress.com, Xanga, and any self-hosted blog engine using ATOM, MetaWeblog, MovableType, or WordPress.
The integration with Youtube, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Photobucket, and a few other photo/video services is a great addition. Although I don't really enjoy using its rather limited Web Streams interface, the photo uploader that supports dragging and dropping to multiple services such as Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook shows Flock's tight integration and versatility.
Flock's "People" section is arguably the best feature in the browser. Why? Because it allows you to access data from many popular social networks in a single sidebar. The icon used to open the sidebar turns orange if you have new messages or updates. The sidebar integrates with Digg, Facebook, Pownce, and Twitter. It also allows you to quickly update the status of your Facebook profile, Pownce messages, and Twitter updates. Although I don't use social networks too often, my Facebook usage has greatly increased after using Flock for a few weeks.
Favorites are added in a single click. Favorites can automagically be added to Ma.gnolia or Del.icio.us and also stored locally as well. The browser also integrates with GMail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail - a small icon turns orange when new messages are in the inbox.
Another great feature of Flock is its amazing RSS functionality. The RSS reader is a solid addition to the browser, and makes reading and subscribing to articles a breeze. The layout of the reader is much to my liking. Many RSS readers style themselves similar to a email inbox, but Flock is styled to look like a webpage with a compilation of content from a user's favorite sites. This styling makes it more enjoyable to read.
Flock also automatically detects when you log into one of its supported browsers, and imports bookmarks from Firefox or Internet Explorer. Any configurations are automatically made, so a person can simply dive into Flock without fiddling with the options dialog.
Flock always had a great first impression on me personally, but I tend to use it for more general browsing. If I need to complete a task or do serious development I still prefer Firefox 3 (which happened to release today). So if you are interested, go ahead and download.
