Xooxia Development

We all get used to our favorite browser and it’s tough to get anyone to change to something new. (Otherwise, not a person in the world would be using IE!). I’ve been using FireFox for quite a while now for a few reasons. For one, the enhancement capabilities with add-ons. I use Firebug, the web developer toolbar, etc. on a regular basis. When I got up this morning, I never thought I would be testing another browser to replace my beloved FireFox.

However, I was looking over my new feeds for the day and Smashing Magazine had a list of ‘Interesting browsers you have never heard of’ and found one that I thought I’d take a look at.

Flock - The Social Web Browser

Flock boasts itself as The Social Web Browser. I thought to myself, ‘OK, you have plugins that let you post articles to Digg, add links to StumbleUpon, etc. Never mind!’. Then, I read on. Flock runs on the same rendering engine as Firefox - therefore all of my favorite Firefox add-ons are available to be installed on Flock <– very important to me as a web developer. Also, it has almost the same user interface with the tabs, search box, etc.

But here’s what really got me interested in trying out Flock. The sidebars for people (friends), media (photos, etc.), feeds, blog this, and web clipboard. I won’t really go into all of these features specifically (I’m still finding out about them myself), but as someone interested in social networking on the web, my second favorite feature is the people list. If I’m logged into facebook, I see a sidebar with all of my friends included with the regular features. This allows me to navigate through the web and shows any updates to my friends as I surf. I don’t have to keep alt-tabbing back and forth to my facebook page.

I said my second favorite feature, because my favorite comes in the form of a Flock add-on. It’s called Me.dium.com. This is a great little add-on that allows me to watch my friends (on Me.dium) surf through the web. I can also see others that I haven’t met that have chosen to allow others to see them. I can chat real-time with any of them, see what sites they’re visiting and with one click go to that site. Now this may seem as just a fun way to spy on your friends as they spy on you, but think of the collaboration that various teams could have. Let’s say you have a small research team put together and your team is researching Bill ‘Lucifer’ Gates. If each of your teammates are using Flock with Me.dium, you’ll be able to quickly see what pages others are on. When one of you finds useful information, you can quickly send a chat to all others that let’s them know. Everyone can then go to that page and view that information and everyone can discuss it instantly.

Wow, what a great bit of software. It’s like Firefox on social networking steroids. If you have any comments, let me know below.

Blogged with Flock

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