Flock 0.9 Released…It’s Firefox 2 for Social Network Addicts

July 10th, 2007

10 Comments Written by Ryan

Flock

Flock’s first public release was back in October of 2005, and now nearly two-years later it is becoming a feature-packed social browser with no "stable" version in sight. Version 0.9 was officially made available early this morning along with a fresh website that guides users through the benefits of using their browser.

So what’s new in version 0.9? Back in May I covered a lot of the new features that they were working on along with my opinion on what I thought about them. The new interface is nothing short of stunning, but not everything is perfect in the land of Flock quite yet. So here is an overview of what you can play with in the latest release:

MyWorld: a dynamic home base for all your favorite sites, feeds, and media streams
Flock’s Media MiniBar provides fast access to both photos and videos on Flickr, Photobucket, Youtube, and Truveo.
The new Accounts & Services sidebar offers easier configuration and enhanced discovery and activation logic
Improved Favorites with folders and support for Ma.gnolia and del.icio.us
Blogging: Improved UI, integrated Clipboard, support for all major Blog services including Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad and Livejournal
Security improvements
In-line spell check
Overall Theme upgrade

This version is based on Firefox 2, so it includes the in-line spell checking and session restore, both of which I’m glad to finally see in Flock. I’m not going to go over each and every feature again since I covered a lot of it in my previous review, but I thought I would recap the major things for those of you who are still contemplating whether to give it a shot.

–MyWorld–

The new Flock MyWorld is essentially a personalized homepage, but without all of the customized gadgets to add. It is a central location to see new feeds, your favorite sites, and images that have been uploaded by your friends on services like Flickr.

–Feed Reader–

There’s no doubt that my favorite feature in Flock is their feed reader, but it didn’t receive many improvements this time around. That’s fine though because it still provides a quick way for users to shuffle through the news to find the interesting stuff!

–Photo Uploader–

I used the photo uploader to add some photos to my Flickr account. It went pretty smooth, and anyone uploading photos on a regular basis will enjoy having this feature integrated inside of the browser. It’s also nice that you can rotate and crop images from within the photo uploader, which can probably save you a step or two.

–Service Integration–

Flock is a social browser…there is no doubt about that. It offers seamless integration with services like Del.icio.us, Flickr, Photobucket, Blogger, YouTube, and many other Web 2.0 sites. An example of one way it works well with these services is by providing unobtrusive options that can be useful, such as these that are seen when hovering over an image on Flickr:

Flock Flickr

–The Downside–

Even though everything sounds great with the new Flock, there is one drawback that can really be a deal killer. After just 15-minutes of browsing and opening no more than 5 tabs the browser hit an astonishing 125MB of memory. It didn’t stop there either, it kept climbing as I used more and more of the features such as the photo uploader, feed reader, and MiniBar. Of course Firefox has its own problems with memory management from time-to-time, but this just adds to it.

This problem is actually a pretty big deal for me, and eliminates any chance of me using this as my primary browser right now. They are definitely on the right track, but I think they need to settle down on adding new features for a little bit and focus on improving the memory usage. Otherwise it will continue to get worse before it gets better.

Flock Homepage
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Tags: Firefox, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Browser, Flock

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July 10th, 2007 at 1:04 pm nogg3r5

I want the media bar as a standalone. Now that would be awesome!
July 10th, 2007 at 5:52 pm Ryan (Author)

The media bar is indeed awesome, but it something that is well integrated into the browser. For example, if you visit a Flickr page for some user you can have their photo stream open up in the media bar. The Flock team really thought through how to make that useful, and that is one area they succeeded.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:39 pm Evan Hamilton

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for a really balanced review. Glad to hear you’re enjoying Flock 0.9 so much!
I’m sorry to hear you ran into a performance issue. We’re very concerned with the performance of Flock and have a whole team spending dedicated hours working to increase performance for Flock 1.0. I hope Flock 1.0 (and perhaps versions before then) will work much better for you.

Flock on!

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
July 11th, 2007 at 10:13 pm Ryan (Author)

Thanks Evan! I am really looking forward to Flock 1.0 and I’m sure that you guys will bring your “A” game. I just have a lot of performance problems with Firefox as it stands right now, so I know that you guys aren’t to blame entirely. Although the usage is a steady 15 to 20MB over what Firefox is.
July 13th, 2007 at 6:06 pm Max (All-Star)

Hey Ryan, do you think you can make a portable version of this release?
July 13th, 2007 at 6:24 pm Ryan (Author)

Sure, why not. I used an older Portable Firefox launcher that I originally customized for Flock, but it appears to run fine. I don’t quite remember, but I think a Flock profile might still be created on your computer instead of in the portable folder. Let me know how it goes:

http://www.divshare.com/download/1254186-f99
July 15th, 2007 at 5:48 pm Max (All-Star)

It creates a Flock folder in C:/Documents and Settings/Owner/Application Data. I don’t know if that’s what you’re referring to.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:52 pm Ryan (Author)

Yeah, that’s what I figured. I’m not sure if it actually uses that folder for much though. At least you don’t have to install it.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:25 pm jerry

I miss using Flock, but like yourself, I stopped using it a little over a year ago (I made a few mentions of it in my tiny blog) due to the massive memory problem. It amazes me that 12 months later, this issue has yet to be fixed instead of adding more features to it.

I’ve been keeping an eye in the releases for some time, hoping to see that they memory problem was resolved, but it doesn’t seem to be a primary concern. Too bad really, otherwise it’s a fun browser.
October 15th, 2007 at 4:37 pm Ryan (Author)

It really is a nice browser, and the memory problem isn’t all their fault. Firefox has it’s own issues, a lot of which have been solved in Firefox 3, but Flock just compounds the memory problems even more.