I have recently started to use Gecko based Flock because I read a blog post few days back where the author had given this social web browser a very high rating. I wanted to see the punch that this web browser claims to have. I turned to Wikipedia to get an idea about it before I could use and form my own opinion. The Flock page on Wikipedia does give sufficient information but the article is written like an advertisement as mentioned on the top of Wikipedia Flock page so I had to give it first hand try.

The first thing you should know is that Flock took more time to load than Firefox or Safari. The default page that opened showed me details about the browser and how to make the most of it. It really is a social web browser as the developers behind it didn’t hesitated to add more and more social media widgets. There is a Digg button besides the URL toolbar which lets you digg stories as well as find the top 5 stories on Digg at that particular moment. Then, there is another item just along with the Digg button which lets you share any web link with your friends via email.

Similarly we have three buttons just between the Star button and the URL bar. The Star button is Flock’s counterpart to Firefox’s star which is used to add certain webpage among your favorites. The first button glows up whenever a media stream is available on the webpage. The second one glows up when RSS feeds are provided on a webpage. The third one glows when an installable search engine is available so that you can search on that particular site right from the search bar.

Okay the toolbars on Flock are glossy and have tried to showcase too much and the curved Flock toolbar is not of everyone’s taste. The Flock toolbar incorporates too many features like a Media bar, RSS sidebar and People bar . Oh yes Flock has tried to bring sidebars in vogue after they were abandoned by Firefox. I liked the media bar which shows the Flickr images.

Flock seems more biased towards Digg and Flick as these too appeared more frequently while I played with it. However I also found some glitches like I couldn’t change the search engine from the search bar as I have gotten used to in Firefox. When I tried to search by changing the default search engine then it opened the main page of the particular search engine instead of displaying me results. The bookmarking system is similar to Firefox but I would have liked something like we have in Safari.

Then there are not many add-ons for Flock too, which is a reason big enough for users like me to stay away from it. There is not a single theme for Flock as of yet. I didn’t find Flock extension webpage very user friendly either.

I have come to the conclusion that Flock is a good attempt but it needs some more activity on development side, mainly more add-ons in order to kick some ass. Flock is definitely a boon for people who are too much into social media but then there are add-ons with similar functionality on Firefox too.

The best thing that turned out after this review is that I have adopted Flock as my secondary web browser and I am really enjoying the social edge on it.

Good Luck Flock.

Popularity: 1%