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www.youtube.com/bestbuy - Musician and Best Buy employee, Keith Parsons, rocks his Best Buy holiday campaign audition.
50 Comments
- MrSunshine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22About as many as there are companies who produce print paper. As long as the standards are followed (in the case of paper: A4, A3...), it doesn't matter how many browsers there are. All users will be able to use their preferred one (one likes a skinnable one, another wants one that isn't a memory-hogger...) because the standards are the same everywhere (display websites).
But yeah, IE could ***** off. - 4815162342, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12the lack of proper bookmark management is holding me off for now. otherwise it seems pretty cool.
- Pooley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"Most of Flock's functions are already available via Firefox extensions, but extensions carry a few problems. First of all, since they're developed separately from Firefox, they tend to get outdated when the Mozilla folks update Firefox and the extension developers fall behind."
Riiight... and what about the fact that Flock depends on the functionality of Flickr, Photobucket, del.icio.us, WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, Blogger etc.?
What happens when any of them update their service and the Flock developers fall behind? - oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12>> But yeah, IE could ***** off.
now that much, we can agree on. :) - pete10203, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I'm not gonna lie, Flock is awesome for photobucket, blogs, and rss reader in a browser.
- dcherryholmes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6IME Flock has a much lower memory footprint than Firefox. It was the main reason I gave it a try in the first place. For my system, FF occupies over 100MB of memory while Flock usually hangs around 50MB. Of course extension use is going to have an effect on how much memory FF consumes, but part of the point of Flock is to avoid having to load up some of these extensions to achieve similiar functionality.
That said, I struggled for a while with the decision to use Flock full time or not. The lack of "proper" bookmark folders really threw me for a loop and I didn't like it. But there were enough other advantages that I persisted. Now I have grown accustomed to accessing my bookmarks in a different way..... namely, by using the search toolbar in the upper left. In Flock, it does a lot more than in FF, and searching your own bookmarks is one of the features. Also, a recent Flock update either added the normal bookmark folders, or just made more obvious to me functionality that had been there all the while. I plan to spend some time today "re-foldering" my bookmarks. Once I've got that, and whenever user-agent switcher works in Flock, I think I won't have much reason to switch back.
The poster who pointed out that supporting Flock is not supporting Mozilla raises a valid and disturbing point though, IMO. - macewan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7flock would fit nicely as a yahoo company
- LordLucless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Except that even the browsers we have now don't adhere to the standards. That's why you have to have sites *designed* to be multi-browser compatible. If all browsers followed the standards, you'd write once, view with anything.
That said, Flock is just a different framework built off the gecko core. The number of browsers doesn't really make a difference, it's the number of rendering engines. And Flock doesn't add to that count. - apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Am I the only one here who just isn't interested in "social browsing?" I just don't see why its so great. It looks like stripped down firefox with some flickr and photobucket and blog writing extensions. And the fact that they call it the browser for you and your friends just sounds stupid. I mean couldn't you imagine how fun it would be for you and your friends to all browse the same websites at the same time, which it can't do, but I'm sure it will go there if they are really the social browser.
The good thing about Flock... one more browser that makes IE look so dumb and incompetent. Web developers are gaining more and more angry over having to make workarounds for IE's shortcomings. - burke, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Whoah. Swiftfox is awesome. They actually have a 32-bit binary for Athlon64. Thanks!
- dmoney06, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4its a beta. just wait for the real release for the memory fixes and speed and such.
- Estazor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3you can create different toolbars that can be for different categories (work, school, tech, etc, etc). It's not a full solution I agree but it's a nice workaround I'd say.
- greggish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Because if all you are doing is making a firefox extension then you can't raise $10 Mil and counting in venture capital...
http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/06/14/latest_action_at_google_skype_myspace_and_more.html
"And Mike adds Flock has just raised up to $10 million in a new round from Shasta Ventures."
--It's all about the money. - magicaltrevor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The lack of the BugMeNot extension and the fact that theres only one theme made me resist flock. I've spent the last few days opening it just to see what life would be like without the beautiful firefox logo. Today, I finally weighed the ups and downs, and set Flock as my default browser. And so far, it's quite nice! But it would be better if it was a FF extension...
- DeexPL, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7it take too much memory (2 websites = 50MB) :/ not yet
- zootm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I hear that Gecko relies upon the functionality of various C and C++ libraries, too.
The fact that Flock's features rely on open APIs means that if and when these change the core browser will be updated too. And the very point of open APIs is consistency - it's unlikely that these things *will* significantly change. Since extensions are more reliant on Gecko's internal XPCOM etc. interfaces, which are more subject to change, these things cause problems.
Flock's main advantage, though, is that it integrates many features in a consistent and sensible way. It just works better as a standalone browser than it would as a collection of extension or one huge, lumbering extension for Firefox.
Flock's development helps Firefox, and vice-versa. They are close enough that all improvements made to one can be fairly easily integrated in some way into the other, but they are different enough that it would be fair to say that they're aiming at fairly different groups of users. - killroy42, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Why can't they just create a single "Flock" extension that encapsulates all these processes? One Flock team to take care of updating, one Flock Extension to maintain.
- dreamcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I used Flock last year with its first public beta and wasn't impressed. Of course, how could anyone with how it was built up. But it was also buggy, clumsy, slow, and based on Firefox 1.0, if even.
A few days ago when I noted my Firefox 1.5.0.4 windows were taking up to 15 seconds to open, I realized I needed to make a new profile and exercise some extension discipline.
I made a new profile, and I was amazed at how snappy Firefox could be without the bloaty, leaky extensions in the chrome. It had been so long. Now it was back almost in the same league as Camino, which I probably would be using if it weren't for a certain SU toolbar...
But of course, this was totally stripped down. I began wishing again that SeaMonkey would get the 10-year interface update that it desperately needs.
So what the hell, I tried Flock again. And you know, it's as snappy as a bare Firefox, and yet, it's not bare. It has an ingenious extension of function without the sluggish extensions. It also seems to have a way to avoid creating a bloated bookmarks menu filled with links I'll forget about as soon as I Cmd-D. And it accepts the most important extensions for which I was using Firefox.
This might hold me til Firefox 3. - crazyboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I did try flock a while back and was impressed, but after a reformat, I didnt get time to download the latest version. Now after hearing all the good news, I went and downloaded, installed..Now I see Flock can be tweaked exactly like firefox, the way u want and the installation procedure abolutely rocks. After getting my permission, it imported firefox bookmarks, cookies, passwords, history and on the first run, u just feel like updating firefox, everything is there for you...even the live bookmarks...I really like its flickr intergration, as its gonna make my life real easier..
My only gripe is that flickr doesnt support yahoo 360 blog and when it imported firefox bookmarks, each subfolders in the FF bookmarks were moved by flock to the top level. I have to look into it, but I feel flock's concept is different, which maynot need any subfolders. Eventhough yahoo is the default search engine, u can easily change it google or anyother..the option is there. And I like Flock by default will search bookmarks and history from the search bar..In firefox, u have to install two extensions to get the same effect (Locate in bookmarks and Enhanced Bookmark Search)...even then its like 3-4 clicks (open bookmarks--manage bookmarks..enter search...right click "locate"...) I cant really find any faults with Flock except it takes a more memory than FF, but then its still beta,..while firefox had severe problems with memory leaks till recently and it FF became one of the slowest browsers (Click back on a webpage and wait...)..
Oncle Flock gets out of beta, i'm sure a lot of ppl will move from firefox...especially those to whom it really caters.. - rudinz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@greggish
Flock does contribute to Mozilla. If there is some bug thats discovered in the Mozilla code, it would be reported and also any optimizations which would make Firefox run faster/better would be reported too and don't forget the fact that some of the devs were Mozilla folks. - JSolo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't think the entire team at Flock worked on Firefox, but that would be a nice story to tell the world and would instantly give them street cred.
One thing I will give the Flock folks, Will and Lloyd in particular - they listen to people, actively engage the community for feedback and use the communities feedback to shape the product. Case in point: I whined to them about how Flock handled imported Firefox bookmarks and they changed it and sure, lots of people probably complained it beyond just myself, but that doesn't help my fragile ego. You'll see the Flock guys asking people what they want from Flock all the time on blogs or if you send them a nastigram, bitching about such and such feature not performing in a way you expected.
Now, you're probably asking how the hell Flock is going to monetize, aka make some cash so those VCs get a return on their investment. Simple! PARTNERSHIPS. On the top right, you're little search box has been sold off to Yahoo though I have a feeling that Google did try and make a competitive offer and of course image handling has been sold to both Y! and Photobucket (they need to monetize as badly as possible ever since beating their drums and getting VC funding). Who knows what else is next? I'm still waiting for Flock to sell links to any product viewed on any page to eBay, for right clicks (aka contextual menus) to have Google adwords, for a Greasemonkey script that puts up interstitial ads before viewing every page and requiring all attempts at saving a page to be in Microsoft Metro format. Those are jokes, Flock guys - please don't sick Bart's attack dogs on me.
A web browser is full of bits and pieces of real estate that be sold to the highest bidder and, if they are successful, it is highly likely that there will be many a competitor. Moreover, you will see a lot of VC funded competitors going down the same path of selling web browser real estate because Flock will have proven the market is viable and that the concept is legitimate. All they have to do is succeed which I sincerely hope they do. - level, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I am suprised by alot of the comments. This browser is amazing. It seamlessly integrates photobucket or flickr, pretty much all of the bloggers, a nice favorite and collections manager, a beautiful news reader, and has probably one of the nicest interfaces I have seen. I have used pretty much every browser out there and I have been using this one alot lately on both my mac and pc. The only one that I really like better is Camino because it is a little faster but this browser is just flat out awesome. Sure you can get extensions for the other browsers but why when you can get it in the first download and it does it without any bugs or annoyances that I can find. There is quite a few extensions available but not near as much as with firefox. Obviously it acts alot like firefox but the integration with everything that most people use is awesome. And if you don't use those features then you don't have to. They will not intrude at all. Another cool feature is the snippets. See the little button at the bottom right and click on it. It will open up a window at the bottom for you to drag text and images and save them for later use. How freakin cool is that? So quit being so damn negative you picky ass digg people...lol...To me this browser hangs with the best of them and they haven't even released Cardinal yet which will probably be similar to this browser but with even more bugs worked out. I just wish they would install something into it that gives you a little more control over how your tabs work. Besides that I love it. It took about a minute to set it up with wordpress and photobucket and the newsreader and it did is so easily. Reminds me of using my mac. It just works. I am pretty damn impressed.
- canyonblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2and what happens when new and better options come out than flickr, del.icio.us etc.? i like flock, the polish is great and the feature set appeals to me... i just wish we could focus that into a single browser, ie. firefox via extensions so i don't need flock, firefox, camino, ie 6/7 (on the PC) etc. all on my system.
- firemaker103, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People, people! 99.9% of firefox extensions work with flock! Know how the author said Google Notebook doesn't work with flock! http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=3264391
http://wiki.flock.com/index.php?title=Modify_Firefox_Extensions - xenlab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"hahaa..." (in my best nelson muntz voice).
sorry couldn't resist. - Ashiro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like it and think it has a lot of promise, however, its not something I will use regularly.
- Estazor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well didn't some of the Flock team already work on the Firefox browser. So why would they have to give back to it if part of their own hardwork already went into it? I mean it's like they're taking part of what they made and expanding on it.
Plus it's open source. They don't need to give back to it and it's not like they are flat competing with Firefox. If anything they are for Firefox and Flock. Again this all from what I've gathered on my own little search on Flock. - zootm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"and what happens when new and better options come out than flickr, del.icio.us etc.?"
The system originally just supported del.icio.us for bookmarks and Flickr for photos. Now it supports two services for both of those -- I'm not sure how extensible the system is, but it's certainly *possible* to add more services. - matid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2What I love about flock is it's bookmarks/history search engine. It coulnd't be more intuitive. You just type you the search bar and you get results from your history as well as del.icio.us. I think it should be incorporated into Firefox (I know nightly have places, but they need *much* polish)
- rudinz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The Flock team is currently working on this and you can see something similar to this in the future releases but it cannot be guranteed.
- tanaeem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Flock rocks.
I have switched from Firefox.
Synchronization of bookmarkwith delicious is great.
So is the search bar, it autometically searches favorite and local history. - rudinz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We will soon be releasing a converter, using which u can convert all you favorite Firefox extensions on the fly.
- rudinz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All the features in Flock interact with each other, its impossible to create an extension with all these interactions without losing functionality.
- byronm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Internet explorer 7 does everything flock does practically and it looks like Yahoo realized this since they released a yahoo branded IE7 component.
Don't get me wrong, flock is great but its not like it isn't being done through extensions or modern browsers such as IE 7, Opera 9 and Firefox 2.x
heck, the dude Running flock is a great guy. Meet with him at Bar Camp NYC and i sincerely appreciate what he is doing. - Estazor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How does IE7 do everything Flock does?
- rudinz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Flock devs are in constant touch with the devs of these services and any change would be notified to them immediately and its not just Flock which relies on these APIs, there are tons of other applications too.
- andz2anand, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1but then think abt one group of flock developers focusing on maintaining compatibility issue....compared to huge collections of extensions developed and maintained by independent developers
- oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1what did one shepherd say to the other shepherd?
let's get the flock outta here. - writerboyVSgod, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I would use Flock as my main browser if you could create folders in the bookmark toolbar. The way Flock handles bookmark management is clumsy and useless.
- davdav, on 10/12/2007, -10/+10Enough Flock hype.
And for the record I used the thing for a period of months. - andz2anand, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, what about the commercial aspect.. how does Flock Please Yahoo ... How does it finally make money from Firefox extension... The Flock Idea is good should get commerical value it deserves.... Now its responsiblity of a Firefox Fan to look-up Flock code and make an extension to convert Firefox to Flock minus Yahoo :)
- greggish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Unless Flock committs to financially supporting Mozilla I wouldn't use it. I would rather use Firefox and support Mozilla. Flock seems to be another Apple, looking to score big on the back of Open Source. Apple is known for not giving back one bit to open source even though OSX is completely built from FreeBSD. It's true that they don't have to, but they are one of the few companies in that area that gives nothing. I was listening to an interview with the developer of SAMBA, and he was talking about how Apple is very strange that way... anyway, I digress. I just hope Flock at least gives back to the developers that created their product.
- somnabulate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think one main reason Flock wouldn't work as an extension is that the search is _so_ difference from Firefox; it searches your Favorites (bookmarks) and history.
- TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I, personally, haven't really tried out Flock in it's full glory as of yet. I've installed a few of the earlier releases to check it out, but I still use SwiftFox and Firefox.
- Jarda, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1How many stories on prominent sites can 10$ million in venture capital buy?
- Lee69, on 10/12/2007, -9/+7I agree, there's been a lot of hype behind Flock and I just don't see it as being any good. I wouldn't switch to it.
- drwiii, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Excellent. It's like they took all the BS web 2.0 trends I hate and combined them into one easy-to-avoid package.
- oOLiquidNightOo, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6i'm not trying to fan flames here but sincerely, how many more "browsers" do we really need?
- Visceral, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5No, no it does not. It's just more web 2.0 hype with polish. A shiny turd is still a turd.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -24/+2Anybody thats still says rocks! should be hung drawn and quartered.
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