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Hey Flockstars,
We've been quiet on the blog front for the last few weeks because we've been working very hard.
First of all, a big shoutout to all the Flockstars I got to meet at MacWorld! I hope you all enjoyed my boisterous presentation and I hope you all got to go home with some Flock swag. We had a blast, and you can see a small smattering of photos here.
If you were at MacWorld, then you already heard the announcement: Flock 1.1 is currently in QA and will be available as a public beta on www.flock.com in a few short weeks. Yep, 1.1. We're very proud of 1.0, and it seemed only appropriate to build you a 1.1 that is even more Flocktacular.
Here's some of the cool stuff you'll see in 1.1:
Webmail
Webmail integration in Flock brings yet another great reason to set up your own web experience base camp from within Flock. Email is the number one most frequently used communication channel on the web, and we tend to overlook that email is social too! Yahoo! Mail and Gmail integration in Flock is coming, and those of you that don't use desktop mail clients are about to be very happy.
Flock lets you know when you have mail waiting, and makes it crazy easy to share the things you find on the web (URLs, Photos, Videos, etc) from within the browser through your webmail account.
MyWorld: Friend Activity and Customization
My World has a new column, and it's called Friend Activity. This new column shows you updates from your friends across all People services, so you can see what they’ve been up to, all within the comfort of My World. Speaking of comfort: you can now rename the MyWorld page to be called whatever the heck you want. After all, it's your page. We've also add the ability for you to add/delete columns in MyWorld and to move them around. Give your MyWorld some personality!
Picasa integration
We heard you. I told you we would! You clamored and pleaded for Picasa integration more than any other service, so we've done it. Flock 1.1 brings Picasa to the Media Bar and Photo Uploader. Enjoy!
I will post more information about the public beta as soon as I have it. Get ready for some more Flock'n'roll.
Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
Blogged with Flock
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Other Systems & Languages
Is Flock 1.1 going to be based on Gecko 1.9, or are you going to be holding that off until the next release?
Hey Kelson,
We will be moving to Gecko 1.9 after Firefox3 is launched; we want to work off of the most solid code possible. When the time comes, it will be one of our top priorities...we're definitely excited about the improvements!
Flock on,
Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
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blog.evanhamilton.com
Any chance Flock 1.1 will support OpenID authentication? My drupal-based OpenID blog keeps me from joining the flock!
As you probably know, OpenID will be built in to drupal 6 and is starting to gain traction elsewhere, including movable type, livejournal, blogger, magnolia, technorati, twitterfeed, claimid, 37signals, pibb, dopplr.
Hey Nate,
We're definitely aware of OpenID and think it's a great idea. It's not on target for integration now, but it's definitely something that is in our consciousness as we develop future roadmaps.
Are you actually not able to set up your drupal blog in Flock because you use OpenID?
Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
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blog.evanhamilton.com
Mail and Picassa integration. Nice. I've been waiting for Picassa for some time and glad to see it's making it's way in now. The e-mail integration sounds like it could turn out really nicely as well depending on how it's handled. I've always liked e-mail integrated within a web browser in a similar style to Opera, although haven't wound up liking the rest of any of the browsers that do this. If you have something similar to what Opera has for the mail integration (basically a mail client in an internet browser tab), I'll gladly kiss my standalone mail client goodbye. Web browsing, RSS and e-mail all in the same place. That's all the basic internet stuff except instant messaging.
Will there come German version?
would really like to see keyword shortcuts in the address bar working, eg to have:
http://whois.domaintools.com/%s
as a bookmark with a keyword of 'w'. I can then put:
w flock.com
... into the address bar and get redirected instantly to:
http://whois.domaintools.com/flock.com
This is THE biggest thing I miss from FF.
But loving the gmail and picasa integration. How about SmugMug too????
I'm so excited for the added integration of webmail. I definitely believe this is the right direction for Flock to continue to add productivity to the browser not to mention you really couldn't tap a larger audience out there!
the gmail support is really nice, any chance that we'll see full google account integration, I'd love to have Google Calendar support built into the browser. I'd also like Google reader built in, although I'd rather have calendar support.
I'd also like last.fm support as well!
Overall I love this browser, it has totally replaced Firefox as my browser of choice. Keep up the good work!
I am really excited about the email integration especially Gmail. With Remember the Milk's Gmail extension, I am in Gmail all day and if Flock can integrate this better into the browser, I am all for it.
Oh I just love the way Flock has grown....And hey Jeff I think you don't know about the Meebo extension....Now you've got the instant messaging too!!! Since the day I've installed Flock I just couldn't stop using it...I've got Firefox and Safari too but Flock is my preference....
they want to rip off firefox as much as possible. they dont have the creativity to make their own full length browser. all flock is, is firefox with flock group's own style extensions. ill give credit when they decide to not use someone else's technology to make a name for themselves.
I enjoy using the Facebook integration, but I use MySpace more, will there be any MySpace integration in the future?
Can't wait for the Gmail integration guys! Keep up the excellent work!
@Rishi, K-IntheHouse, webonics: Thanks!
@harold: That's on my list of functionalities that we need to bring back...hopefully later this year. I'll log your vote for SmugMug!
@wunderbar: I'll log your votes for those services. :)
@Pascal: As I've said before, all the localization of Flock is done by volunteers. Currently nobody has volunteered to localize Flock into German, but if you're interested you should email gandalf at flock dot com. No technical knowledge neccessary!
@Your Name: We're built off of Firefox because we feel that it is the most superior browser technology on the market today. There's no reason for us to change how your pages are rendered, as Firefox already does this great. We're concentrated on providing a more compelling experience around the different services you use online, which is not part of Firefox's focus. I suggest you give us a try; you might like Flock.
@Jon: MySpace is definitely a possibility and definitely high on our list of potential services. A lot depends on how their API develops...hopefully we'll know more soon.
Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
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blog.evanhamilton.com
What about integrated music services? Last.fm, Finetune, iLike. With integrated friends list, profiles and music scrobbling!
"And hey Jeff I think you don't know about the Meebo extension....Now you've got the instant messaging too!!!"
Oh yeah. Forgot about that. I've just never been a huge fan of Meebo as I've got Adium running and handling all my IM needs almost flawlessly. I kind of feel like mail goes better with a web browser than instant messaging since an e-mail window needs the same amount of space as a browser window, and Windows sizes just get Wonky with instant messaging.
@ Pascal - There is a team working on a German version as we speak and I hope that we'll have one available for 1.0 in the next couple of days as well as shortly after 1.1 ships.
Thx,
Mike Dosik
Director, Engineering Services
Flock, Inc.
I'm looking forward to the newest version and features! I love Flock....it's like more than a browser to me...Awesome! :)
~Les
Harold: When I initially started using Flock more, I missed my keywords too. You can get them back via a change in about:config, detailed here:
http://www.flock.com/node/11752
pretty excited about the gmail!
Why is OpenID no priority?
Take Magnolia for example supports Facebook AND OpenID, none of these could be used by flock. I have to create ANOTHER account again because I liked to use Flock...
This sounds great.
Hopefully the Blog-Editor gets some improvements like text-alignment.
Can't wait for the new version to see. Great work already !
Well, i didnt know abt flock until very recently, and i have to say, im totally impressed ! Splendid skins (need more though ;) ), and integration with al the neat stuff really makes it a Bloggers Browser! Thumbs Up Flock Team, and am anxiously awaiting for Flock 1.1...
Any chance of including hotmail on the list of integrated clients??
looking forward to the gmail integration, does that mean that google bookmarks are not too far behind too? cos that would be absolutely awesome
I love Flock, and the fact that it's built off of FF - no need to recreate the wheel. I can't wait for the email integration, I might be able to get my fiancee to switch once that comes out. Two services that I would love to see are MySpace, and Jaiku.
Gmail integration and "My World"'s page improvement, you made my day!!
Keep up the good work.
What could be great is to be able, directly from "My World"'s page, to check articles from favorites feeds as "viewed", so they disapear from the list.
Thanks
~Ludo
@Jonas: I understand the frustration of lack of OpenID support. Unfortunately, we're a small company and we need to concentrate on getting our foothold in the browser landscape right now. OpenID support, as great as it would be, is not going to do that.
@Ryo: I will log your vote for text alignment. In the meantime, I highly recommend the BlogPlus extension: https://extensions.flock.com/node/11538
@Atof: Thanks for the kind words! As for Hotmail, my impression is that they don't have an API so we can't really access that information cleanly. Send Microsoft some emails asking for an API! :)
@Vytautas: I will log your vote for Google bookmarks.
@Duane: Votes logged. :)
@Ludo: We definitely want to sanitize the relationship between MyWorld and the other features in the future...marking as read may well be part of it.
Thanks to everyone for your kind words...I can't wait to get the beta to you! :)
Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
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blog.evanhamilton.com
I did contact gandalf at flock dot com Hope I get an answer!
Google Bookmark: I would like it!
I really like Flock - my only noted objection is in the Yahoo interface - where it asks about which logon page you want and how you want to start - my objection - there is a check box to ask if you do not want this option to be seen again. --
You will always see this box again with the defaults set to Yahoo, no matter how you set the options or respond every time Flock is reloaded.
Irritating, not fatal.
Hey Jim,
Can you explain what feature you're talking about specifically? None of our features should go back to Yahoo! after you change them. You may be experiencing a bug...let me know what part of Flock you're talking about and we'll see what we can do!
Evan Hamilton
Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com
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blog.evanhamilton.com
Hey have been really enjoying Flock 1.0.. keep up the great work. The only thing stopping me using it as my full time browser is the del.icio.us intergration. I use the del.icio.us bookmarks 1.5 all the time, and while I can think up my own descriptive tags I just like to use the ones that previous taggers had used.
When will flock be able to pull the descriptive tags when I add something to my del.icio.us ??? Its gonna be the killer feature in my eyes!
I love the progress this this browser is making- my biggest suggestion was My World customization, thanks! I can't wait to see the Gmail integration. New themes would be great, I know you're working on it.
Will the Gmail integration work with Google Apps hosted Gmail, or just @gmail.com addresses?
Flock Rocks.
Best browser for anyone to use...Themes would be nice <3.
+1 for Last.fm integration- would be a huge plus for me!
@harold: Just type about:config into your url field, then type keyword into the filter. Set keyword.enabled to true, and then set flock.favorites.showKeyword to true as well. Bam, keywords using %s, just like FF.
I was reading about the improvements, is excelent! Great work!
There is a new music mash-up, idiomag, it´s very interesting, think it´s posible to incorporate it?
I´m sorry for my english...
Cheers!
Nico
can't wait to see my gmail integrated!!! Will that ever happen with hi5. what about the color scheme i don't like about 1.0? any posibility of an easy change-color thing?
gmail? Yay! That's stellar! Add last.fm and Vimeo and I"ll finally check "Yes" in that box that keeps asking "do you want to set Flock as your default browser" every time I launch!
hello，i am a chinese ，so i love chinese lang，but how can i use the chinese lang！or tel me how i can change it to chinese！tel me for a email！thanks！
Having chosen Ippimail over GMail as my webmail system... Some day finding decent squirrel mail integration in the flock picture would be awesome (although Yahoo and Google are of course top priorities by popularity as they should be lol).
I don't use flock for much as far as services go, although in fact the reason I first tried it was for the access to ma.gnolia in the bookmarking :-) but I'm likely to soon change over form Imageshack because of the flock--photobucket support. Flock kind of grows on ya!
For me, the thing that really separates flock from firefox is the 'polishing' for odds and ends (I'm not found of extensions). but I've got to agree it's good sense to base it on Firefox. The only other alternative worth while without getting proprietary is KHTML/Webkit I guess.
Note that I use Opera and Konqueror when Opera is unavailable for testing my own web pages ;-)
I'm so stoked about the email integration I can't even speak. Its going to be Flocking awesome.
I love this browser. This is everything I needed in a browser. No more Safari or Firefox.I use Flock for my creative photography blog at
http://gamini.wordpress.com
Are you going to implement Ipernity.com? They use RSS a lot so I guess it won't be too difficult. And it looks quite similar to flickr in many ways, even the delivered uploader is based on the same. I got a pro-account, so when you need my help to test things, it's ok :).
Gmail integration will be awesome and a reason to begin to use flock in my workspace too. Keep up the good work!
And an extra vote for OpenID!
I anticipate the day that Flock integrates with MySpace. Although I hate MySpace, it is a necessary evil in my networking with fans. I chose Flock because it helped me do all my fanbase management from a single "control room" with the exception of MySpace. It kicks total butt! I hope it will help me kick even more in future releases.
Hi. When posting to a blog, it would be nice to be able to add trackbacks in the post. Unless I am missing something, as it stands now I have to log in to the site as usual and then add the trackbacks in the post.
I would LOVE a way to keep the settings, account info, local favorites, etc., synced across two computers.
Any way to do this? Or am I missing something?
@your name,
I'm not sure if you're aware, in fact it sounds like you're definitely NOT aware, that Mozilla, right from the moment Netscape made the code open-source, was MEANT to me copied and modified by individual companies for their own purposes. To copy, or follow in the footsteps of Firefox is complimentary co-operative and good business sense. I'm glad Flock is built on such a solid foundation, and wouldn't want it any other way. I still use Firefox and Safari (both Mozilla based) when I don't need Flock's features, but Flock excels in ways the other browsers can't touch.
--
Daryl S
Please fix the annoying window & tab handling bugs. Occasionally when you close a tab, the window title won't change to the current tab. When that happens you can no longer select that window from the Windows menu.
January 30, 2008 - 4:14pm — Norman (not verified)
I would LOVE a way to keep the settings, account info, local favorites, etc., synced across two computers.
Any way to do this? Or am I missing something?
Not sure if extensions exist or not but the most simple way for any Mozilla based browser is to store your profile on a portable disk (usb, floppy e.t.c.) or SFTP server and load it onto your PC as part of your login scripts.
Not sure how to do that on Windows actually but it is quite trivial on Unix/Linux based systems. A wrapper script around the flock binary also could work if you want to get jiggy with it.
I actually did this with a USB Stick and SeaMonkey until the USB Stick snapped in half hehe.