Flock Web Browser (Flock is only in the "preview" phase, meaning that this version may have bugs and flaws that could harm your computer, so install and use at your own risk. However, Windows A to Z has yet to encounter any errors or bugs. )

Flock is the latest Web browser to enter the market. It's written using Mozilla's Firefox code as its base and they just developed Flock off of it. Flock takes Firefox to a whole new level without bloating the browser like Microsoft has done to Internet Explorer. They managed to add quite a bit of multimedia features that Firefox (or any other browser for that matter) doesn't have. Even better, it works on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. So let's take a look at Flock...

When you open Flock, it looks almost exactly like Firefox. The layout of Flock is identical and even the button, address bar and search bar are in the same place as they are in Firefox. This is a good thing because Firefox's layout has proven itself to be very efficient and user-friendly. The first thing that you will notice is that the navigation buttons (home, back, forward, refresh, etc.) look a little different than Firefox's default theme. In Flock, they have different pictures on them that can be rather confusing for new users. We had to hover our mouse over them to see what function that each button did.

If you open the options control panel (Tools -> Options), you'll see the "insides" of Flock so to speak. This is where you can control every aspect of Flock much like the way you can in Firefox, even the control panel style looks the same. Along the top of the options window, you'll see
several different sub-option control panel links, such as General, Privacy, Content, Tabs, Downloads, Advanced, Blogging, and Web Services. In the General tab, you can change your
home page, set connection settings, and change Flock to your default Web browser if you wish. In the Privacy tab, you'll see an array of tabs leading you to history, saved passwords, cookies, and
so on. In the next tab, Content, you can turn on Flock's built-in pop-up blocker, change font sizes,
and much more. Let's skip ahead to the Downloads tab, which is where you can modify Flock's
built-in Download Manager, which is very nice. The Blogging tab is where you can set up your blogs that you wish to post to (more on that later) and the Web Services tab is where you can setup photo sharing and online favorite sharing (also more on that later).

Flock Screenshots

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Flock includes a blog editor that can be quite useful. Just go back to the options control panel and click on the "blogging" tab. In there you can click on the little "+" sign at the bottom and a window will pop-up with a wizard to setup a blog. Simply just input your blog's URL and it will auto-detect your blog's XML-RPC API, which is the way that blog editors communicate with the blog. Next, just type in your user name and password used to add posts to your blog and you're all set. You can also add notification servers to Flock, such as Technorati, so that it will tell these sites that you have posted something new to your blog.

In the Web Services tab in the options window, you'll find options for photo sharing and favorite sharing. In the favorite sharing area, you'll see that "del.icio.us" is already added and for now,
that is all that you can add. You can use "del.icio.us" to look at other's favorites and add your own for others to see too. The Flock developers are working on adding more services to this feature for upcoming versions of Flock. In the photo sharing tab, you can associate your "Flickr" account to Flock so you can use it to post and edit your pictures online. With this service, you can currently only use a "Flickr" account, but support for more online photo services will be available with later versions of Flickr.

To add a blog post to your blog, just click the button that has a feather icon on it in the top navigation bar and a window will pop-up for you to create and post a new blog entry. It worked quite well and we were pleased. However, it does not include a spell check, but we think that one will probably be added in later versions of Flock.

Some other things that Flock includes are tabbed browsing, themes, and extensions. Currently, there aren't any themes and very little extensions for Flock, but keep in mind that Flock is still very early in development and we expect that as more people being to use Flock, more extensions and themes will become available for download. The extensions are downloaded and installed just like they are in the Firefox, which makes the process literally painless. One of our favorite features of Flock is the "Clear Private Data" button, which is located in the "Tools" menu. When clicked, a box comes up with a one-touch way to clear your history, cookies, saved forms and passwords, download history, cache, and authenticated sessions with only one click.

In conclusion, we liked Flock a lot even though it is only in a preview status. Anyone who loves Mozilla's Firefox will without-a-doubt love Flock. It's very easy to use and it packs a lot of useful features into one very small package. It is definitely worth a look, especially if you are still using Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

NOTE: Flock is in "preview" status and has not been finished. This means that it may include software bugs and glitches that may cause harm and/or data loss to your computer. Install and use at your own risk. However, Windows A to Z has yet to encounter any errors or bugs.

Flock Screenshots



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