Sep
Flock
It’s been quite some time since I tried Flock. I took a look at it way back around version 0.7 and found it interesting, but not ready for public consumption. For those not in the know, Flock is a browser. I know what you’re saying, “don’t we have enough browsers?” You would be correct and for most folks simply browsing the web, I would not recommend Flock (stick to Firefox for now); however, if you are one of those folks, like us, who have a blog, a Flickr account, a YouTube account and any other number of social networking sites, you might want to give Flock a shot.
Select to View Larger Image
Here’s a quick reason why. I used Flock to make this GUOM blog post. Before submitting my post however, I decided that a screen capture would be appropriate. I used Flock to upload the image, shown above, to my Flickr account, complete with tags. The image then appeared in my Flock media gallery. I simply dragged the thumbnail image into my blog post. The link to the image was automatically inserted as well as a smaller version of the image. Very nice. It made the blog posting process very simple and saved me several steps from my previous posting method(using TextMate). There are many other features (way to numerous for me to mention) and I plan on exploring many of them. I might even share my findings in a future post.
I’ve also begun using Flock as my default browser. It’s based on the Mozilla engine (Firefox) and I find it to be fairly quick and accurate when viewing my favorite sites. I also like that I can install Flock on my Windoze machine at work and on my personal Macbook Pro. I even tried installing the Firefox Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (to keep all my bookmarks sync’d across the many computers I use daily) and it is working flawlessly even though it is not “officially” supported. {Read Comments Below for an Update!} It will be an interesting experiment to see if I once again change browsers, but Flock is compelling enough for me to give it another try. Have you tried Flock? Let us know by posting a comment.
Blogged with Flock
You wrote:
I even tried installing the Firefox Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (to keep all my bookmarks sync’d across the many computers I use daily) and it is working flawlessly even though it is not “officially” supported.
Thanks for the shout-out.
Unfortunately, Foxmarks works flawlessly with Flock only if by flawlessly you mean “not at all.” Flock completely replaces the bookmark system built into Firefox, so making Foxmarks work with Flock is a substantial undertaking, the main reason it hasn’t been done yet.
If you’ve found a version that does indeed work with Flock, please let us know — Foxmarks is available under an Open Source license so it’s always possible that someone has quietly done the heavy lifting to make it work without telling us about it.
For now, as far we know, Foxmarks works only with Firefox and the reasons for that are technical, not policy.
-Todd
September 16th, 2007 at 3:41 pmTodd,
Foxmarks works with the current version of Flock that I am using (0.9.0.2). I am using Flock and Foxmarks on several different computers (3 Macs and one Windows) and each one continues to sync my bookmarks/favorites. My post was meant to imply that it is working and working well.
Let me know if you need additional info and keep up the great work. The more I use Flock, the more I like it and without Foxmarks, I would still be using Safari for my bookmark syncing needs. Foxmarks is a great product and one I recommend to all my friends, family and students.
———-
September 16th, 2007 at 6:14 pmSteven B. Combs, Ph.D.
:: Give Us One Minute (GUOM)
:: http://www.giveusoneminute.com
:: giveusoneminute@gmail.com
Steven,
My curiosity was sufficiently piqued by your reply that I downloaded and installed Flock to see for myself.
What I found — to my amazement — was that, despite the warning message about potential compatibility problems — Foxmarks installed and claimed to sync without a hitch.
Then I went looking for my synced bookmarks and that’s when I ran into trouble. It doesn’t appear that there is any UI in Flock to access the “traditional” Firefox bookmarks. It’s obvious in the UI to set up Delicious and Magnolia accounts (insert .’s as appropriate) to access those bookmarks, but there’s no way that I can see to access the bookmarks that Foxmarks syncs.
This is different from my understanding of what the Flock developers had done — I thought that they had ripped out the back-end bookmark storage entirely. It appears instead that the back-end remains but is entirely vestigial; the new UI doesn’t talk at all to the old back-end.
So while it’s technically true to say that Foxmarks works with Flock, it’s an academic sort of assertion if you can’t actually access the bookmarks that Foxmarks is synchronizing.
I’m not a regular Flock user, though, so it’s possible that I’ve misunderstood something or have missed some less obvious way in. I hope you’ll correct me if that’s the case.
-Todd
September 25th, 2007 at 3:03 pmTodd,
You are absolutely correct. Foxmarks is NOT syncing. I ran a couple of tests and found the same thing you did. I guess in my glee, I failed to notice that while I received a sync successful message, nothing was really happening. So sorry that you spent the time to find this out for yourself. I guess next time I will need to “completely” verify an add-ons operation. I have since removed the non-working add-on and now have no syncing of favorites. I am trying to use the del.icio.us integration, but am not liking it so far. So, who do we send e-mails to get Foxmarks working?
Steven
September 25th, 2007 at 7:23 pm———-
Steven B. Combs, Ph.D.
:: Give Us One Minute (GUOM)
:: http://www.giveusoneminute.com
:: giveusoneminute@gmail.com