Summersault Blog

Today I downloaded and tried the view preview release of Flock, a new web browser based on Firefox.

I went into the experience cynical, having used many browsers in my experience as a professional website developer. What else could they possibly add that I would really want?

I found one feature in Flock that by itself makes it worth considering the browser.

Flock has built a better bookmark.

How Conventional Bookmarks Failed Me

In 1997 I became a bookmark fanatic and collected folder upon folder of them. Literally hundreds.

That worked OK until I started using more than one browser regularly, and the system broke down horrendously when I started using two computers regularly– one at work and one at home.

I could import bookmarks from one browser to another, but they quickly got out of sync.

Managing the bookmark mess

My solution– until now– was to move most of my bookmarks to a web-based system. Currently I’ve been fairly happy user of the free, non-commercial del.icio.us bookmarking service.

In this system all bookmarks are public, which is fine for most of my bookmarks. It builds on the synergy of many people sharing their bookmarks in the same place, enhancing my value of my own bookmarks. There are a lot of other reasons I like del.icio.us, but I digress.

del.icio.us made it very easy to get bookmarks into the system, but it was still a little harder that it seemed it should be to actually use the bookmarks.

Better bookmark storage

As a foundation of Flock’s bookmark system, my bookmarks are stored in my del.icio.us account. I can access the bookmarks directly in the browser or through the del.icio.us website, and flock automatically synchronizes between them. This means I can access my bookmarks easily from both my home and work computers, a real win.

This system blurs the line between public and private bookmarks. It takes some getting used to the concept that bookmarking something in my browser immediately makes it available to the rest of the world. I expect Flock will address this in a future release with private bookmarking option.

Better bookmark access

With the storage problem solved, there remains the difficulting of sifting through hundreds of bookmarks to find the Right One.

Flock does away with the conventional scheme of displaying folder within folder bookmarks. Instead, it offers three smarter ways to use my bookmarks. It actually tracks my most recently used bookmarks and my most frequently visited sites.

My personal favorite is the enhanced search bar (see screenshot). As I type a search term, Flock searches through my browsing history and searchs in real time for a match. I can select a result from the list or just press Enter as usual to search Google instead. Smart.

But before you download…

You can see in the screenshot that my “del.icio.us/markjugg” page appears twice in the history results. That second entry is not useful. Really, the first entry isn’t useful either, since this page represents just another copy of my bookmarks.

This is one of several rough edges in Flock that aren’t ironed out, earning it the “pre-alpha” status it currently has. If you try it out, expect a few glitches along the way.

For me, it’s been a refreshing and pleasant browser experience worth the few annoyances.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 10:33 am and is filed under Desktop Software, Website Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.