So now Flock is out again, now in version 0.7 and definitely more mature. I tried it first when the first developer beta was online and it is clear that the developers have put enourmous amounts of work into the whole product, from the user interface to the underlying technology.

So I decided to try it again, although I was disappointed the last time. Very disappointed. But it could be that this was due to the very anticipated new type of social browser they managed to create a huge buzz around. Everybody was writing about Flock last autumn, and I think this was not to the benefit of the team and the product. Somewhat the buzz overheated and put a pressure on the whole project that wouldn't have been necessary. But maybe it also could have helped in developing a better product, due to early user involvement.

Now here's the point: I tried it and uninstalled right after trying it for about 3 hours. Why?

1. It broke a fundamental mechanism of my browser that I use a hundred times every day
2. It has a counter intuitive user interface and some serious (logical) flaws

ad 1. I think that it is radically difficult to provide a new web browser to a group of people who consider the browser their single most important tool on the computer. Those people have high demand, good knowledge how to tune and customize this tool and possibly have it customized so heavily that you might even take functionality away for them, rather than adding new for average users. The one function I really love about Firefox is the possibility to assign shortcuts to bookmarks, short words with place holders, that you then can enter into the address line of the browser and call (mostly) search services with that shortcut.

I have set up numerous of those combinations, the most important one is "gl" for Google, I also use "gd" for Google Desktop, "am" for Amazon, "dl" for "dict.leo.org", "gs" for Google Scholar "gb" for Google Blogsearch and "ti" for Technorati. I have even more, but those are the one that I really use frequently. Whenever I search for something (which happens quite often) I use this shortcut. Whenever someone sits next to me and watches me typing "gs" and the search term into the address page and Google comes up, they ask how I did this and how cool that is.

Because Flock tries to transparently integrate del.icio.us into the browser, they broke this possibility (at least I couldn't find it after searching for a while).

2. In many cases (especially when integrating a blog into Flock) the interface is bad and has serious functional flaws. Although it detects the XML-RPC API really fine, and uses MetaWeblog API (which is significantly better than Blogger API) the integration doesn't work right. This also does apply to many other functions, especially bookmarking (where I don't get my del.icio.us tags to choose from them) and Flickr integration (which is really slow and not that well done.

I think I could have found more reasons, but the first one is already the best reason, because I would have to change my routine, my habit, but without gaining any significant advantage. I have del.icio.us Integration with the excellent Firefox Plugin and I do not visit Flickr that much. One thing that could be a good argument is blog posting integration, because that would free me from that web-based interface that is really not perfect for writing and would also have the benefit of having my posts saved locally.

So, again no Flock. Maybe next time.