Irreproachable Honourableness

Flock

I've been using the Flock web browser for several weeks now.  I first saw it recommended in Andy Clarke's Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design.  Clarke recommended Flock as a tool to collect images for getting design ideas.

Flock provides a media bar for viewing images from Flickr, Facebook, and select other websites.
. Clarke suggests using the Media Bar to search Flickr (or the other supported sites) for ideas for the "mood" of a proposed design.  For instance, one could search for "purple" (for a website for one indigo-infatuated friend of mine) or for "flame" (lots of chaff to sort through there: anything that can possibly be part of the name of a band will get you lots of fan photos).

In any case, Flock also provides a Web Clipboard: you can drag selections of text, photos, whatever, over to the clipboard and save them.  I have a "mood" folder there, full of images that (in me) evoke the response I would like my website to give…someday, when I have time.

But beyond that, Flock has become my default browser. It has sidebars that provide live interfaces to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, news feeds (granted, I still use Google Reader); there's a photo uploader; there's a blog editor. It has a few problems, still being resolved, and is chasing a moving target: every "Web 2.0" site is probably changing their site interface weekly, so interactions with Facebook broke down for a day or so a few weeks ago, and Google has made some changes to Gmail that have still not been overcome. But the Flockers are doing well, and it's a tool I enjoy using, and that has made using the web's social networks more enjoyable.

Tags: flock, browser, web, transcending css, css, mood