Review: Flock web browser

With the rise of blogs, photo sharing and RSS news feeds, much has been said about Web 2.0. Flock is a browser built on top of Mozilla Firefox with all of these technologies in mind.

Setup is easy and Flock will take all of the settings from Firefox, including page history and cookies. This makes the transition the most painless of all browser upgrades, although this will not help those moving from Internet Explorer or Opera.

The interface is similar to most browsers, although the most recent browsing history is revealed by right-clicking on the Back button rather than there being a discrete menu.

It does feel a little hidden, but is convenient once discovered. On a more favourable note, it is possible to add icons for the blogging, photo and news tools.

A search box in the toolbar is nothing new, but the extra twist from Flock is that it searches dynamically as text is entered. The results vary depending on the words but it is a much faster way of searching.

Flock is an ideal tool for anyone who wants to record their web experiences on a blog. Simply select an area of text or even an image, and then select the Blog This option. An editor appears with both a Wysiwyg editor and a source editor.

It is compatible with Blogger, Typepad and other popular blogging tools. You can see some demo posts at http://ano pensource.wordpress.com.

A shortcut button can be added to the toolbar for creating blog posts without external content. This is not a complicated tool but it makes creating blog posts really easy. If you like blogging, Flock is well worth downloading just for this feature.

Of course, blogging is a two-way process and Flock comes with a handy RSS news feed reader. Blogs are organised in folders, each with its own summary; a summary page of the entire collection can also be viewed.

Images are not forgotten with a Photobar that can be shown at the top of the screen for moving images in and out of online spaces such as Flickr, Myspace and Ebay.

Although it doesn't have as many Extensions (add-ons) as Firefox, Flock is a decent browser with good blogging features and an excellent search tool.

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