RIP Netscape Navigator – AOL today finally stops maintenance and support for the browser many of us used in the 90s. I liked Navigator though in later years it became hopelessly bloated on the Mac platform. Its demise is the stuff of anti-competitive history.
From the ashes of NetScape, both Firefox and now Flock were born. Flock is a social media browser, so as well as all the basic web browsing you’d expect, it also connects to FB, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. There’s also blog integration (from whence this post), social bookmarking with del.icio.us and an in-built RSS reader. Or you can easily subscribe to your fave online or offline reader from the navbar.
At first, Flock is rather confusing since it has a persistent window on the left hand side with people in your networks or web clippings, as well as streaming pictures across the top, in addition to tabbed browsing and your toolbar favorites. That’s a lot of information to take in, but after some acclimatization it becomes more understandable.
I always find with new apps which you rely on so much, such as email or browser, any change can take some getting used to. Now that I have it configured, I quite like Flock. Sure, there isn’t the full suite of Extensions you’re used to on Firefox and no-one has yet volunteered a single new Theme, but it’s clean, fast and has some great features which might suit the social media maven.
Blogged with Flock