I'm sure the main reason for this is that I've been using Google's Chrome browser as my primary browser for the past few months. Chrome is all about keeping things simple and it really does a great job. The two coolest things about Chrome are it's merged search and address bar and the "Start" page which is a page that sort of evolves with your browsing habits. I should also mention it's speed. It's faster then FireFox which is saying something. All of these things have made me love Chrome.
Then I got a netbook (an HP mini which I love, except of the battery life) and I found myself wishing I could use that half an inch of space at the top of the browser for actually viewing pages instead of just as a search and address bar. But Chrome is all about simplicity and I guess that falls into the category of "extra features" which Chrome is all about not having. It certainly wasn't enough to make me switch back to Firefox or IE but the seed had been planted and I was starting the question my decision to abandon the more feature-rich browsers.
So what does this have to do with Flock? Well even though I felt it was cluttered I still decided to give it a little more of a chance since there were a few drawbacks to the uncluttered Chrome. Once I saw Flock's designs and features for keeping you simultaneously connected to all of your online accounts I really started to open up to it. Right now I usually have about 4 tabs in Chrome open and just sort of jump between them randomly to check up on things. Flock completely eliminates any need for this. It gives a very compact but effective visual cue of which accounts have unchecked items and lets you bring up an account with one click. That's pretty sweet.
Then I discovered the Feeds reader. I fell in love with that right away. Nothing terribly special about it. Just the fact that it's integrated and is implemented very well is, by it's self, more then I could have hoped for. I'm all about one-stop-shops and Flock was really delivering with the web experience. I decided that I would use it for my social sites at the very least and I could do my heavy browsing with Chrome.
I got my HP Mini out and loaded it up. Setup my accounts. Checked and replied to some messages from friends and was overall very happy with it. I pulled up the Feeds reader and clicked on an article that caught my interest. After the page loaded I felt that same longing for a full screen mode that I'd had with Chrome except it was a little more intense since Flock had even less screen real estate. Almost out of reflex I tapped the F11 button. To my surprise and utter joy Flock morphed to a beautiful full screen mode that utilized every millimeter of the display. On a 10.1'' screen this is a priceless feature. After I saw this I popped open the Blog editor and have been typing ever since.
I'll, most likely still use Chrome on my desktop for it's shear speed and simplicity but for my Mini it's Flock all the way.
Flock can be downloaded here: http://www.flock.com/
Blogged with the Flock Browser
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