Periodicdesign

No, I’m not talking about a flock of birds, I’m talking about a browser and a rather nifty one at that. I stumbled across their home page the other day, although I can’t recall how I ended up there, and signed up for their announce list. Well, just last night, I received an announcement about an alpha/beta release for testing. I then proceeded to download both a copy for my home machine and one for my work machine. I have tinkered on both platforms with the browser and am very pleased with what I see so far.

As far as I can tell, this browser, for all intensive purposes, looks to give the major browsers like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, a run for their money. Of course, some of you may argue it’s just another browser and that market is already saturated with the aforementioned browsers as well as many others. To this I say, you are correct and Flock is dead, conversation over! Well, I’m not going to say that, because saying that would be down right ludicrous I tell you!

This thing is more than just a browser, it’s an interaction with the digital life around you. Thomas talks about the Personal InfoCloud and I think this browser moves in that direction. Flock brings what you want on the web, to you, without using web applications or scripting plug-ins for your current browser. This thing ties into your blog and your del.icio.us bookmarks, bringing a portion of your digital life to you. Now granted, it may not bring all of your digital life, but it is a start.

Browsers themselves have faced an unfortunate doom in the past few years. They are all on the same path of rendering valid mark-up being the basis of what a browser should do. On this level, I believe all browsers should be the same and I hope that in that aspect the browser wars are from over. Where browsers will take off is in the functionality and how they tie into the web and the data you want. As Thomas has already said:

In a “come to me web” this is very important.

The browser itself is rather slick in appearance and a rather usable interface to boot. I’m anxious to see what comes of this browser, as it is still in its early stages of development and testing. Will it die, or will this browser become something in the near future? Will this become as valid a browser as Firefox and IE or will it only be embraced by the blog and geek communities? Time will tell I guess.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 9:19 am and is filed under Accessibility, Browsers, Flock, Folksonomy, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Design, Interaction Design, People, Social Networking, Technology, Usability, User Interface Design, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.