Category: Flock

Houston, we have a solution without a problem

Houston, we have a problem

According to Scrivs over at Whitespace we’re building a solution without a problem.

This isn’t the first time the 9rules guys have attacked Flock.

I’m having a hard time understanding what their intentions are. On the one hand they lament the state of web publishing software (concluding to build their own) and on the other, lambast a tool that aims to at least make the publishing part easier. I’m all for constructive criticism and feedback (to answer one of their points, our pre-launch hype was really a product of the fact that people are still hungry for a better browser), but I don’t see much in their posts that’s constructive. It’s almost as if they’d prefer us to just take our gloves and baseball and go home.

Which is admittedly somewhat disappointing since I would have expected a little more engagement from them before writing the whole thing off. We’ve particularly gone to great lengths to make it quite clear that we’re just getting started and are looking for feedback! And yet they’re essentially taking what come across as cheap shots. Where’s the substance of their critique?

As I’m considering this, I guess there is one thing that might not make sense about how we’re building Flock — and why we released Flock as we did. We’re not, for example, keeping everything closed up and super-secret, going after the first run experience and trying to blow your socks off (like Apple typically does). So for most Mac users, this is probably a strange departure from the norm.

I know that when I download a Mac app for the first time, I go through a process similar to Ryan’s. Typically if I’m not impressed or the value isn’t made obvious to me in first 10 seconds, it will end up in the trash. That’s just how it is.

If I were to apply that metric to Flock 0.4.9, it would probably meet a similar fate after a day or two. It’s just too buggy and too slow to be used as my primary browser. And quite frankly, if I weren’t on the dev team, I’d have no idea when to expect new features, when performance might be improved or when my pet feature might show up. As a result, it would be very easy to pass on Flock (at least for the time being) and stick with what I’ve got.

But we’re not Apple and we’re not building Flock that way. We’re doing something different. We have a vision: to build a world-class browser that focuses not only on bringing information into the browser, but also encourages engagement in web-centered dialogue and discussion. To do this, we’re not going to hole up for a year and then spit out some fantastic product. Our process of designing for inclusivity is nearly as important as the product itself and will, we believe, lead to a much more interesting, usable and powerful tool.

We’re starting first with a fairly simple collection of tools for now. But over time, they will grow into the story of a more interactive, more human-friendly online experience. It’s not enough to say that Flock could be replicated with a bunch of extensions and themes; doing so ultimately ignores the problem that we’re working on. Flock isn’t being designed to be static or to sit on your desktop for years without changing. It will be a product that will change and evolve according to how people use the web to communicate and interact. Firefox did an excellent job of smoothing out the Internet Explorer model of the web. We’re working on what happens next.

So those wishing to share and shape this vision are incouraged to get involved (even if all you have for now is constructive criticism). I firmly believe that the best ideas for Flock will not come only from us, but more importantly from our community.

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“They showed [the mayor] ‘Flock’ and he went crazy,” Farrah said. “He loved it.”

So what if San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom wasn’t referring to Flock, the browser? It still looks cool.

And not only that, but apparently the artist is expecting similar reviews for his ‘Flock’:

“It won’t be so readily accepted and people will say, ‘What the hell is that?’ which is always good,” he said.

Kindred, misunderstood artists — aren’t we all?

Flock on the BBC

Flickr Photo

Here is why Flock is interesting: over the past two years, the way we use the internet has started to change.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | Internet Part II: Return of the geeks?

There you have it. The BBC’s Paul Mason sums up the reasons why Flock makes sense.

Of course, it’s really not that simple. Firefox does and will continue to be the best browser around for most people. But for those who want a little more – who want to use the browser to directly engage with the people and ideas they encounter on the web – maybe Flock can help make that process a little easier and a bit more exciting.

Anh, we’ll see.

Flock Postage Stamp Contest

Now that Flickr is offering all kinds of new services (including stamp printing!) I thought it’d be fun to do something about it!

Flickr PhotoSo how about this? You design some kind of way cool Flock-inspired postage stamp and we’ll print it. I can’t say how many we’ll print, but chances are it’ll be a few (since we’ll need stamps to send out the shirt we’ll give you in exchange for your entry!).

Let’s say this little contest goes until Nov 5.

Here’s how to play: create a stamp using this template (borrowed from Postal Shirow). Upload it to your Flickr account and tag it “flockstamp” and add it to the Flock Art pool. Based on interestingness and some good taste, we’ll pick a winner and print the stamps and give you some other cool swag.

Questions? Just drop me a message!

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Take a gander at Flock (pun intended)

Flickr PhotoIt’s still pretty early on in Flock‘s history, so a Slashdotting now and then certainly isn’t a bad thing. Not to mention homepage coverage on BusinessWeek and a great write up by Stowe Boyd, who I had the pleasure to meet today.

But the feeling that I’ve gotten from Slashdot and around the blogs surround two things:

  1. What the heck is it? … and …
  2. Why do you have such an ugly website?

Well, the first answer would take forever to explain, so I’d rather just show you.
For the second one, hey, it took me like 2 hours on the day of our initial private launch. I was focused more on the browser and less on the site and if you don’t like it, well good – more time to spend using Flock on other sites!

Anh, no, seriously … I’ll be taking another whack at it eventually but at least as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather have it be super simple, super plain and super lean. I’ll tone the volume down in the next release but at least the design, for whatever reason, seems to have inspired some kind of derivitive work.

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Supah Cheap CSS Dropshadow Hack

Flickr PhotoSo I came up with my very own stupid CSS hack to do dropshadows in Flock (and by reverse extension, Firefox). It’s very much a hack and not one that I would generally recommend unless in very small quantities, but I like it because a) I invented it and b) it works for meª.
So how does it work? Well, it’s fairly simple, actually (and would work even better with a little Javascript-foo).
So take any block level element, something like an h1 or h2, give it a class of “dropshadow” and (ready for the hack?) add a span tag inside the block with a title that is identical to the text of the object. Something like this:


<h1>And another for good measure</h1>

Now here’s the CSS you need (add it to the head of your document:


    .dropshadow {
      color: #fff; 
      margin:0; 
      padding:0; 
      position: relative;
      z-index: 1
      }
    .dropshadow span { 
      position: absolute; 
      top: 1px; 
      left: 1px; 
      color: #000; 
      z-index: -1; 
      -moz-opacity: 0.50;
      }
    .dropshadow span:after {content: attr(title);}

It works by taking your original text, positioning it relatively and then elevating it to the Z-index of 1. Then we generate the same text from the title attribute of the span, sets the Z-index to –1 and absolutely positions it snugly beneath the the original text. Give it a –moz-opacity of something between 0.00 and 1.00 and you’ve got a crisp dropshadow! You can of course also change the top and left values to move the dropshadow around.

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Opera drinks the Googlejuice, finds business model

Don't ask me about my business modelAfter my buddy Om Malik did some digging, it turns out that Opera’s move to make its browser free had less to do with its community and more do to with inking an increased compensation deal with Google. This makes plenty of sense in terms of Opera’s longer term viability (paying for browsers is simply no longer an option — sorry OmniWeb) but also suggests that my spidey-senses are becoming more and more savvy:

Though they claim that “Opera fans around the globe made this day possible,� for some reason, that sentiment rings hollow to me.

So now that we have Mozilla Corporation and Opera showing that a viable business is possible through leveraging various browser defaults, it makes it somewhat easier to begin to answer a question we get a lot.

It’s interesting to note that Opera CEO’s answers to various interview questions could be considerably generalized to apply to many of the browsers currently competing for mindshare:

[Browsername] Watch: [Browsername] is a commercial company; how do you plan on generating revenue from the desktop browser?

[Browser Company CEO]: Through search and service deals. We will continue to provide services that enhance the browser experience. We will continue to add services, as long as they improve the overall user experience. The user comes first.

Post script: As for wrestling the number one spot away from the giant gorilla, well, we’ll just have to see who executes best. I’m not entirely concerned about that personally, as I would rather be focused on building tools that are simple, elegant and relevant to a good number of people. Seems to me if you start there, it won’t really matter whether you’re first first, third or eigth. How you got there would be just, based on the quality of your work and not the number of exclusive OEM deals you might strike. Heh, but I digress.

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Webzine2005 Pimpage

Webzine2005Matt beat me to pimping the upcoming Webzine2005 event happening this weekend, but I wanted to go ahead and spread the meme.

…That and Andy, Matt and I will be presenting at 12 noon on Sunday in the Valhalla Room on “Making Media With Open Source Publishing Tools”. Hmmm. Wonder if that has anything to do with anything.

Oh, and yes, they have a wiki and IRC room, reportedly inspired by Bar Camp… Nice!