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| When I open Flock’s feed reader, all my folders are expanded (above). I’d rather the default be that all folders are collapsed (below). |
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I’m still trying out the Flock browser, putting it through its paces. While I still generally like it, here are some problems that are bugging me so far:
Feed Reader: I love having this in my sidebar. It imports and exports feeds in OPML perfectly, including folder info. However, there are a couple of bothersome things.
First, when you open up the Flock feed reader in the sidebar, the default setting is for all folders to be expanded, rather than collapsed. If youhave several folders each containing lots of feeds, that’s a significant usability problem. I find myself constantly clicking folders closed. Could we change that default, Flock team?
Also, when you click on a folder to display all the latest results from all the feeds in that folder, it shows them grouped by feed. (That is, all the new results from feed A, then feed B, etc.) The reason I track so many feeds is I enjoy the serendipity of living in the moment. I’d love it if they offered an option to view results in a folder strictly by “most recent,” without grouping it by feed.
If they don’t fix these bugs, I might try installing the Sage feed reader plugin with Flock and try that instead.
A few more complaints…
Bookmarks: I like the usability of working with Flock bookmarks (”favorites”) in the sidebar, and the dialog box that pops up when I favorite something that allows me to immediately file it where I want it (a benefit over Firefox).
However, a major disadvantage is that I apparently cannot export my Flock bookmarks in HTML format! This annoys me, since my now meticulously organized personal data is effectively trapped within this browser. Yes, I tried grabbing the bookmarks.html file from within Flock’s application support folder — but it was empty! I don’t yet know where and how they’re storing my bookmarks, but I’m peeved by this.
I’ve posted a query about this bug in the Flock support forum, we’ll see what they say.
Social Networking: Well, this has been a total disappointment for me so far. The only service they support that I use regularly is Twitter, and there’s not indication of which services they will add next and when that might happen. Flock’s Twitter interface simply sucks: No easy way to reply to tweets, and it doesn’t even display the full 140 characters! (I have to mouseover to read a longer tweet.)
Well, incorporating social networking into the browser is a nice idea, and maybe Flock might nail this later, but for now I’m going to ignore this “feature.”
…Whining aside, I generally find Flock more usable than Firefox, so I’ll stick with it for now.
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