What I Don’t Like About Flock (so far)

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).

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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This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on February 19, 2008 at 10:35 am and filed under problems, tools. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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7 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Benjamin — wasn’t specifically planning to blog about Flock for Idealab — probably will for Poynter, though. So go for it!

- Amy


1. Amy Gahran on February 20th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Hi, Evan. I’ll check out the 1.1 beta, thanks!

I’ll post more later about my discontent with your people sidebar. A bit too slammed to do it today. Will let you know when that’s up.

Thanks for being so responsive on this!

- Amy Gahran


2. Amy Gahran on February 20th, 2008 at 10:19 am
The Flock 1.1 Beta is out.

Here’s my one big pet peeve about Flock:

The blog writing tool inserts “span style=’bold’” and “span style=’italic’” instead of strong and em. This hurts me to my very soul.

Since the Flock people

p.s. Amy, my latest post to IdeaLab was going to be about Flock, but somehow Flock got passed over entirely. I plan to revisit it but am wondering if you’re planning to bring your Flock analysis there.


3. Benjamin Melançon on February 20th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Hey Amy,

Flock 1.1 hit public beta today. You can grab the beta at http://www.flock.com/beta/download . The full version will be out in the next month or so, depending on how many bugs are found.

I’ve added exporting favorites as .html to our FAQ at http://flock.com/faq/show/30#q_61211

I think after my long post I deserve a better explanation as to what you don’t find functional about the People sidebar. As I said, most people do like it (http://flock.com/news/list) so I’m curious as to how you’re not finding it functional.

Flock on,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com


4. Evan Hamilton on February 19th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Thanks for responding Evan.

Re: Feed reader — Yes, if you’d have it remember how I left my feed folders, that’s a step in the right direction. However, it would be even better to allow users to select a default preference to collapse (or expand) all folders — or at least provide a collapse/expand all button or menu option.

When is this fabled Flock 1.1 due out?

Thanks for explaining how to export favorites to HTML via the favorites manager. I tested that on the mac, and it did work. I couldn’t find that instruction on your site, you might want to make it more obvious.

RE: Social media — keep trying. Maybe it’ll get more functional as you continue. Worth a shot.

- Amy Gahran


5. Amy Gahran on February 19th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Hey Amy,

Great feedback. We’re always trying to make Flock better, and stuff like this is key in doing so. Some responses below.

-Feed Folders Open-
Flock 1.1 will remember whether you left these opened or closed, which is a much-needed improvement. Having them by default be open or closed is not something we plan to do, but I will take it into consideration (most people prefer to have it stay as they left it, which, as I mentioned, will be possible in 1.1).

-Grouping by Most Recent Feed-
Makes sense to me. I will put it on the feature request list.

-Exporting Favorites as HTML-
You should be able to do this by going to Favorites>Favorites Manager>File>Export (on Windows…may be a slightly different path on Mac). Let me know if that is not working.

-People sidebar-
Sorry to hear that you dislike this feature…it’s the one that most people love.
We don’t have a list of upcoming services until we know they’re going to be able to be successfully integrated. The only officially announced upcoming service to be integrated is MySpace, but we spend a lot of time collecting community feedback about what else should go in the sidebar. If you have a suggestion, let me know and I will log your vote.

You can respond to tweets (and post tweets) by clicking your latest tweet under your username. Obviously this is hard to find, and in 1.1 we will be adding an “edit” button to make it more obvious.

Reading full tweets is tricky…I totally understand your want to be able to do this (I use Twitter all the time), but we’re also working within the confines of a sidebar designed for multiple other social networks. It’s something we’re definitely ruminating on, but we haven’t found a solution for yet.

I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t gotten a response in our support forums yet. We’re in the process of hiring a full time support person so that posts on that forum don’t fall through the cracks.

Thanks again and Flock on,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com


6. Evan Hamilton on February 19th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I’ve been watching your experience with Flock, so thanx for posting here.

I tried Flock for about a week and found that I still liked Firefox more. Maybe because of familiarity, maybe because of usability, can’t quite put my finger on it.

I agree about both the cool factor of the feed reader and the lame factor of the social networking feature. However, I still prefer to just use Bloglines as my reader, the Twitter integration is pretty much worthless & it’s simply easier to just go to Facebook to check in there.

It’s got a great shiny look and interface, but for sheer utilitarian value, I’m sticking with Firefox.


7. Dave Webb on February 19th, 2008 at 10:59 am