Copyright 2006, 2008 Claire J Rottenberg

If you use Mac OS X, you probably use either Safari or Firefox as your web browser. Both of these browsers are popular and serve the needs of most users, but there are other browsers for Mac OS X that are also good and have some extra features that are missing in Safari or Firefox. In this review, I describe some of the special features of one lesser-known browser: Flock.

Flock is a visually pleasing browser, using blue highlights and Mac OS X gray in a non-cluttered layout with unusual but attractive icons. When you first launch Flock, an Import Wizard will guide you through importing your preferences, cookies, browsing history and bookmarks from Safari.

One of Flock's special features that sets it apart from other web browsers is its sharing capabilities. The first time you launch Flock, the first tabbed window will be a "Getting Started" window with five tabs for: Social Animals (social networks, such as Facebook or YouTube), Shutterbugs (photo sites, such as Photobucket or Flickr), Bloggers (blog sites, such as Blogger or Wordpress), Media Junkies (media sharing sites, such as Flickr or YouTube), and News Hounds (RSS feeds sites). Each section has instructions for logging onto your favorite sharing sites.

One unique feature of Flock is the ability to add entries to a blog directly from Flock. Once you've set up your blog with Flock, just select "Blog Editor" from the Tools menu and a pane will open, letting you enter and edit text or images for your next blog entry. When you finish, you can publish the post directly to your blog.

My favorite feature of Flock is its handling of RSS and news feeds. The first thing you might notice when you open a feed in Flock is how attractive it looks. Feeds are laid out in two neatly spaced columns (although you can change it to one column) with Flock's pleasant blue, gray and white background. Each item in a feed has four options under it - Viewed, Save, Blog, and Email. Most other RSS readers don't make it as easy as Flock does to mark items as viewed or to save individual items in a feed. When you've marked an item as saved, it will appear in the Saved Articles collection in Flock's sidebar. Two other special features of RSS feeds in Flock are an easy-to-subscribe button and a sidebar for storing and viewing feeds.

Another feature of Flock worth mentioning is its search function. Like Spotlight, searching in Flock yields immediate results. Start typing a few letters in the search box in the upper right corner of the Flock window and results appear instantly.

If you're looking for a browser that works well with RSS feeds and blogs, integrates well with social bookmarking and photo sharing services and has superfast search capabilities, you might want to try Flock.

Disclaimer: All trademarks and products mentioned in this review are assumed to be the property of their owners and no infringement of rights is intended through mention of the products.