Flock just became unusable for me tonight. I was flying with the rest of the flock (pun intended) just dandy even with the quirky behavior as listed in my previous article. However, tonight I tried composing an email through Gmail’s standard web interface.

When I clicked on “Compose” or pressed “c” (I have the keyboard shortcuts enabled) Flock would start Java (not JavaScript) and I would be unable to access the Compose screen.

I admit I haven’t asked on the Flock forums yet, but I had to switch back to Firefox as my primary browser for a bit so I could get some stuff completed.

Does anyone know how to remedy this situation?

So far I find Flock as an excellet replacement for Firefox. There are a few quirky things about it, but that’s understandable at it’s 0.5pre status. Below are a few things that I have found “quirky” that work very differently from Firefox. Oh, one other thing. I have installed Flock on all three of my systems; Work, Home Desktop, Home Laptop.

• Difference in post-install startup: All three systems have Firefox 1.5 beta installed. However, only my Home Desktop asked, upon starting Flock, to import anything from Firefox. The other two systems didn’t present Firefox as an option. After importing Firefox settings, I noticed that there was no “Favorites” or “Blog” buttons. I added them, but hte “customize” window looked really different as it had all the standard, mouse over, mouse out, onclick type images also.

• Plugins: The Macromedia Flash plugin worked like a charm. However, the Shockwave plugin doesn’t detect Flock as an appropriate browser. Even when I selected the Plugins folder, the Shockwave Installed still declined to accept it.

• Blog Editor: The quick blog editor is great for when you find something and want to quickly post about it.  I am finding that the WYSIWYG buttons sometimes don’t transfer from what you see into what you get on the blog.  For Example: on this post I had to go back into WordPress and edit the post to get the bullets to work and the bold first lines to stay bold. (I am actually editing this post in WordPress to make sure the formatting stays the same as I see it)

I will be adding to this thread as I encounter more Quirky Flock’ings.

I know the Flock people said to not use Flock as your default browser, but how am I to truly judge whether or not this is the browser for me?  So I did it!!  I set Flock as my default browser.

The first thing I notice is that Flock opens much more quickly than Firefox did on my system (P4 2.8Ghz, 1G Ram). This IS a VERY good thing.

Secondly, when clicking a link in MS Outlook the link would open up in Flock, but so would a “Locate Link Browser” window searching for an executable.  So, Google then became my friend.  I found the following the tip on a thread at Software Tip and Tricks.com: (slightly edited for clarity)

Welcome.  I have started this blog to document my experience and thoughts on the new browser Flock and all that comes about because of this new browser.  So far I am very impressed.  It is much quicker than Firefox.  I will post more later as I learn its pros and cons.