In another weblog post Lloyd Budd asked me to created an updated weblog post since last time I talked a bit about the topic of Flock and I thought that this time around it would be a good time to share some thoughts on the latest build I have been trying the last couple of days.
Lloyd suggested that I should go and download one of the latest continuous builds available by going into http://tinderbox.flock.com/, which I have done a couple of times, the last one being this morning where I downloaded the 0.4.11 build. So I got it installed and the process went rather smoothly.
However, and just because there are so many things to talk about this web browser, and to not try to bore people to death with a lengthy weblog post, I am going to focus, for the time being, and on this particular post on the weblogging component from Flock, since I have already been sharing my thoughts about Qumana, w.bloggar and Performancing for FireFox.
Ok, before I get started with sharing some of those thoughts I must say that this is not the first time that I have been in contact with the weblogging component from Flock. I have tried it out in the past and being such a big fan from w.bloggar and Qumana I wasn’t very much impressed to be honest. However, Lloyd suggested that I should give a try to some of the latest builds as there have been some substantial improvements as far as the weblogging component was concerned, amongst others. So I decided to do just that, as I have mentioned already, and got the latest build installed.
I must say that after I have done that, I am not sure what has happened after the installation itself, but things seem to have gone totally wrong, at least, from my initial reaction. Apparently, I have been doing a clean install of the build after having tried out reinstalling and a few other things and it looks like the weblogging component from the browser, along with a whole lot of other options are not longer working. I mean, I can click on different buttons and options but nothing seems to be happening. There is no activity taking place, no action executed, nothing ! Nada! Zero! Anyway, I thought it may have been a problem with my machine so I installed the same build on another machine, also running XP, and still the same problem.
I couldn’t create a weblogging account through the Tools > Options > Blogging menu option. I had to go through the Default drop down list to select Blog Topbar and then I got prompted indeed to enter the URL and set it all up. So I did and after being prompted to enter the URL address of my weblog it came up with the settings but selecting Movable Type, instead of WordPress, which is what I have got running for this weblog. So I changed that to WordPress, then click on next, entered my userid and password and it got rejected ! I thought it may have been a temporary problem, but it wasn’t. It is still there and persistent. So instead of selecting WordPress I select MetaWeblog API and that seem to do the trick as it accepted the settings and set up the account. Hoearaaa !
Thus I decided to give it a try out now and see how it would go, with the creation of this particular weblog post, but alas, it doesn’t seem to work. I try to click on the top left button Create a Blog Post, or clicking the cross on the top of the screen or through the Tools > Blog Editor and nothing happens. I see no action taking place at all and this is something that has got me really worried that I have may messed everything because, on the 0.4.10 build everything seemed to be working just fine, as far as the setup is concerned. So from there onwards I have tried to reinstall everything with a clean start and I am still getting the same thing. Nothing happening and frustration increasing by the minute.
But I have decided to persevere, I know that something must be wrong in the installation process but I haven’t figured out just yet what it is. I am not going to give up that easily on it since I think it would be worth while checking it out as it is a very promising way of providing some social networking capabilities in a single web browser, specially if those improvements that Lloyd mentioned would be a reality. I guess I will have to wait and see. But one thing that I have got very clear is the fact that so far the setup process of the blogging component is not as straight forward as many others, like, for instance, Qumana where it would only take you a few extra seconds for an automatic process to complete and have the weblog account ready. I think that if Flock would want to have that cutting edge advantage of the next best web browser experience in order to share information and collaborate with one another in whatever the environment, it would need to have some very slick features available and one of them should be its ease of use for an initial setup. And so far, and from what I have mentioned above, there is still some room for improvement. But I am hoping to have this issue sorted out soon (If you have got any clue about what I could do to try to fix it please drop a comment or send me an offline e-mail) so I can give it a try and provide a much more descriptive description of what this weblogging component is all about.
I guess that, for the time being, I am not ready to flock just yet. But it will come, I am sure.
Technorati Tags : Flock, Qumana, w.bloggar, Performancing for FireFox
(Update) : Just a quick update for folks who may be following up on this particular subject. Over at Lloyd’s weblog he has just been commenting the reason why I haven’t had much luck with the latest build available to try the weblogging component from Flock. It is all documented in Performancing for Flock. I have now downloaded the working build from the previous day and that seems to be working fine. So I will take a look into it the next few days and will certainly share another weblog post to detail what my experience has been so far. Thanks again to Lloyd for the headsup and for clarifying the different issues.