SillyDog701

[Antony]

We here at SillyDog701 haven't spent a great attention on Flock browser based on Mozilla Firefox codebase and focused on the social networking. According to Electronista, Flock 3.0 beta is out now, and it uses Google's Chromium and its WebKit engine. (Chromium is the open source web browser project from which Google Chrome draws its source code.)

Flock 3 supports Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr, the most popular in their respective categories. The browser resembles Google Chrome and Apple Safari as it's WebKit based. It will also have what's being called the first sidebar application in Chromium: the extra area is built in HTML5 and will show updates from friends without leaving the current website.

Flock 3.0 beta is currently available for Windows platform, while the Mac version is due in July. Flock will continue to support the older, Mozilla-based browser, and expects to release version 2.6. The current stable release is version 2.5.6.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3

[James]

Sidebar application? Now you have me curious. It was because of the lack of sidebar that I gave up on Chrome. Very interesting.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3

[DJGM]

Well ... what an epic fail this is turning out to be. Aside from the fact that Flock is following Chrome in
following the over simplified (or dumbed down) GUI route, it is also auto-installing itself in completely
the wrong place, with no option for the user to install it in the correct place ... exactly like Chrome.



Although if it wouldn't actually crash on startup, then I might be able to judge it further.



Eitherway, I'll be banning it from my network like I have with Chrome, once they drop support for v2.x.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SeaMonkey/2.0.4 (like Firefox/3.6.x)

[Antony]

So the sole issue was just that the software installs itself into an unusual folder? And you can't move it to the 'proper' folder you like?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3

[DJGM]

The issue is that, exactly like Chrome, it automatically installs itself into a location that was never meant
for software installations to go ... within a sub-sub-sub-sub folder of \Users on Windows 7 and Vista, or
a sub-sub-sub-sub folder of \Documents and Settings on Windows XP. It gives the user no options to
install it in the location that has been the standard location since 1995 ... Program Files.

This is wrong, and as you might say, unethical, as it makes it easier for users to perform unauthorised
software installations on PC's upon which they are are not allowed Admin level access, such as public
internet access computers in internet cafes or libraries, or other places with shared access PC's
controlled and maintained by the relevant appointed admins and technical staff.

At least if a program, be it an internet browser or something else, is written to be installed within a
sub folder of Program Files, unauthorised installations can be stopped in their tracks, as the admin
staff would've set the PC's to block aattempts to add any new files to the Program Files directory.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SeaMonkey/2.0.4 (like Firefox/3.6.x)

[Antony]

Based on what you mentioned, I would agree that it is unethical.

Do you happen to know Chrome's excuses/reasons on this unethical installing path?

And are you able to more Chrome to proper folder? Or it was designed to be with great difficulties.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3

[DJGM]

Based on what you mentioned, I would agree that it is unethical.

Do you happen to know Chrome's excuses/reasons on this unethical installing path?

And are you able to more Chrome to proper folder? Or it was designed to be with great difficulties.

I would assume, to make it easy for as many people as possible to install the software, which in theory
is a good thing, but in practice, the way the Chromium based installer are written, it's a bad thing.

It's possible to manually move a Google Chrome installation to C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome if you
want to, and the same for the new Flock 3 beta (to C:\Program Files\Flock\Beta for example) but this
breaks things, as it would have to be moved to back to it's original (and inappropriate) location if
you want to uninstall the program as cleanly as possible via Add/Remove Programs.

The only Chromium based browser I'd recommend is Iron. It still has the over simplified GUI you get
with Google Chrome, and now this new Flock beta, but is does have a standard install routine that
is set by default to install the software to the Program Files directory. Also, it does not have the
phone-home "feature" of Google Chrome that some have labelled as spyware, nor does it have
the sneaky Google update "feature" that updates the browser with no visible notification.

Iron is available primarily for Windows, but with versions for Linux and Mac OS X also offered.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SeaMonkey/2.0.4 (like Firefox/3.6.x)

[saint satin stain]

I am bothered by the non standard install place of Google Chrome, but I like it. I now have good reason to uninstall it. I shall replace it with the other, Iron? (I can't see the post with name in it.)

SeaMonkey is my default, but I use K-Meleon, Firefox, IE 8, and, soon uninstalled, Google Chrome. I will replace it with the apparently more secure variant.

I also use Live Mail for Hotmail only; my other 14 email accounts are organized into SeaMonkey.

My computer, the room it's in, and the internet is my office. The multiple browsers with their multiple home pages implement my dynamic file system.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 SeaMonkey/2.0.6

[James]

I can't think of anyone who uses Flock anymore. Once IE9 makes an appearance, it's going to be a horserace between it and FF and Chrome (with Safari and Opera in the distant rear). I'm willing to wager that over time, Chrome will overtake FF.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.127 Safari/533.4