Flock Switches To Chromium For New Beta 154
An anonymous reader writes "Flock, the social networking browser, has moved from Firefox open source code to Chromium in its latest beta. The new Flock is essentially a combination of Chrome and TweetDeck, as you can sign in to Twitter and Facebook accounts and look at a single feed that incorporates updates from both. Currently, the beta is only available on Windows, but a Mac version is slated for later this year."
Re:Why not WebKit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they are using the GUI as well. And they are probably doing so to cut development time for other things they care about more than reimplementing another GUI around WebKit.
Re:No more Fireflock. What next? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. I didn't explain my main worry. There's a strong trend towards Chrome because of its simplicity, and I like Firefox because of its completeness. People who "give to shits about freetard politics" would use GNU Icecat. I don't. I just think that Firefox is the best.
Re:No more Fireflock. What next? (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the H.264 point has been mooted by the introduction of WebM (VP8 + Ogg Vorbis). If VP8 is in fact patent-free
Yes. If. MPEG LA claims it isn't and one of the core x264 developers states (paraphrasing) it's unlikely to be.
MS has stated an intent to include WebM in IE9. Firefox and Chrome already support WebM in development releases
This is all the reason in the world MPEG LA needs to immediately prepare a portfolio of infringed patents. Someone the size of Microsoft and Google distributing to all their users, Firefox which for now is quite well funded?
If you think WebM isn't going to have at least "many" of the same patent problems as H.264 I think you're thinking unrealistically.
Re:No more Fireflock. What next? (Score:1, Insightful)
If you think WebM isn't going to have at least "many" of the same patent problems as H.264 I think you're thinking unrealistically.
And with Google providing no indemnification any of their downstream users those users could be in a world of hurt. Google, on the other hand, has already licensed MPEG-LA's patent pool so they couldn't care less.
Re:VP8 on Safari (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really since you can't use Flash on either the iPad or iPhone, so the only way to view streaming video is through HTML5, and presumably H.264. In either case, HTML5 fins.
Macs can run any browser of your choosing including Firefox and Chrome, which do support VP8. VP8 just seems like a better choice than H.264 for streaming video. Perhaps when all the other major browsers support VP8, Apple will add support.
Chrome Extensions (Score:5, Insightful)
So now Flock is Chrome + Javascript application layer on top of that. The Flock devs are aware they can basically write javascript extensions, right? Those extensions will work on all 3 platforms of Chrome/Chromium.
Why not just release them as pure Chrome extensions and call it a day? What is the benefit of calling it a separate browser?
The Chromed Bird extension for Chrome was what caused my wife to switch over. It is my favorite Chrome extension for any platform.
Flock was taken a Linux/Mac/Win product and turned it into a Windows only product without offering anything new or worthwhile.
Re:No more Fireflock. What next? (Score:3, Insightful)
Decrying FUD and putting your fingers in your ears because someone said something you disagree with doesn't make it untrue.
MPEG-LA are a cartel that needs to be out of business.
You do realize that MPEG-LA going out of business doesn't eliminate or invalidate the patents in the pool, right? All that is going to do is make it a bigger pain for anyone who wants to implement video codecs by having to individually go to all licensors.
They are actively stifling progress in the useful arts and preventing progress in general.
Breaking up the MPEG-LA isn't going to stop the businesses whose patents making up the pool from being able to do so anyway. It's just going to create more hassles on the licensees.
Re:No more Fireflock. What next? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think they've ever lead the market in features; they've led the market in quality.
You've got that completely backwards - at least for the past >=5 years.
Firefox was first awesome because, compared to the alternative, it was fast - damn fast - and lightweight. It also used modern standards, which could certainly be considered a 'feature'.
Then Firefox dominated amongst geeks due to the extensions - the very large, typically high quality extensions. The extension API was a non-trivial part of this - ie, a "feature".
As for quality? Have you given Chrome/Chromium a fair shake? I switched from Firefox about a year ago because I was sick and tired of Firefox quality problem: even with minimal extensions (Adblock and Flashblock), and the Flash plugin used for occasional things, it was unstable. It was horribly unstable, crashing upwards of once or twice a day. If it wasn't Flash causing the problem, it was Javascript itself. Yes, I disabled extensions trying to find the problem, tried different versions, etc., but I'm pretty sure it was just Firefox design issues.
I switched to Chromium as soon as there was a semblance of ad blocking (hiding) and didn't look back. The speed difference on a per-tab basis is significant, nevermind when you've got a dozen or more tabs open at once: Chromium is noticeably faster on a single core system, nevermind a multicore.
Re:Why not WebKit? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is common knowledge within certain programming and Internet addict communities that Chromium is open sourced. For people outside these communities (which is the vast majority of humankind) it is not common knowledge.
Feel happy when you can enlighten someone to a piece of knowledge. But don't lord it over them. They are sure to know many things common to their communities of which you have no idea. The first step to being accepted by people (getting friends, wife, getting along with workmates etc.) is learning how to accept people.
Dissing someone for not knowing what Chromium is just reeks of an inferiority complex. Learn to accept that others know things you don't know; and you know things that others don't know.
Should I say you've been living under a rock because you don't know these basic concepts of social behaviour, which are ubiquitous across different cultures and time periods? No, it is much better to tell, convince, persuade. Resorting to insults, or astonishment which implies disrespect is just aggressive behaviour, which is something which most societies do not accept (except for the fact that people being aggressive to one another can be fairly entertaining).
If someone asks "what animal does beef come from?", there are several ways to respond. I will list two.
Correct
Incorrect
[person who asked question now feels incredibly stupid and will respond either with aggression, or avoidance of you. Either way, they will not like you]
[alternatively, you will receive a lecture from the politeness police]
I CAN'T give up Firefox just yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome/Chromium still doesn't have an adblocker that actually blocks ads instead of just hiding them. Adblock Plus saves bandwidth, finishes loading a page quicker because you'll never get hung up on a slow/dead ad server, and neatly reformats the page to work without the ads.
Once THAT level of functionality in an adblocker arrives with Chrome/Chromium, only then will I consider switching. And don't tell me to use a HOSTS file; what if I want to whitelist certain sites?
Re:Mozilla Corp blew it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox is hardly "going down in flames".
Sure, it's lacking some features (such as process-per-tab, über-fast javascript execution) that chrome has, but it's still well ahead of Opera and IE. I've still never seen this "crash prone-ness" that people talk about with regard to firefox, maybe because I've always used adblock plus? In any event I suspect it will go away with 3.6.4, which pulls flash and other plugins out of the browser process.
Thunderbird, on the other hand, isn't doing so great. But I'd say that's as much about the rise of gmail and other good webmail based systems as anything else. I would even argue that Mozilla has made the right decision to de-prioritize thunderbird work given the "put literally everything including apps on the web" atmosphere these days.
Not so fast... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Note that Chrome doesn't actually support this all the way, so a few resources might still load before AdBlock can get to them, in which case we'll remove those as usual."
Re:Mozilla Corp blew it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the only thing going for Firefox are extensions(Chrome supports extensions now) and proper Adblock.
Safari supports extensions [apple.com] now too so that's going to take a big bite out of their mac market share. Probably the best thing Firefox has going for it now is dev tools like Firebug [getfirebug.com]. I remember how nimble and fast it used to be back when it was still called Phoenix, what the hell happened ?
Re:Mozilla Corp blew it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Safari supports extensions [apple.com] now too [...]
Not to say you are wrong in your prediction, but remember that it is the extensions that have to support Safari to get people to switch from Firefox, not the other way around.