Flock Beta 1 has been released

Yesterday, the team behind the open source web browser, Flock - which is based on Firefox, with some major social/web2.0 features added - posted on their Blog that Flock beta 1 has been released.

I am going to be trying it out this week, kicking its tires, and hopefully developing some firm conclusions about it.

One of the things that pleases me about it is that it uses the same core as Firefox 1.5. That same core is also used by Camino, a sort of a Safari-fied version of Firefox.

So the same long laundry list of standard web technologies that are supported by Firefox, work just the same in Flock and Camino. That is important. And, it is a long list of standards indeed. Here are just a few of them: HTML, XHTML, SVG, CANVAS element for graphics/animation, XSLT, CSS 2.1, etc. No other browser today supports as many W3 standards.

As your personal predilection drifts from one browser to the next, you can just tend tend to use that one more. They are all compatible with regard to the web pages they display and how they display them. So the browser issue is finally decoupled from the web page issue, as it should be.

The Social Web and Web 2.0 features of Flock are what make it really compelling. They have made searching, bookmarking, blogging, and photo browsing/uploading truly easy.

Now everyone can use the latest, most popular features of the web - with free, cutting-edge software to help them do it. That is a pretty sweet deal.

Here is an excerpt of the Flock first-beta announcement that its team put out yesterday:

Flock team:

What do we like about Flock Beta 1?
Where to start? This first beta has a bunch of features that offer a glimpse at where we're headed:

Photos:

Sharing photos is one of the main ways people connect with their friends online, and we believe Flock delivers a rich end-to-end experience for Flickr and PhotoBucket users.

Uploading:

Getting pictures online doesn't have to be tedious. In Flock beta 1, users can simply drag pictures onto the Photo icon to upload them, batch upload with our photo uploader, or even drag and drop pictures onto any form field on the web (we'll store the picture on your Flickr or Photobucket account, then insert the appropriate HTML snippet into the form).

Discovery:

On any web page (such as a Typepad blog, a MySpace page...), mouse over any public picture that's hosted on Flickr or Photobucket and we'll offer to show you the entire photostream in our photo topbar. And once you're there, you can scroll through thumbnails (including nice big ones) faster then ever before. It's fast and addictive!

Sharing:

Right click any picture to blog it. Or drag a photo thumbnail into any comment field on the web. Or drag a picture from your desktop into a comment field. Then talk about it.

Notification:

Keep a list of your photo buddies and Flock will tell you when your friends have new pictures. We'll import your Flickr friends list and let you add anyone on Flickr or Photobucket.

News:

RSS made easy. With Flock you can preview any RSS feed, then easily add it to your RSS aggregator (we call it My News). You can then view new stories by feed, by category, or aggregated across all categories (our front page shows you today's headlines). We also tell you when you have new stories - keeping you up to date at all times.

Technorati tags: flock, browser, web, social, flickr, rss, searching, bookmarking, software