The other day I was looking for updates for the Flickr Uploadr and found this; a new browser with a hostage-to-fortune-name and built-in photo uploading features. Based around the notion of making all sorts of blogging, sharing and community activities more streamlined, it seems to be built around the same open-source core as Firefox and Safari. Flock therefore has a load of familiar features including tabbed browsing and web searches from the toolbar (though it seems to favour Yahoo! over Google). The word-processor style blogging tool interface is identical to the one in Firefox.
Uploading photos to Flickr using Flock's built-in uploader
(also works with Photobucket)
The stuff that interested me was the photo uploader and "photo-bar". The uploader will work with Flickr and Photobucket; you just drop photos from your hard drive into the uploader window, after which you can re-title, add captions and tags just like the Flickr Uploadr; once you click "upload" you get a second window offering the chance to add them to an existing set or create a new one*. You can re-order the photos in the list before uploading, a feature not offered by the Mac Flickr Uploadr. When I first tried Flock, I couldn't find a way of adding batch tags, but as of the Flock 0.7.12 update, I can add batch tags by selecting multiple photos in the ulpoader. Whether this is a new feature, or whether I just missed it the first time, I can't be certain.(also works with Photobucket)
*this is with Flickr; I don't have a Photobucket account.
Drag-and-drop photos from the photo-bar into blog comments
(on some sites you see the photos, in others you get the html)
Once photos are uploaded, they'll appear in the Flock photo-bar, along with everything else in your Flickr stream; you can then drag and drop the images into blog posts or comments. When you click on a photo thumbnail, three tiny icons appear, allowing you to pick whether you want to add a pic in Flickr's preset small or large sizes. If you want the photo in a different size, you can add a sizing instruction to the html tag (height="xxx" width="xxx" where "xxx" is the number of pixels) - the photo below is a Flickr large image that was scaled down to fit this blog's column width.
Flickr large image dragged and dropped from photo-bar,
then scaled down to fit Blogger column width
Flock impresses me enough that I've started using it regularly, though more as a substitute for Flickr Uploadr than Firefox. The usefulness of the photo-bar means it's taking over for blogging, but for general browsing it's so similar to Firefox that there's no point in swapping over, especially as I have all sorts of extensions installed which might or might not work with Flock assuming I knew how to import them and could be bothered doing it.
Pros:
Cons
Available from www.flock.com and well worth a go. Like Firefox, it does take ages to self-configure when you first install it.
Pros:
- Firefox-like interface and functions make it easy to get started
- Runs smoothly
- Photo upload from inside application
- You can change order of photos in uploader
- Supports batch tags
- Photo-bar very handy
Cons
- Yahoo! search engine
Available from www.flock.com and well worth a go. Like Firefox, it does take ages to self-configure when you first install it.
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