Flock 2 Beta^(three) Now Accepting Test Pilots

Flock 2 is built on the same technology that powers Firefox 3. Take a test flight
and get ready to meet your new favorite browser!

Interface Improvements

Interface Improvements in Firefox 3 and Flock 2

Browser interfaces are delicate things. Like when you are driving an unfamiliar car, having something change in your browser can really throw you for a loop. You navigate the web with your browser, and if your turn signal (or back button) is not in the right place, you're going to have a hard time.

That said, there are always things that could be better. The Mozilla and Flock teams took special care in tweaking the interfaces of Firefox 3 and Flock 2 to provide a better browsing experience overall, without throwing you off your game.

So, what exactly will I see in Firefox 3 and Flock 2?

The first step that Mozilla took in Firefox 3 is to make you feel more at home in the browser. Firefox 3 and Flock 2 will feature Operating System-specific buttons and web forms that look and feel like what you're used to in Windows or Mac.

(Windows Form)

(Mac Form)

Many of the changes in Firefox 3 and Flock 2 are simply surfacing features that have been around for a while. The Add-Ons window now shows the plugins you have installed in the browser and allows you to disable those that might be causing issues. When you close the browser and have multiple tabs open, Firefox 3 and Flock 2 will ask you if you want to save the current collection of tabs for next time…a much-requested feature in Firefox 2 and Flock 1 that was actually available, just buried.

What interface enhancements will I see within Flock's features?

Flock has its own set of powerful features built on top of the Firefox platform, and we took this opportunity to tweak many of them slightly.

Flock's Media Bar has received the most attention, as the previous organization system for favorited Media Streams wasn't quite intuitive. In Flock 2, we took a number of elements from the general Favorites system and applied them to the Media Bar.

The first thing you'll notice is the blue Flock Star within the Media Bar instead of Flock 1's grey star. Clicking this star will favorite the current stream and turn it orange, just like when favoriting a webpage. Clicking an orange star in the Media Bar will, for the first time, provide a collection of options for this favorited media stream. The first is an option to delete said stream, as many people found it difficult to delete a favorited media stream in Flock 1. This dialog will also offer options to rename the favorited media stream and to place it in a folder (folders being yet another new feature). These combine to allow a brand new level of organization for favorited media streams, saving even more of your valuable time.

The People Sidebar has also been reworked slightly. With the release of Flock 1.2, we officially had enough People services in Flock that having them all activated would fill the entire tabbed section of the People Sidebar. If you narrowed your sidebar, you'd lose some of these tabs. Not good.

In Flock 2, we've modified this interface so it will scale as we continue to add more People services. Now, narrowing the sidebar will move tabs that don't fit on the top line to the line below, ensuring that you can always see these tabs.

Within the "All" tab, we've solved a similar issue by giving the list of services its own scrollbar, instead of taking up valuable vertical space that could hold your friends.

You won't be frantically grasping for the handbrake in Flock 2…interacting with your favorite web browser is going to be even easier and more fun than ever!