What would make Flock a "best of breed" product?

Don't forget compatibility with music services like the ever requested Last.fm

The speed and reliability have gotten to the point where I need to use another browser sometimes to get a job done.
Flock crashed so bad the other day my only option was to hard off my PC... talk about throw back to '98. I'm running 2.0b2 - so it is beta, but it's supposed to be the next step up!

Don't get me wrong, I love flock and all of its features, but the price we have to pay for them in terms of speed is getting too high.

Deal with the issues with RSS feeds. I've mentioned it a couple of times (The duplicating items; case in point being a 'read' RSS feed about a daily podcast suddenly having 74 items to read, some going as far back as 2006), but no-one seems to know how to help. It's a real pain on less updated blogs. It could be how Flock deals with the RSS items from a specific platform, but still, it's annoying to go 'OH NEW ENTRY AWESOME', only to find it's one from six months ago.

I am a huge Flock fan as most there at Flock already know. I do have one suggestion that I always forget to throw out there. When you click on a friendcard it always opens in the window that's open. So usually I open a new tab first then click on the friends page I want to go to. But it would be soooo nice if it opened a new tab on its own when clicked. The Gmail button does that, so any chance we could have the people bar do the same? Much love to you Flock folks, keep up the great work.

I think that compatibility to see updates from 12Seconds.TV would be great. 12Seconds is an amazing service, like a video twitter, and I think that if you could incorporate it into Flock, it would be even better.

Speed up initial browser load. Has the browser been benchmarked under different profile conditions? Tons of favorites vs. tons of RSS feeds vs. tons of buggy extensions vs. lots of Lucene history?

The one feature I seem to miss the most in Flock, is the ability to right click to reorder a favorites folder. I find sorting by name within the Favorites Manager to be tedious. It also sends the bookmarklets (that I want at the end) into the alphabetical order within the folders. I almost dread adding new favorites because of the sorting procedure. I am using Flock almost to the exclusion of any of the other browsers. What suggestions do you have to make Favorites easier to manage?

Flock is doing some very commendable things--between innovations & things we've all wanted for eons-- it's the leading browser candidate for me...over all others.

So...how does one displace the #1 & #2 guys?

A. By NOT dropping any of their major features / modus operandi...while only adding & NOT 'making any like feature proprietary or incompatible'. Why is it that most browsers fail this simple litmus test: the easiest way to convert the many users of the leading competitiors is by adding, improving & tweaking, rather than reinventing the wheel & making modules & settings incompatible / hard to migrate & utilize in both browsers.
Keep in mind that when a user converts from one browser to the other, it won't be in immediate, cold turkey style...but rather by trying both for a period of time. A subset of this is:

B. Major browsers have been so completely re-done that web sites & content are having a very hard time interfacing properly with the new browser onslaught.
SO.... a lot of users are being forced to use multiple browsers to access all content on the web.

1. Mozilla browsers should use ONLY(as much as possible) the same History, Sessions Bookmark, Cookie, Profile, Cache, Recent, MRU, AutoComplete, AutoFill, PW, etc. folders / locations as INTERNET EXPLORER.....AAAANNNNDDDDD...

2. Work up an app that auto-syncs / pulls all the above from major competitors' browsers one has on their computer.

Whichever browser accomplishes all that first--- will win the browser wars in the long run.

Think about it...say Flock follows this-- if users can pick up where they left off no matter which browser they were forced to use last...they would use Flock as much as possible & the rest 'only when they have to'.
This will also help mask over the content & website incompatiblities Flock has...hardly anyone who tried Flock would get rid of it completely.

And new users would 'flock' to Flock in droves-- esp. those who work on the web...who have to waste too much time trying to sync & find where they left off last...

OK....it's very noble that Flock can use IE Faves...but....

3. The lag in opening Faves Toolbar...to boot repeated with each subsequent subfolder...renders the feature practically useless.
NOW...i belieave that fault lies more with the OS.... then what is needed is to import them to another location WITH an AUTOSYNC app that keeps everything constantly updated.
If this same app can also import from other browsers and keep everything in one location, in a universal format....

4. As well it would be nice, if in IE style, the last saved fave location was the one that opened up each time.

Kudos for auto-opening the location of a duplicate bookmark.
Keep in mind that some may want to save same to two different folders. Needed for such situations:

5. A way to save to multiple locations w/o having to restart that process again for each desired location.

Also needed:

6. To manage / look thru an unwieldy amount-- either a multi-column / entire page sort...Maxthon 1 is a good example...OR as html links on a webpage a la Chrome / Maxthon Session Restore.
Plus....Very Important-- WITH:

7. Click, rather than hover, to navigate each column / line...when there're so many lines and columns the mouse can easily touch another folder / column / line... requiring starting the navigating process all over again.

Unrelated....here's a major problem Flock needs to fix ASAP:

8. Browser freezes & hangs when on auto-updating pages-- like say a trading page with a stock ticker...the same occurs when it's detecting Feeds.
This occurs on different Vista systems-- everything fully tweaked btw...from OS to network to browser.

Thank you very much for listening-- most browser developers listen...BUT wind up NOT LISTENING thru the arbritrary dropping of popular features & overt insistence on proprietary formats / methods / modules.

I absolutely agree with valeehill. a speedup in loading is necessary. I'd like to go one step further: why don't allow the user to completely disable some features (e.g. not even load the libraries, buttons etc for some services)? This is just an hypothesis, but isn't the overhead in loading w.r.t. the other browsers due to the additional features? This approach would keep loading efficient also with many features added and people who don't use certain features would enjoy a less memory-consuming browser.
(Ok, this is a huge step that involves a lot of rewriting, but I think it will be necessary to keep the app sustainable...)

Feed (and browser setting) syncing would make this a KILLER app. I'd love to be able to move to another computer and instantly have access to my draft blog posts, all of my friend info, and my RSS feeds.

I second google reader integration...

I also support adding identica and friendfeed to Flock. I'd use the people sidebar a lot more if that were the case. Linkedin would also be a welcome addition.

Thanks for making an awesome product!!

Add LinkedIn, and make organizing feeds easier. It IS hard to drag them around when there are a lot of them.

Maybe also allow for other social bookmarking sites, especially now that Magnolia went bust.

If I had known this was around I wouldn't have written: http://getsatisfaction.com/flock/topi...

I included a lot of suggestions in that.

idea list: private browsing that uses gutmann deletion methods for deleting everything after a private browsing session is over this includes FLASH COOKIES or .SOL FILES which can be used to track your web tracks. Gutmann is the best deletion method today. It uses 35 passes and encrypts data with meaningless data overwriting the file 35 times. After private data has been erased in other browsers flash cookies still remain or enable private browsing to prevent flash cookies from being put on the pc al together, tear tabs, get a better lookor come out with themes, play music that's on your computer through an audio sidebar or music from a music service site, send messages to friends on myspace through the people sidebar, call the people sidebar the social sidebar or social bar, add blog tv to the people accounts and services list, add twitpic to the media sharing accounts and services list, enable posting blogs from the blog editor to myspace and other non blog focused sites that have blogging capabilitys, add an html editor and web developing tools to the browser like Mozzila Seamonkey but enable the user to hide these features so that the browser doesn't become crowded unless you guys can make it fit somewhere, add all IM services you can think of so the user can IM from the browser, if the user puts a video in the web clipboard enable the user to watch the video in the sidebar, enable the user to not only drag text in the bew clipboard but write in the web clipboard and save there writing to the clipboard and if they need to add a video to their text enable the user to do so. allow the user to edit anything saved to the web clipboard weather it was created from scratch or draged and droped. Allow the user to edit the name of the of any notes saved to the clipboard, look at the add-on for Firefox called "Yoono" to see if there is any features that they have that you don't have and ask if you should have that feature, make it better, or not have it at all. Yoono is your competition

Simplify, simplify, simplify!!! Flock is doing 'wayyyyyyy more than what it needs to do to be a fantastic browser. In fact, it has gone past the "Gee this is a great product" stage and become over-thought, over-developed browser that is a real pain to use.

I'd like the people bar to become my new Instant Messenger buddy list.

By that I mean, if I had Skype, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN installed, I'd like the people bar to show me the friends online in a buddylist, similar to how Trillian instant messenger has one buddy list for all mediums, but Flock wouldn't be re-writing the code like Trillian, instead, people would have to have their main IMs loaded and logged in, and Flock would just use some form of API or whatever is needed to list the friends in one bar, with the medium label next to their name.

If I click their name, standard IM Program message pops up for that person.

Then I'd never have to have the main programs buddy lists up, just keep all my main IM programs minimized and use them all via the people list of Flock.

That'd be my request.

What kept me on Flock is the simplest of things believe it or not.

It was the standard FILE EDIT VIEW HISTORY FAVORITES TOOLS HELP menu.

In the DEFAULT position that it is has been for almost the beginning of GUI creation.

And the main button menu below BACK FORWARD REFRESH STOP HOME.

Those two very simple things kept me here.

Internet Explorer lost me when it re-invented itself and moved buttons around to places that were stupid to get to and removed the file menu. When I put it back, it was in a place that isn't right, below something else. It felt wrong, upside-down... annoying.

So as an old school older person I like how Flock kept the basic default positions of the main things known to many of us users out there and then added to them with stuff beside and below.

Whatever Flock does in the future with its options and additions, I pray to god that they keep the most simplest things in the default well-known areas, especially the File menu. It may be stupid, it may be old school, it may not even be required, but a lot of us like it there and feel if ever anything goes wrong or we need to find something we can always go straight up to the well known file menu where an option / all options span from.

So good job Flock, that's what got me to keep the browser installed initially, default location of file menu and toolbar. Then I played with it and used it. Things didn't crash, things loaded up fast, and most importantly, websites loaded correctly and weren't displayed strangely like in some browsers.

After that I started playing more with the people bar and media bar and the other additions.