If you were trying to develop a new Web browser, your first instinct would probably be to try to make it as different from the leading products as possible. The folks at Flock had a different idea. They've based their new browser unabashedly on Firefox, with the difference that Flock, currently in beta, offers a variety of features geared toward today's social networking sites: photo-sharing sites, blogs, and bookmark-sharing sites.

Flock is recognizably based on Firefox -- placed side by side, the only immediate difference is that Flock's icons are more rounded, and there are additional icons for photo sharing, blogging, and RSS feeds. There is also a large starred icon to the left of the address field; this allows you to tag URLs for the favorites-sharing sites Shadows and del.icio.us.

Flock is recognizably derived from Firefox. However, there are distinct differences. Click image to enlarge.

Better Blogs
The blog tool is quite nifty. Flock supports blogs that use WordPress, Typepad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, and Blogger. I set Flock up for a LiveJournal account, and found that it really did work easily and well. On the first try, I was able to drop in an image, type in some text, and immediately post to my LiveJournal blog.

To make things even easier, the blog tool includes a "Web-Snippets Bar," a bar across the bottom of the window that acts as a sort of savings bank for images and text selections. You save images or text selections by either dragging and dropping them onto the bar, or right-clicking on the highlighted selection and choosing "Send to Web-Snippets. You can then drag and drop the text or the image into your blog entry. It's a very convenient and impressive feature.

Flock makes it very easy to add images or text elements to your blog entries. Click image to enlarge.