Amorphic Voodoo Wanderlust

My computer has eight web browsers rolling around its innards, Safari, Camino, Web Kit, Shira (1.2 and Beta), Firefox, Opera, OmniWeb (9 days left, don’t think I’ll pull the trigger), and Flock. I bounce around the default like a smitten Tigger. I probably use Camino most often, followed by Safari and then everything else.

Shiira 1.2 is fine, 2.0 looks very promising. OmniWeb is nice but costs money. Firefox feels like a bitter ogre on my Mac. Web Kit is there because it can be. Opera feels like a jealous troll, and so forth and so on. Every browser has its strengths. Every one has its weaknesses. Throw my own subjective tastes into the pot, a dash of perpetual personal indecision and a teaspoon of boredom and you get a bowl of gooey browsers. I’ll often have three or four of them open at once. Terribly inefficient of me. I wear it like a badge of honor. It’s part vestige immaturity, part knee-jerk reaction to the productivity craze, which might be the same thing.

Recently I’ve been giving Flock another chance. I long ago downloaded its first public Beta like the rest of the weary eyed early adapters. Flocked to Flock as it was. At the time I was impressed with where it could go but not with where it was, (we had that in common) which felt like four seconds behind every other browser. Thing was slower than my Grandpa juiced on Valium and Scotch. I cut it some slack at the time. It seems terribly unfair to shred a Beta with well reasoned opinions, kinda like telling a Pop Warner kid how much he sucks at understanding the basics of Cover Two. You know, like who looks like the asshole, the kid or you?

In the time since the first Beta I’ve used Flock sparingly, following along as it grows from blastocyst to zygote. However, for the past few weeks, I’ve been using it more and more until a few days ago when it became the default browser (not exactly a prestigious honor as I’m a slut). I’ve pretty much used it exclusively for the past couple days. The result; I like.

I like that it wears more Mac-like than Firefox, think Patagonia as opposed to Wal-Mart. I like that it’s got extensions. I like that it’s got spell check, though Spellbound is not remotely as smooth as Mac’s built in baby, more Mr. Blonde than Shaft. I like its Inquisitor-like search results drop down. I might go so far to call it better (gasp!) as it includes local searches as well. I said might, a cowardly Clinton-esque touch. I like that it’s got a Collection Selector or an easily accessible drop down of all my bookmark toolbars. I like that I can blog from within its belly. I like that it’s got a photo uploader. I like that it saves my web browsing sessions. And I like that I can move tabs around till my eyes pop outta my head and I bleed to death. I like that it integrates with del.icio.us (but please give me Ma.gnolia as we all know catering to my needs is the point of all this). I like that it has cute little icons my friend’s four year old, Princess obsessed daughter enjoys, in spite of her annoying habit of trying to rub her grubby, fudge dappled hands across my LCD. I like that it’s got the best RSS reader of any browser. I like that it’s got its own official blog.

What don’t I like? Plenty but I’m accentuating the positive today. Okay what the hell, no one likes Mr. Positive Thinking, let me add folders to my favorite collections and I’ll tattoo a Flock button on my forehead. There’s one. Though if someone tells me it’s already possible but I’m still kicking the tires on my Neanderthal cerebrum and missed the functionality then I’ll tattoo the Flock button to my right ass check instead of my forehead. So what am I saying here? I like it, basically. It’s now my default browser and lo and behold the rivers aren’t running red. Yet.

Flock will never appeal to the casual web surfer. Maybe, it depends, generalizations are dangerous, but not appealing to the causal web surfer is fine. In my opinion, they shouldn’t try to appease the mob. Keep adding fun toys that dorks and Integral Web geeks get off on and the future looks bright and stained with money shots from the fringe. They’ll be some creep from the edges and it’ll bleed as all things do but Flock should stay focused on what it is and not begin an Atlanta massacre of suburban sprawl like doom. Keep it close to home. Who am I to suggest what they do? A user, unimportant in my singularity, almighty in my choice. What the fuck does that mean? I haven’t the slightest. It rolled out and I’m not one to edit thoughts to screen in the weblog universe.

So keep it up Flock. Now don’t I get a shirt or something?

Postscript:

1. The Post Title holds no meaning per se. Voodoo has become my favorite word of late. The title just rolled out and I left it at that. Makes some sense actually. Kinda like you can tell someone what as song is about, completely pulling the meaning out of your ass, and when they listen to the song your explanation makes sense. Like the “Pina Coladas In The Rain” song is about a repressed homosexual serial killer in a Christian Right “Go Straight” program. Lyrics work. Link Warning: that link above will give you two things, lyrics which is fine, but it’ll also play music, immediately. Really, really bad music, an instrumental version of the song I can only imagine was created by a deaf person on LSD. So bad it’s funny like if David Lynch did a remake of Ishtar. You’ve been warned.
2. The Rich Text Editor in Wordpress is awful, God awful. I knew this. I usually have it turned off but I’m stupid’s dumb brother. I keep thinking it’ll somehow fix itself like it’s some sort of self-replicating nanobot. It never does. It just sucks and coats everything you write with tar and burning coals. Using it makes me feel worse than surfing the web with IE. I feel molested every time I try it again, which may say more about me than I want, Freudian if you let it.
3. Today is someones birthday. The implications are fuzzy.

Post Tags: browser + Camino + computer + Flock + internet + OmniWeb + Web 2.0 + Weblog // Subscribe // Bookmark