TechCrunch just informed me that Flock is to publicly release within the next 3 hours, 5 pm PST (TechCrunch’s mention)! Congratulation, Flock. I am sure this is a really big step for you guys. There is still a lot to go over with you about Flock that I had in mind. I’ll use this as an opportunity to do so. This is just going to be a small follow-up to my previous post, Flying with the Flock.

One feature that I did not notice at first is the searching of your favorites and history. The way it works is very neat and makes searching easily. At the top right search box, begin typing a word and it will create a list of sites in your favorites and history and present them in a nice organized dropdown that you can select from. One thing that I did not notice though was a method to search in the actual Favorites Manager. I would really like that becuase it will provider a much bigger area to view and search.

I have also received a few emails about adding bookmarks with tags. It is actually very simple and I love the way you write out the tags in Flock. You go to, Favorites > Star and Tag this Page. This will then bring up a window like you see above. As you type a tag, it is appears as normal. But once you hit comma, it will turn it into a bubble circling the word. To edit a tag you have already written, double click it and it will allow you to do so. This tagging method is also used when tagging a post for your blog.

Just a few other notes about Flock. You will notice that you do not have a stop button. Why is this? It is because when a site is actually loading, the refresh button will then change to a stop button. I really like this because it provides Flock more space for their features and it also gives us more space to add any additional buttons to the bar. As for Blogging Platforms, I know that WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad work. I did hear that they were working on Movable Type. This is for the release that I have received and not the one they are soon to release, so I am not sure as to how much of a change their will be. You can setup multiple blogs and have multiple ping services. You can add ping services by going the options for Flock and selecting, “Blogging.” I have also recieved a few questions about the rendering engine of Flock. Flock uses Firefox as its backend, which is absolutely great. You can use Firefox extensions on it and I have tried a few and they seem to work just fine. I do not believe you can change themes though, but really, I don’t want to. I love the design and I even have my wallpaper set to Flock’s wallpaper right now!

On an important note: Geoffrey has also informed me that the issue with del.icio.us automatically adding their Flock bookmarks is now fixed. He told me it will be fixed for the next build, which I am assuming is the one that is going to be released shortly.

Did I have any other issues? Honestly, nothing too serious. Sometimes the feed viewer would lag on me and then say the script couldn’t continue running and sometimes when I viewed my memory usage, it was fairly high. But this will all get better in time and I do not know if these problems have already been fixed or not in the new release that we are all waiting for.

Now just sit back and wait for the release! Great work, Flock, and congratulations.

P.S. If anyone was wondering, I have purchased a new hosting provider and I will be switching servers hopefully in a day or two. I just need some time to transfer all my files and databases. Thank you for your patience and I apologize for the problems that have been occuring.