After constant issues with stability, performance, and other issues related to working with so much different code for two platforms, I’ve come up with a solution that will put PocketFlock way ahead of all other portable browsers.

I’ve replaced the buggy and unstable Gecko Rendering engine for Microsoft’s tried-and-true Trident rendering engine!

Yep! this is the same engine that powers the worlds most powerful and prevalent browser Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

This means that your portable browser will be safer, faster, and better integrate with your system.

Unfortunately (for some) this means that I will no longer support the fringe operating system Mac OSX, and nonstandard badly coded websites won’t render correctly, but those are small sacrifices to make.

I’ve tried it, and my personal use was the only reason that I even created a Mac release, but every new version seems to cost far more money than it’s worth and the system is buggy and riddled with problems.

So dropping OSX support and Gecko should help me make releases faster and easier.
PocketFlock Improved for Windows
PocketFlock 1.1 with Trident! ~13MB

Tags: flock, pocketflock, mozilla, gecko, trident, internet explorer, osx, windows

Once again, finding that useful piece of software that keeps your browsing experience small, simple, and enjoyable.

Today I’m not just reviewing an old favorite of mine, I’ll tell you a little bit about why it’s important.

I’ll be honest here, in this more modern version of the web, FTP seems to be forgotten for fancy uploaders with pretty graphics built in to most websites and it’s hardly used now by the general public.

So what is FTP and why does it still matter?

According to Wikipedia:

FTP is a commonly used protocol for exchanging files over any TCP/IP based network to manipulate files on another computer on that network regardless of which operating systems are involved (if the computers permit FTP access). There are many existing FTP client and server programs. FTP servers can be set up anywhere between game servers, voice servers, internet hosts, and other physical servers.

I’ll sum up the rest of the article for you, FTP is a quick and easy way to send and receive files to servers that support it. It’s fairly fast, can be secured with both public (password free) and private (password protected) directories and is supported in almost every web browser already.  If you host your website with a company like Dreamhost, 1and1, GoDaddy, or some Yahoo accounts, uploading from a FTP client is far faster than using a site-based uploader, especially for making small changes.

If it’s supported by Firefox/Flock/etc already, why do I want an extension?

Perhaps I shouldn’t have phrased it that way. Downloading from FTP servers is supported by all major browsers, the only one I’ve found that supports uploading is -ick- Internet Explorer for Windows.

FireFTP changes that, giving you a full-fledged ftp client within Firefox and its offspring. It’s not the fastest FTP client I’ve found, and in many ways it’s not the prettiest, but the UI is very easy to work in, and the instant gratification of pulling it up from the Tools menu is an absolute plus.

Like any Ftp client worth it’s salt, FireFTP supports multiple accounts (not at the same time, but few clients do), better still, while many clients cost anywhere between $10 and $30, FireFTP is completely free for you to use (though the author does ask that you make a charitable donation) –BTW just found a weird bug in Flock while trying to paste the address for that link in.

Half the donation goes to orphans in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and FireFTP will only ask you once, so there’s no annoying splash like some freeware/shareware FTP clients.

Sounds great, so what’re you holding back on?

Ok, I’ll be honest, there is a cloud to go with this silver lining.  Unlike many standalone clients, you cannot drag files from an explorer/finder window and have it automatically upload to your server, you must navigate your disk from the client’s UI and upload/download from there.  It’s also a bit slower to start and cancel uploads than most standalone clients, so in many cases I’d recommend not using it to update a blog or cms installation, but for uploading pictures, media, and small files its a must-have extension for the modern-day nomad.

Verdict:

If I didn’t think it was perfect for portable browsing, it would never have been a part of PocketFlock’s earlier history.  If you’ve got any another FTP client on your USB drive, ditch it right away.

Tags: flock, firefox, pocketflock, fireftp, ftp

• keep it small
• keep it simple

How do you do that when it comes to messaging?

Enter SamePlace

Sure, you could just load Meebo and watch as the host machine’s ram slowly dies painfully due to Gecko’s memory leaks, but after a while that just gets tiresome. You could also try a portable version of many of the popular instant messaging clients, but why load two programs when you just wanna get something done quickly?

SamePlace currently supports, Firefox, and Flock (including their portable offspring) natively.

Features:

• Supports Google Talk, Jabber, Twitter, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, and AIM
• Supports dragging web content such as pictures and snippets into the conversation window
• Shared web applications
• Extensions (or should I say Extension) and Scriptlets (think of it as an IM version of Greasemonkey)

That’s great and all, but how well does it actually work?

Immediately after launching SamePlace you’re given a friendly wizard to help you setup your accounts.

Setting up each account is quick and easy, the only hitch is that if you enter the password incorrectly, you’ll have to run the wizard for that account again from the beginning.

Afterwards, Sameplace occupies a sidebar on the left of the browser and a new menu item.
It seems to work pretty well and is definately worth the download for those of you wanting to take your messaging, and your browser, with you.

Verdict: It’s earned it’s place in my PocketFlock profile

Tags: flock, firefox, extensions, pocketflock, portable firefox, sameplace, jabber, xmpp, aim, msn, yahoo, google talk, gtalk, im

I realized that I neglected to bundle the source of PocketFlock Win and since it’s based on GPL code… big no no.  I’ve corrected this mistake and uploaded a separate .zip file containing the NSIS code written by John Haller that PocketFlock Win is based on ( I really need to replace this soon since it doesn’t play nice with Vista).  I will be uploading the Mac source after I stabilize some features of it.  (currently it’s a nasty cludge of bash scripts and ruby code held together with Platypus)

Tags: nsis, flock, pocketflock, portable apps, gpl

That was their update… and that was the push I needed.

I’ve always been a bit favorable to using portable browsers since I’ve been almost constantly traveling between Washington DC and Virginia Beach, VA since 2004.  Mind you, that may not seem like a long time, but when your ‘commute’ is three hours long and you know almost every side-street, alternate path, city, town, empty field, and rest-stop in between, it adds up.

Before I had a reliable laptop (Thanks to the donators who gave me a whopping $15 towards my MBP) I carried around a small gray 64MB USB key.  I’ve since lost the cap, the keychain hook has worn off, and all the paint has come off the sides, but I still use it.

On this key were a few Word documents, some mp3′s and Portable Firefox.  When I first found out about Flock and got excited.  Your bookmarks/favorites were stored online!  This was huge!

I started blogging seriously once I found out how easy Flock made it to be… but it was still tied to my desktop.

The idea behind PocketFlock was born.

At first just given the name Portable Flock (how unimaginative) and was just a Flock install with the directory renamed to firefox, and flock.exe to firefox.exe lazily pasted over John Haller’s launcher.  It went through many fits and spurts.  Lots of bundled extensions, upx packing, and many failed attempts to bring the experience to the Mac platform.

I snuck time here and there from work, and tweaked the theme, learned NSIS, PHP, met many great people, and started the most active development in my life.

I also started a huge controversial thread on the Flockstars Mailing list.

I had many detractors, and many supporters, it got very ugly and left everyone involved with a bad taste in their mouth.  Many of my detractors included people who were at that time on Flock’s payroll, where I was publicly derided on their personal blogs and in the instance of Lloyd Budd tried to deny my existence, deleting PocketFlock, and Flock’d from the Flock Wiki, many forum posts, and Wikipedia (and its easy to tell who it is when they go by the same handle on all these sites).  I would get harrassed on my blog, on other forums, but when reasonably approached was still able to apologize to those who I offended.

Things got overwhelming and I stopped caring.

It was a for a variety of personal reasons too.

Illness, 3 moves (4 if you just count august of 2007), many unsatisfying jobs, more spam than actual comments on outraged-artists, and horrible financial problems led to infrequent and half-assed updates.  Many people asked me if I had given up, if PocketFlock was dead, and I replied much later that that wasn’t the case, but I really didn’t act like it.

When Flock went from 0.7-0.9 there were many issues that were quite frankly security issues for people in a portable environment.  I tried to get back into things by submitting a buzilla entry and having a dialog with the Flock devs.  While they promised that there might be a fix in the future, they quickly closed the bug and only offered me the solution to compile my own binaries with modified source (to their credit they did tell me what to change and how to do it, but I didn’t have the resources to do it).  Again there was some hostilities towards me, but I tried to shrug it off.

Flock 1.1 got me excited again… I had switched from Flickr to Picasa, and had been asking for email support since Flock 0.4.x.  Most of the old staff was gone, and I felt like things were finally behind me.  Now, I’m still stretched for time, but I’m excited again and want to get back to being busy.

That brings us to today, I’m on a new domain, with a new blog, and a fresh start.
PocketFlock now supports 2 platforms, has a new source code under development, that might allow it to support Linux x86 and Vista.

I’m back, PocketFlock is back, and I want to get everyone excited again.

Tags: flock, pocketflock

Still on my list (though not in any order of importance):

• Flock’d (and not just that old version, but a completely rewritten program that’s fully compliant)
• PocketFlock extensions… as part of my commitment to building the most complete portable browser experience, I’ve got to start better sorting what extensions get bundled with PocketFlock.
• Pollux.  Yeah… I had a working version, no I never posted it or it’s source, I’m reworking Pollux into a client side app instead of a server side app. (for those of you who forget it’s a podcast creator)

I’ve got a few new ideas brewing in my head that I just haven’t implemented yet, but I’ll do what I can when I can.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: flock’d, flock, pocketflock, podcast

About 22 MB compressed, nearly 70MB uncompressed

–Much Love,

Dave Ferrite