Rockmelt ... a new way to browse in the net

[somona]

Few days ago, a new browser was launched based on Chromium, whose purpose is to facilitate the sharing of info through the social networks. The browser is called RockMelt.

To get RockMelt, you must register in the main site using your Facebook account and wait, but I know many of you are already on fb .... Your Facebook friends who already got RockMelt will be notified of your interest and will be able to send you an invite to download and use RockMelt.

At first, RockMelt only allows it to be used by Facebook users. When launching the app, you need to first login with Facebook. For Technology Review, RockMelt is not a social browser, but a Facebook browser. Due to these divergence of opinions, I will look forward to patiently test the new software and find out its weakness and strong features.




Let's watch the most important itens that make RockMelt a different browser. When launching RockMelt by the first time, you'll see a welcome page quite intuitive that will guide you through the help file.





Visually, the browser looks a lot like Chrome, but it differs thanks to the its side edges. The left edge features the Friends panel, while the right one is for the apps.

On the left edge, we can browse our Facebook friends, see who's online, away or offline, see the person's last updates, publish in the person's wall, send him/her a message and still talk through the Facebook chat. All that in one single window that can be seen by clicking on the friend's avatar.



Now for the apps panel. On the right we can use the default RockMelt extensions to connect to Twitter, Facebook and read RSS Feeds. It is on this bar that the Chrome extensions get installed, though not everyone of them will work perfectly on the new browser.

Connecting to Twitter is even better with RockMelt, for it allows you to add many accounts simultaneously, follow different timelines and choose from which account to share any info. Right now, RockMelt won't allow you to add more than one Facebook account, only Twitter ones.



RockMelt's address bar also deserves to be highlighted. Through it, you can not only search for web pages, but also find your Facebook friends quickly. The Share button speeds the engagement in social networks. Through the search bar, we can see the results of our query without loading new tabs, speeding our navigation.




As mentioned, the Chrome extension support does not work perfectly. The same is true for themes. You need to test carefully each theme and extension to see if it work with RockMelt.



After using the browser during good work hours, I listed a few items that can be improved ...

Add Google Login support
Add GTalk support, alongside with Facebook chat, afterall they're both XMPP
Share photos via Flickr or Twitpic
Replace the Twitter icon from the right sidebar for the account avatar
Improve support to Chrome extensions, allowing to choose the position between the sidebar or the address bar
Add support to Delicious to save favorites
Improve theme support
Allow to Like comments on the friend's window
Allow to Share friend's status updates
Add support to Google Buzz to share stuff
Do not forget federated social media, such as Diaspora

BUT : this browser is REALLY fast ( more than Firefox and IE ..) and the new features are really usefull ...so ..

If you already use RockMelt and have another suggestion for the app, feel free to collaborate with the list.

Click here for the visual presentation ...


What do you think will be RockMelt's future? Will the browser become a good alternative to browse the social web or will we see another #fail in 2011?

Lots of kisses xoxox