roncli.com blog: RockMelt

I read an article a while ago, can't remember where, about this new browser that was coming out, called RockMelt. "Oh god", I thought, "not another web browser with its own JavaScript and CSS quirks I will need to consider."

Well, I went in on the beta very shortly after it came out, and I have to say, I'm fairly surprised. RockMelt is based on Chromium, the same guts that powers Google Chrome. This browser, however, provides fast and easy access to the social networks Facebook and Twitter.

This is huge. I'm an avid fan of both sites, as they are really easy avenues of communication between me and my friends & family. As a result, both my Facebook and Twitter usage has gone up recently, having fun responding to people's statuses and replying on Twitter some.

What I love most about it is that the browser's settings are stored on their server. This means all you have to do is log in to Facebook (hey, you gotta do that anyway if you want a Facebook-integrated browser, right?) and the settings that you setup on the computer you were using at home are downloaded to your computer at work, resulting in a consistent look and feel between computers.

All of Chrome's extensions are available, so I don't miss things like One Number or IE Tab. However, the extensions are a bit buggy, as you can't see any icon animations, such as notification counts. Hopefully that will get fixed soon.

It also has an integrated RSS reader, although its implementation seems poor for now. I'll be sticking with Google Reader for reading my news for the time being. They recently added a GMail notifier which is nice.

The features I'd really like to see added to it are closer Google integration so I don't have to have One Number or manually subscribe to RSS feeds through the browser. It would be really nice to take a feed and just say "add to Google Reader".

However, this is Good Software™, and I highly recommend you get it if you're into Facebook and Twitter communication at all. If you're on Facebook with me, hit me up for an invite.

Labels: RockMelt, Software

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