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RockMelt

blog.rockmelt.com

31–40 of 42 posts

Re: RockMelt

#31
Whatever social web browsers were supposed to be has been superceded by the next generation of smartphones.

With Android, IOS, WebOS, Symbian, et al. anybody can get up to date notifications about anyone's location, feelings, and opinions aggregated from their favorite sources - no "computer" required.

Re: RockMelt

#32
What is it at the moment with people posting websites with silly names with just the name as the title?

Hey people, HN already displays the domain name - put something useful in there please!

Re: RockMelt

#33
For a team of 28 people (see team photo on http://www.rockmelt.com/thanks.html) I was kinda expecting more than what I downloaded, especially as this is just a skin on top of Chromium.

All of the heavy lifting in terms of the browser itself has been done for them by Google.

Re: RockMelt

#34

Are there really 25 people working on this? How? It's social plugins with easy APIs on top of a well written WebKit browser. At least, I assume that's what the footer there is for: http://www.rockmelt.com/

Here's a much better picture of the team: http://www.rockmelt.com/thanks.html?dl=b9068e9a4c500efc8de47...

Re: RockMelt

#36
post #33

For a team of 28 people (see team photo on http://www.rockmelt.com/thanks.html ) I was kinda expecting more than what I downloaded, especially as this is just a skin on top of Chromium. All of the heavy lifting in terms of the browser itself has been done for them by Google.

From a cursory look, it appears they wrote all the new functionality in C++ (and ObjC for UI on the Mac). That's a lot of work. Why they didn't do the bulk of it in JS/HTML/CSS is anybody's guess.

Re: RockMelt

#37
post #6

I'm a little disappointed. A truly social browser should introduce something social that is intrinsic to the browser itself, not just integrate with existing social sites. A browser should be a basic tool that works equally well for everyone. This browser has Facebook and Twitter built in -- fine for the US/UK market, but what about Europe, South America, and all over Asia, where different networks hold sway? Even if…

Ugh, I should've searched for this before I wrote it up, but see here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1881875

and an excerpt, which makes my main point, that Rockmelt is in a great position to be bought– by Facebook:

"Additionally, the Chrome Web Apps store is unlikely to support Safari or Firefox, which makes the fact that almost all of these browsers (including the latest version of Flock) are based on webkit a moot point. Standards support will be the minimum requirement to use a web app, but the real value will be in the specific technologies that these different browsers adopt and the rate at which they adopt them, as well as the way apps get incorporated into a user's browser. The 2nd browser wars have begun.

Apple understands this, which is why it maintains a Windows port of Safari, has a Safari Dev Center, and is building a huge server farm in North Carolina. I fully expect to see an Apple backed cloud apps platform, running on a Safari for an end user, next year."

because it's about browser enhanced apps and the browser web app stores.

Re: RockMelt

#39
post #32

What is it at the moment with people posting websites with silly names with just the name as the title? Hey people, HN already displays the domain name - put something useful in there please!

My thoughts exactly. It feels like they're trying to convey as little information as possible, so that people have to follow the link if they want to know what it's about.

Re: RockMelt

#40
I think that this may be a good idea but should be implemented as a browser plugin. I don't want to switch from Chrome to something based on Chrome that will not be updated as fast and often as the original.
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