Mark Forrester

The Flock Website Re-Design

I’ve always been interested in trying out Flock, the “social web browser”. Up until now I haven’t though, so I thought it was time to head on over to the Flock website and download the latest version. I’d seen the website before and was very impressed with the simplicity of it, good use of typography coated in nice shades of blue.

To my shock and horror when returning to the site I was presented with this:

Flock Website Re-Design

Flock have you lost the plot? Personally I think it looks like you have taken a step in the wrong direction. The new website is littered in mucky mark up, including tables, and in my opinion poorly used flash elements. The style of the website is cheesy and out of date. Even the images look poorly rendered, some slightly pixelated, some slightly blurry. If I remember correctly cut out characters were a popular feature in website design about 5 years ago when I designed my first website.

I often judge a product/service by its website, especially if I’m shopping for a web browser! I’ve now had second thoughts about trying out Flock. Yes, I am being a bit critical, but I am a website designer and appearance matters.

Old Flock Website

The old, much better looking Flock website

In

9 responses

  1. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    Have to agree with you there Mark, from a non designer perspective, I think it’s a very outdated site. However, Flock the browser is fantastic, and that’s definitely worth a try. What do you think of it?

    Reply
  2. Shane Avatar
    Shane

    Hey Mark

    I’ve just checked it out and you are right bro…its a step in the wrong direction [shudder!]. I’ve been a Flock user for some time now and really digged their old site. What a shame!

    Reply
  3. Armand du Plessis Avatar
    Armand du Plessis

    Flock’s decent but someone definitely rolled the changes to the site in the wrong direction there. Eish.

    Reply
  4. hash Avatar
    hash

    Man, that’s complete rubbish… I too like the old look/feel better than the current one. It seems more “corporate” to me, which doesn’t jive with what I feel Flock really is.

    Reply
  5. Adam Patterson Avatar
    Adam Patterson

    It looks like some sort of free template site. the little flowing bits at the bottom are all jagged.

    Reply
  6. Stii Avatar
    Stii

    Dude, gotta try Flock. Worth it! About the site, well, it just goes to show what I know!!! I thought the new site looked great! Then again, so does very obscure source codes and hex files and streams of 1’s and 0’s, so I’ll take my queue from masters like you guys… Maybe its just a case of different strokes?

    Reply
  7. Pierro Avatar
    Pierro

    Howdy;
    i use Flock too, but i agree with Armand du Plessis.
    The update is a little in the wrong direction .
    but anyway; i keep and use it . . .

    Reply
  8. Evan Hamilton Avatar
    Evan Hamilton

    Hey Mark,

    Thank you (and your commenters) for your candid feedback. We read and record all feedback we receive about the product and the website, and we have already taken much of that feedback into consideration for the next update we’ll be doing to the website. I hope these changes will suit you better.

    That said, our focus is our browser and I hope that you will give Flock 0.9 a look. We’ve taken major strides and have a lot more planned for this year.

    Flock on,

    Evan Hamilton
    Flock Community Ambassador
    evan at flock dot com

    Reply
  9. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Hey guys, thanks for all the comments. I’m glad most of you are in agreement with me.

    Thanks for popping by Evan, and I’m glad you have received the feedback well. By no means do I want to disrespect Flock, I would just like to see the high quality of the Flock web browser portrayed through the Flock website.

    I will definitely be trying out Flock in the next week.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.