RockMelt Browser Review

RockMelt is a new web browser that I dub as being “social on steroids.” It’s designed to integrate the social stuff you use and make it easy to share-share-share anything and everything.

The technical particulars

Q: What browser engine is this?
A: Chromium.

Q: Is it the latest version of Chromium?
A: Yes, it would appear so.

Q: Is it as fast as Google Chrome?
A: Not exactly. All the social stuff loaded in does slow it down a bit, but it’s nothing too unnerving.

Q: Does it work with Chrome extensions?
A: Yes.

Posting a status update

The first thing I did was connect up my Facebook and Twitter accounts. All that worked without a problem.

If you want to post a status update, you do this via the button at top left of the browser which is your Twitter or Facebook profile icon. On click you can choose which network you want to update:

Not exactly the most intuitive interface in the world, but it gets the job done. It would have been nice if there were an option to post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time, such as just by checking a box to enable the feature.

Sharing stuff

Load a web site, hit the share button. Easy and straightforward.

The little drop-down menu above where it says “Post link to my wall” can be switched to a Twitter account if you have one loaded in. Again, would have been nice if there were an option to post to multiple networks at once.

Searching for stuff and sharing it out

Chrome with a separate search bar? RockMelt is it – and that’s cool in itself:

However… I do have a complaint about this.

Sharing an individual link from the search result list requires a right-click:

That shouldn’t be necessary. For each result you hover over there’s a little blue “+” button (look at the first screen shot above,) but that only opens the result in a tab. Why isn’t there another button right next to that for sharing?

I’m complaining about this because there is absolutely no reason for a very basic share function like this to be hidden in a right-click context menu. If I didn’t tell you it was there, you probably would have never found it.

RockMelt really shouldn’t hide ways to share like that.

Adding feeds

This is my absolute favorite feature of the browser because it’s a feature completely absent from Google Chrome.

1. Go to any web site that has a feed, like pcmech.com.

2. Hit the green button on the right sidebar:

3. Click “Add” button.

4. Web site appears on the right, along with ‘unread’ view count, just like email.

That, dear friends, is awesome. It pulls in the ‘favicon’ from the site so you know what site it is, the ‘unread’ count is easy to see and read, clicking on it flies out a small window to peruse articles easily, and each article can be shared easily.

Also notice that once a site is added, the green add button at the bottom of the list changes from green to gray so you don’t accidentally add sites twice. GOOD.

The only thing that keeps this from being perfect is that there’s no way to categorize other than by dragging/dropping the buttons you have there. If this had the ability to create folders (think of it like organizing bookmarks,) then it would be perfect.

This is without a doubt the easiest way to use feeds I’ve ever seen. Works on just about any web site, blog, YouTube channel, Vimeo channel or anywhere else that has a feed.

Best part: You don’t have to even know what a feed is to use this feature – and that right there is great design.

Verdict

I normally hate ‘social’ browsers with a passion, but RockMelt does social in a way that’s actually useful. It is easier than manually going to Twitter or Facebook and is most certainly easier when managing feeds for the web sites you visit often.

On top of that, it looks good. Granted, it doesn’t have theme support for added personalization (which it should since it’s social-branded,) but for a first-run browser it was mostly done right the first time – and that’s no small feat.

I would say go and download this now, but you can’t. An invite is required. Go to www.rockmelt.com, connect with your Facebook account an request your invite.