RockMelt co-founder Eric Vishria walked us through the new updates and offered us some information about who is using RockMelt and where the browser is headed.
When RockMelt launched in November 2010, the goal was to create a tool that would integrate social networks and feeds directly in the web browser. Our first brush with the browser left us with a lukewarm impression, but the concept, at the very least remained interesting.
Tools like Flock and RockMelt face an uphill battle of balancing social functionality without making the core browsing experience sub-optimal.
In that regard, Vishria told us that the team spent a lot o f time looking at ways to make the interface and the interactions more seamless and less confusing. The biggest UI overhaul is related to RockMelt’s popular integrated Facebook Chat feature.
Chat Gets Better
Vishria told us that RockMelt users use the built-in chat tool at least three times a day. With RockMelt Beta 2, the team has added a new chat bar at the bottom of the browser window. This bar lets users stay involved in multiple conversations at once. Each conversation can be parked in its own window or chat bar tab when users are browsing the web.
The best feature is the new notifications — very similar to Growl notifications in Mac OS X. When a chat window is minimized, users can still keep tabs on what is happening by way of an unobtrusive overlay.
Better Twitter Client
RockMelt says that 50% of its users have added at least one Twitter account to the browser. One of the biggest areas of user...
