RockMelt 0.9.58.390 Free download

RockMelt boomed onto the alterna-browser landscape last November, grabbing some notable attention from social browsing competitor Flock but then fading from the limelight. After four months, RockMelt announced today that it's ready for the next step: entering into a public beta. That's right, this entire time the Marc Andreessen-backed, Chromium-based RockMelt beta (download for Windows | Mac) has been restricted to invitation-only. RockMelt has continued to develop since then, issuing 15 updates that include a YouTube app, integrating Chromium 9, support for secure (HTTPS) RSS feeds, and tweaking the log-in process so that RockMelt completes the Facebook log-in information in the background so users can begin browsing more quickly. Your Facebook log-in is required to use RockMelt's social-networking features--otherwise, you might as well use Google Chrome, Comodo Dragon, or another Chromium-based browser. It's a real social browser RockMelt shows which of your friends are online on Facebook, right in your browser. If you want to share something from the Web, you'll know who's going to see it right away. It makes sharing links and pages more engaging than using Twitter or even Facebook's site. (Downside: you can't scroll the left-hand "Facebar," which is sorted alphabetically, so unless you filter your friends by your RockMelt favorites, you'll always see your "A" friends on your list but you may never see your "Zs.") Yet the social aspect is not overwhelming RockMelt puts your friends in a narrow bar on the left, and status badges for sites (Facebook and Twitter, plus RSS feeds and plug-ins) in a skinny bar along the right. On wide-screen and large monitors, these dashboards are at once informative and unobtrusive. The design works. Flock's social sidebar has the cool feature of pulling status updates from all your social networks into one stream, but it's more in your face than RockMelt's. Sharing is fun and easy. So is updating There's a "share" button near the URL entry field. You can share pages to Facebook or Twitter easily and intuitively. The same button lets you send links as private messages directly to specific Facebook users (but not as direct messages to Twitter friends.)