Even with the advent of tabbed browsing, which allows you to keep multiple Web pages open in the same window, Web multitasking can be a pain. You have to constantly click back and forth among tabs if they contain fast-changing material you check often, like the status of your friends in social-networking services, or updates to news feeds.

Trying to share information with people on your Web-based networks can introduce another layer of digital jujitsu. It can be awkward to snag a photo or a snippet of text from one Web site and send it to a friend in a social network on another, or post it to your own blog.

But I've been testing a little-known Web browser that attempts to solve these problems. It's called Flock, and it bills itself as 'the social Web browser.' I found that it worked well, but it isn't for everyone, and it has some important downsides.

Flock is a modified version of the excellent Firefox Web browser that tacks on some special features for social networkers and bloggers. It's available free at flock.com in essentiallyidenticalversions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Flock adds a special vertical 'sidebar' at the left of the browser that keeps your social networks, photo sites or news feeds visible at all times, regardless of what page you're viewing in the main browser window.

For instance, with Flock, you can see that you have a new friend request in Facebook, or that a pal has posted new photos in Flickr, without clicking away from reading this column in the main browser window.

But, wait: There's more. With one click, you can display a horizontal 'media bar' across the top of the browser containing thumbnails of all of a friend's photos or videos from a social-networking or photo site, again without changing what's in the main browser window.

These two special bars also allow you to take action. For instance, you can just drag images and text from Web pages into the sidebar to share them with friends listed there. And any photo on the media bar can be quickly emailed or posted to a blog.

There's also a 'Web clipboard,' which can save any text, image or link from a site in the main window by merely dragging it to the Flock sidebar. Once an item is in this clipboard, it stays there until you delete it.

Flock has its own built-in blog editor, which allows you to quickly compose, edit and publish blog posts containing interesting items you encounter on the Web. And it creates a special personal Web page, called My World, which combines your social-networking updates, news feeds and photos.

I found Flock productive and fun to use. I tested its special sidebar with my Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube accounts, and with my favorite news feeds. I also used another of Flock's features, which let me check my Gmail and Yahoo Web-mail accounts without navigating to their main pages. And I published several posts from within Flock to a test blog I maintain. All of this worked as promised.

In my tests, I used the latest edition of Flock, version 2.0, which is built on the new Firefox 3.0 browser. Even though this latest iteration of Flock is still in beta status, I found it to be quite stable.

But Flock isn't for everyone, and it has some significant drawbacks. For one thing, you'd need a fairly large or high-resolution monitor to accommodate the Flock sidebar and media bar without reducing the size of the main browser window so much as to require too much scrolling. Even with a big or high-res screen, you will see fewer toolbar links and browser tabs than normally.

And, Flock has a busy, even frenetic, look that can be distracting and annoying. So many things are going on at once that it can be hard to concentrate on the main attraction: the Web page you are reading in the main window.

Also, while Flock does indeed spare you from clicking back and forth as often among tabs in your browser, it doesn't entirely eliminate clicking around. Its sidebar can display only one type of information at a time -- social networks and photo-sharing sites in one view, news feeds in a second, the clipboard in a third, and Web bookmarks in a fourth. So you'll have to click the sidebar's own controls fairly often to check all of these, or keep going to the special My World page in the main window.

Finally, Flock works with only certain social networking, photo-sharing and blogging services. While it does support most of the main ones, there are some glaring omissions. MySpace isn't yet on the list, though it's expected to be added next month. But Hotmail, Windows Live Spaces and SmugMug, among others, are missing. And it doesn't support any instant-messaging services at all.

Flock does a good job at the tasks it sets for itself, but I would recommend it for only the heaviest and most impatient social networkers. For most others, Flock is overkill.

尽管分页浏览的出现让人们可以在同一窗口打开多个网页，不过，在互联网上"多管齐下"可能令你劳神费心。如果网页中包含着需要经常查看、而且迅速更新的内容，比如查看社交网站上朋友们的状态，或者接收新闻源的最新消息，那么你就必须在不同页面间来回切换。

在以互联网为基础的社交网络上与他人共享信息会将你带入数字博弈的另一层次。从一个网站抓取一张图片或一段文字，然后发给另一个网站社群内的朋友、或者张贴到自己的博客上可能会让你感到不便。

我最近一直在测试一款鲜为人知、却试图解决这类问题的浏览器。该浏览器名为Flock，自称是"社交网页浏览器"。我发现它运行得还不错，不过并不适合所有人，而且它还有一些重大的缺点。

Flock是一款基于火狐(Firefox)──性能卓越的火狐浏览器专为社交网络用户和博主加入了某些特殊功能──的浏览器。它可通过flock.com网站免费下载，其针对Windows、苹果(Mac)和Linux系统的版本基本相同。

Flock在浏览器左侧特别设置了垂直的"边栏"。在这里，不管你正在用主窗口浏览哪个网页，都可以随时看到社交网络、照片网站和新闻源的最新情况。

比如说，有了Flock, 你不用从刊有这篇专栏文章的主窗口切换出去，就可以看到Facebook上新的交友请求，或者有朋友在Flickr上贴了新照片。

不过，等等，还不止这些。只需轻点鼠标，浏览器上方就会出现一个横向的"媒体栏"，里面有朋友在社交网站或图片网站上全部照片或视频的缩略图。同样，你也无需切换主窗口。

你还可以在这两个特殊的边栏上进行操作。比如，你可以直接将网页上的图像和文字拖入边栏，和列表上的朋友们分享。而且，媒体栏上的所有照片都可以用电子邮件迅速邮寄或者粘贴到博客中。

Flock还有个"网络剪贴板"，它允许用户通过拖拽保存主页面上看到的任何文字、图像和网络链接。而一旦存入剪贴板，这些内容将永久保留，除非你把它们删掉。

Flock有自己内置的博客编辑器，允许用户快速编写、编辑并发布含有网络上有趣信息的博客日志。该浏览器还创建了一个特殊的名为My World的个人网页，其中整合了你的社交网络更新信息、新闻源和照片。

我觉得Flock功能强大，使用起来也很有趣。我利用自己在Facebook、Flickr、Picasa、YouTube以及我喜爱的新闻源上的账户测试了Flock特殊的边栏设置。我还使用了该浏览器的其他功能，比如在不登录Gmail和雅虎(Yahoo)主页面的情况下查看我在这两个网站上的邮箱。此外，我还通过Flock在我的一个测试博客上发表了帖子。所有这些操作都很顺利。

我在测试中使用了Flock的最新版本2.0，它是基于火狐新的3.0浏览器构建的。尽管这一最新版本仍处在测试状态，我发现它运行得相当稳定。

不过Flock并不适合所有人，而且它还有一些严重的缺陷。首先，如果你想在不改变主浏览窗口大小的情况下正常显示Flock的边栏和媒体栏，那么你就需要有个相当大的或者是清晰度非常高的显示器，否则主窗口就会缩小到你经常需要拖拽滚动条的程度。即便你有个大的或者高清晰的屏幕，你能看到的工具栏连接和浏览器页面也要比平时少。

此外，Flock眼花缭乱的界面有可能令人心烦意乱。许多东西在同时进行，因此很难关注到重点：那就你正在浏览的主窗口网页。

另外，尽管Flock确实帮你省去了在浏览器各个分页面间来回点击的麻烦，不过它不能完全让你摆脱用鼠标点来点去的命运。Flock边栏一次只能显示一类信息──社交网络和照片共享网站在一起，新闻源其次，剪贴板第三，而网络书签第四。所以你必须经常点击边栏上的控制按钮来查看所有项目，或者时常光临主窗口上的My World页面。

最后，Flock仅仅和某几家社交、照片共享和博客网站合作。尽管支持大多数的主要站点，但它也忽略了一些重要网站。比如，MySpace尚未在列──Flock预计下个月将加入这一站点。Hotmail、Windows Live Spaces和SmugMug也难觅其踪。此外，Flock还不支持即时通讯服务。

Flock出色地完成了为自己设定的任务，不过我只会将这款浏览器推荐给那些经常使用社交网站、又极度缺乏耐心的人们。对我们大多数人来说，Flock都算是"大材小用"了。
关键字:计算机英语
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