We’ve made several improvements based on your feedback to make RockMelt for iPhone better than ever. Here’s what’s new:
Not only have we added support for double-tap-to-zoom, we’ve also made video playback smoother and sped up web performance overall.
In addition to syncing items in the bookmarks bar on your computer, RockMelt for iPhone will now also automatically sync everything in your Other Bookmarks folder.
We’ve also made this version of RockMelt for iPhone better by:
You can install the latest version of RockMelt for iPhone here.
Thanks for all of your feedback. More coming soon!
Thanks for all of your feedback on Beta 2! We’re glad you like the new chat experience and improved support for Chrome themes, as well as the new Twitter and View Later Apps and how they sync with RockMelt for iPhone.
Today, in addition to several performance improvements, we’re happy to announce that RockMelt now has Quiet Mode, supports localized results from the Search Box, and is now on Chromium 11.
These are features that many of you have been asking for, and are also ones that we’re excited to use ourselves.
Need to focus? Have exams coming up? Just turn on Quiet Mode to remove any potential distractions.
Since everyone will have different preferences for what Quiet Mode does, we’ve made it fully customizable. As you can see in the image above, you can choose to have Quiet Mode make you go offline in chat, hide Edges, hide notifications of new updates, and more.
Turning on and configuring Quiet Mode is easy. If you’re using Mac, you can enable and set preferences for Quiet Mode under View in the menu bar. If you’re using Windows, you can turn on Quiet Mode from the RockMelt menu. We plan on making it even easier to enter and leave Quiet Mode in the near future.
If you’ve ever tried using RockMelt while studying abroad or traveling overseas, you know that RockMelt’s built-in sync lets you conveniently access your feeds, apps, bookmarks, and preferences. All you have to do is download RockMelt, login, and we’ll take care of the rest.
Now, no matter where you are, you can get even more relevant results when using the Search Box. All you have to do is choose which country you want to see results from.
To change your settings, just look for Search inside the Basics tab under the Options (Windows) or Preferences (Mac) menu.
RockMelt now has all the enhancements that come with the latest version of Chromium, making it better than ever.
We’ll start rolling out the updates today and everybody should have it in about a week. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
p.s. Good luck to everybody studying for final exams. We hope Quiet Mode helps!
Thanks for all of your feedback! We’re excited to release our first update for RockMelt for iPhone. In addition to several performance improvements and bug fixes, here’s what’s new in the latest version:
Due to popular request, now you can email any item – tweets, Facebook updates, websites, links – over email! Just tap on the Action icon in the bottom left of the toolbar to send links and more to friends and family.
Ever wonder where you’ll end up when you click on a shortened link? Wonder no more! Just like in RockMelt for your PC and Mac, shortened links are now automatically expanded inside your Twitter stream so you know what you’re clicking on.
For those of you that were having trouble seeing your Facebook and Twitter updates in a timely manner, they now load faster and are more reliable overall.
You can install the latest version of RockMelt for iPhone here.
As we mentioned before, we plan on releasing updates quickly to improve your mobile experience. There’s a lot more coming soon – stay tuned!
We’re excited to introduce RockMelt Beta 2! While we’ve shipped 20 updates since November, RockMelt Beta 2 represents our most significant revision so far.
One thing we’re really proud of is how much people actually use RockMelt. People use RockMelt for more than 6 hours each day to share links, get quick previews with the search box, stay updated with App Edge notifications, and chat from the Friend Edge.
RockMelt Beta 2 doubles down on some of those features making them faster, easier and better. Here’s what’s new:
Did you know that people use chat more than 3 times per day? Chat is one of our most popular features and people love it because of how easy and accessible it is.
But we realized that while it was easy to talk with one person at a time, having multiple conversations was more difficult with all the separate chat windows. This was our most-requested feature so we decided to completely re-design the experience.
With our new chat bar, chatting with multiple people has never been easier. Chats are now docked in the chat bar along the bottom of RockMelt so they’ll stay visible while browsing. We’ve also created subtle notifications for new incoming messages so they aren’t distracting. Of course, chats can still be dragged off of the chat bar and made into separate windows like before.
When we set out to re-invent the browser, we quickly learned that bookmarking has really changed. With features like autocomplete, most-visited sites on the new tab page, and search built into the address bar, many people no longer use bookmarks.
On the other hand, we love services like Instapaper and how easy they make it to save websites to read when we have more time. These services inspired us to build View Later deeply into the browser.
With View Later, people can save any URL and any links from the App Edge to read later. This includes individual posts from Facebook, Twitter and other feeds. Find something you want to come back to later? Just click the clock icon to add it to your View Later. Of course, as with everything in RockMelt, View Later is sync’ed so you can access it everywhere you login.
If you’re one of the 50% of RockMelt users who have connected their Twitter accounts, you’re going to love our new Twitter App.
It doesn’t just look better, it’s packed with new features. Now, in addition to your lists and @mentions, you can also edit retweets, view direct messages, reply to all users, and search Twitter easily. Did we mention that it uses the real-time API so you get updates instantly?
RockMelt is now better and faster than ever with the latest Chromium updates.
We’ll start updating users to RockMelt Beta 2 today and everybody should have it in a week or so. We can’t wait to see what you think of the big changes.
Happy browsing!
(and no, this is not an April Fool’s joke)
P.S. In addition to all the great features, we’re on a never-ending quest to improve stability and performance. In this revision, we’ve fixed 78 bugs to make RockMelt Beta 2 the most stable and fastest version yet.
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That’s right - RockMelt can now be downloaded without an invitation!
Since launching in private beta in November 122 days ago, we’ve been hard at work improving RockMelt and creating the best user experience possible. During that time, we’ve updated RockMelt over 15 times and added a bunch of new features like a YouTube app and Quick Launch.
Thanks to everyone’s help, we’re excited to announce that RockMelt is now in open beta and can be downloaded by anyone.
Stay tuned for more exciting announcements coming in the next few weeks!
p.s. if you love RockMelt, please let the world know by commenting on this TechCrunch article!
(See more sketches of early logo ideas by our friends at DesignMap)
Thanks to the hard work of our intern Emilio (RockMelt’s biggest YouTube fan), you can now watch YouTube right from the App Edge!
The idea for a YouTube App first came about during our company holiday party, where Emilio volunteered to be our DJ. Although he left his iPod at home, Emilio re-created his playlists on YouTube – and that’s when the fun started.
Since YouTube lets you play all the videos in a playlist continuously, we all added our favorite songs to Emilio’s playlist. Occasionally, the music would be stopped by people searching for videos using the same tab that videos were playing from. We also heard some songs five or six times because people didn’t know which ones had already been added. But none of that stopped us – especially Emilio – from having a good time.
Following the party, we also did some research and discovered that YouTube was the #1 RSS feed added to the App Edge!
Given the fun we had and YouTube’s popularity with RockMelt users, we thought it would be great if there was a YouTube App for RockMelt that could re-create the festive atmosphere quickly. Not only would this app let you play YouTube videos easily, it would also include the most-requested features from our party:
With these ideas in mind, Emilio began working on an app right after the new year. Today, we’re excited to have everybody try it out.
To install the YouTube App:
In addition to watching your favorite videos, the YouTube App also lets you:
If you click on the gear button in the app and sign in with your YouTube account, you can also:
To play videos in the background and re-size videos (especially high-definition ones), just drag the YouTube App off the App Edge.
Special thanks to YouTube for providing the APIs and tools to make this app possible!
We built RockMelt to make browsing simpler and more enjoyable. We started by integrating automatic feed updates, faster search, and social features like chatting and sharing because those are the most fundamental browser functions.
But we’ve never thought of RockMelt as just a browser that makes it easier to access social networks or to get website updates. In fact, we have a whole lot more planned – the YouTube App is just a start, and we’d love to hear your suggestions.
Enjoy!
p.s. Here’s where Emilio learned all his dance moves:
Thanks for all of your feedback and for helping us make RockMelt better!
In addition improving stability and fixing 70+ bugs, we’ve been hard at work upgrading the launch experience and our Chromium base to improve overall performance. In this update, RockMelt now has:
RockMelt now starts up faster than ever. With Quick Launch, RockMelt will start immediately and complete the full login in the background so you don’t have to wait for login to complete. To use Quick Launch, just check the “Keep me logged in” option on the login screen.
Of course, if you’re using a shared computer or want to disable Quick Launch later on, you can always log out from the RockMelt menu.
Updating to the latest stable release of Chromium (which was released just a few days ago) means that RockMelt not only handles multimedia better, it’s also faster.
Details about other changes in this update can be found at the bottom of this post.
Your RockMelt will download the update automatically within the next day or so but you can update it now by opening the RockMelt menu, choosing “About RockMelt” to download the update, and then restarting to apply the update.
Please keep sending us feedback – we love hearing from you. Much more to come soon so stay tuned!
Happy 2011!
Our New Year’s resolution is to continue raising your expectations of what a browser can be. As part of that goal, we’re happy to announce that our first update of 2011 puts RockMelt on the latest stable release of Chromium and makes the browser better than ever.
In addition to fixing over 40 bugs and adding a dozen features, this upgrade to Chromium 8 means that we now support web apps from the Chrome Web Store. We’ve also made feed updates faster, updated keyboard shortcuts, synced Friend Edge view preferences, and added many more features listed below.
Like always, your browser will download the update automatically within the next day or so. If you want it now, open the RockMelt menu, choose “About RockMelt” to download the update, and then restart to apply the update.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates, and happy browsing!
- Hide Friend Edge: Cmd (Mac) / Ctrl (Windows) + Shift + [
- Hide App Edge: Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + ]
- Hide Both Edges: Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + \
- Open Status Updater: Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + U
- Open Share window: Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + S
- Open FB Message w/ current page attached: Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + M