Rockmelt Blog

RockMelt Update: Incredible Sharing, Thinner Edges, and More

We took everything you liked about RockMelt’s one-click Share and made it 10x better.

In addition to new features like thinner Edges and easier App adding, the latest RockMelt includes a completely re-designed Share button that lets you share to multiple people and services simultaneously.

Looking for Social Reading? It’s coming VERY soon.

Here’s what’s new in RockMelt:

Incredible Sharing

If you liked the Share button before, you’re going to love it now. Thanks to all your feedback, the Share button now lets you do all the following — at the same time:

Post to multiple friends’ walls on Facebook
Send multiple Facebook messages
Update your own Facebook status
Share to multiple Twitter accounts
Share to Facebook groups

Easier App Adding

You can now add Apps to your App Edge in one click. As you surf the web, your RockMelt will suggest sites at the top of your App Edge — just click on them to start getting instant updates.

Thinner Edges

The Edges and the navigation bar in the latest RockMelt are now thinner than before. The result? More room for you to browse.

Chromium 14

This RockMelt upgrade also includes all the enhancements from the latest stable version of Chromium to make it better than ever.

Coming Soon: Social Reading

Click here for a preview of Social Reading.

How to Upgrade

As always, your RockMelt will upgrade automatically over the next few days but you can manually upgrade now by going to RockMelt menu > About RockMelt.

Happy browsing!

30 Second MBA with RockMelt CEO

Click the video above to hear RockMelt CEO Eric Vishria’s talk about the time he was learning the most.

Coming Soon: RockMelt Beta 4 Brings the Ultimate Reading Experience

In the next few weeks, everybody will be updated to RockMelt Beta 4!

One feature we’re especially excited about is Social Reading. RockMelt is one of the first companies to launch Facebook integration to make reading news more social, and we’ve done it in a way that’s uniquely RockMelt.

By building social right into the App Edge and browsing experience, Social Reading lets you and your friends connect around reading online like never before.

Social Reading

With Social Reading enabled in RockMelt, you can:

Discover what friends are reading
See what’s popular and trending online
Help friends find new content by sharing what you’re reading

Social Reading will initially be available for some of the most popular sites, including CNN, ESPN, Fail Blog, Gizmodo, and others. Like all things RockMelt, you are in control of how activity is shared and who can view it.

Stay tuned for more info — reading news online will never be the same!

YouTube App Updated – Now Supports Subscriptions

As you know, the YouTube App is an easy way to search for and watch videos from the App Edge. Now, you can watch all your subscriptions right inside the app itself!

New Features

Here are all the new things you can do with the upgraded YouTube App:

Watch all your video subscriptions right from the App Edge
Instant notifications of new subscriptions
Clear recent searches with one click
Create new playlists right from the My Playlists section

How to add the YouTube App

To add the YouTube App to RockMelt, just click on the button below. If you already have the YouTube App installed, yours will update automatically in the next few hours but you can also click below to update it now.

You can also add the YouTube App to RockMelt by clicking here.

p.s. Don’t forget that you can keep the YouTube App open while browsing by dragging it off of your App Edge

RockMelt Update: Chromium 13, Improved Support for Themes

We’re excited to announce the new version of RockMelt fresh out of the oven! Here’s what’s new in version 0.9.64.253:

Chromium 13

RockMelt is now better than ever thanks to all the security and performance improvements in the latest stable version of Chromium.

Theme Support on New Tab Pages

Themes now apply to every part of RockMelt, including the New Tab page! To give your browser some personality, just head over to the Chrome Web Store and pick out a theme that catches your eye.

Here are some of our favorite themes:

We’ve also fixed over 100 bugs in the this update to make RockMelt even more reliable (including the issue a few of you were experiencing of having to log into facebook.com every time).

Your RockMelt will update automatically over the next few days, but if you want the new version now (while it’s still hot), look for About RockMelt under the RockMelt menu, and then restart RockMelt.

Happy browsing!

p.s. There are some known issues in Chromium 13 that may prevent some extensions and themes from working properly. We’re keeping a close watch on these and will update RockMelt once the Chromium fixes are available.

To improve our flexibility in the ring, we’re going to do yoga every day.

RockMelt Updated to 0.9.62.313: Improved Performance, Better Mac OS X Lion Support

The latest version of RockMelt includes several improvements to overall performance and stability. In addition to adding the latest Chromium enhancements, we’ve also fixed over 130 issues to make your browsing experience better.

This update also makes RockMelt runs more smoothly on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. That said, we are working on a few things to make the RockMelt experience on Lion even better in the near future. This includes better support for full-screen mode, gesture-based navigation, and hiding scrollbars until sites are scrolled.

To update, go to the RockMelt menu, look for About RockMelt, and then restart RockMelt.

As always, please let us know what you think and thanks for your feedback. Happy browsing!

Meet Our Rock-Solid Conference Rooms

There comes a time in a startup’s growth when… conference rooms suddenly become a hot commodity and are always being used. Having reached that point a few weeks ago, we decided to make room reservations easier by giving each conference room a different personality.

First, we gave the rooms memorable names so people know the exact room they’re reserving online. Asking to meet in the “glass room” or “the third-biggest room on the right” was already confusing, and would only get more so later on. Initially, we wanted to name the rooms after volcanoes. We quickly changed our minds after trying to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull.

Eventually, we thought it would be nice to name the rooms after traits of the RockMelt browser, like “supremely secure”, “rock solid”, and “totally trustworthy.” Coincidentally, we had also been thinking of ways to graffiti the office since we have some big fans of graffiti art. From there, an idea was born!

After settling on the names, we reached out to our awesome friends at New Edge Creative Services. They came into the office, decided on a stylistic hybrid of acrylic and graffiti, and started pimping out our conference rooms immediately with creative themes and amazing artwork.

Since the completion of the conference decorations, we’ve never had problems with room reservations. And we feel more productive too!

Hope you like them as much as we do!

Our Beta 3 Launch in Pictures

What does a big launch look like at a startup? Want to learn about the people behind RockMelt and our company culture? Read on for more details! (Note: pictures were taken from a few hours before launch through a few hours after launch)

The weeks leading up to our Beta 3 launch were some of our busiest ones yet. To make the user experience as awesome as possible, RockMelters had several late nights (and some all-nighters). Good thing our office has comfy sofas, bunk beds, and giant bean bags — not to mention a kitchen full of food.

Below, meet the RockMelter who helped add Facebook Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications into RockMelt. The red bean bag is always in high demand.

We always take great care to test the performance of a new version before releasing it into the wild, and Beta 3 was no exception. Here’s a picture of our (stylish) Quality Assurance gurus right after Beta 3 passed all inspections.

People came in extra early to support the big release. And yes, we’re big fans of yoga balls (we have nine of them scattered throughout the office) and improvised ping pong tables.

The following picture was taken just seconds before Beta 3 is released by the smiling RockMelter! All of our hard work the past few weeks came down to this one moment. Some people were a little more nervous than others, but everybody was excited and looking forward to the launch.

We even hired “professional” photographers to capture this historic moment. We also had photographers capturing photographers capturing this moment. In the background you’ll notice our love for avant-garde blox structures, lava lamps, and standing desks.

With Beta 3 released into the public, how did we celebrate? By eating (copious amounts of) crepes, of course. If you’ve never tried them, there’s nothing quite like fresh, flavorful crepes to kick off the post-launch morning right.

The line was long but boy, the wait was worth it. The crepes were so tasty that everybody kept returning for second and third helpings. Company favorites included bananas, strawberries, and nutella crepes; ham, egg, and cheese crepes; and tomatoes, chicken, and pesto crepes.

Thanks for trying Beta 3! We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

p.s. if you’d like to help us change how people browse the web, check out our open positions here.

Welcome to RockMelt Beta 3: Richer Chat, More Facebook, Better Facebook.com Experience

Staying in touch with friends is now easier than ever with RockMelt Beta 3, our most exciting update yet!

For this major update, we’ve partnered with Facebook to give you the best possible browsing experience. Available for download and upgrade today, RockMelt Beta 3 adds over 30 features, including better Facebook chat, more Facebook integration, and a streamlined facebook.com experience on RockMelt.

Our goal is to build a browser that makes surfing the web better, easier, and more fun. We couldn’t be more excited to work with Facebook to make social a core browser component and to continue the browser revolution. By the way, Beta 3 is just a preview of what’s to come later!

You can download RockMelt Beta 3 here. We can’t wait to see what you think.

Happy browsing!

Here’s what’s new:

Brand New Friend Edge for Richer Chat Experience

Your love of chat on RockMelt is loud and clear! Since nearly 40% of RockMelters chat every day, we wanted to make the chat experience even better. In Beta 3, we’ve completely re-designed the Friend Edge with three new features so it’s even easier to stay in touch.

1. Expandable

Your Friend Edge can now be expanded to a full buddy list complete with names and search. This expanded view makes it a cinch to find any friend and manage your Friend Edge. Highly recommended if you have a high-resolution screen!

2. Swappable

You can now pick which side of RockMelt you want your Friend Edge – on the left or the right. If you’re used to chatting on facebook.com, you’ll feel right at home with your App Edge on the left and your Friend Edge on the right.

3. Scrollable

To make browsing through friends even easier, you can now use your mouse to scroll through friends in your Friend Edge. Scrolling can be done whether your Friend Edge is fully expanded or collapsed.

Quick Access to Facebook Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications

One of our most popular requests has been to let you manage Facebook Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications right in RockMelt. Now you can!

In Beta 3, you can confirm Friend Requests, send and reply to Messages, and see all your Notifications (along with the posts or links that you’re getting Notifications for). Like on facebook.com, these are located next to your profile picture in the top left corner of your RockMelt for quick access.

Unified Facebook.com and RockMelt Experience

We’re excited to announce that, by working together with Facebook, we’ve streamlined your facebook.com experience! You’ll now only have one set of Friend Requests, Messages, Notifications, friend lists, and chats when you visit facebook.com – the ones right in RockMelt. Additionally, chats you initiate on facebook.com will open RockMelt chat windows. We hope you like this is a unified effort to make your browsing experience even better.

31 NEW FEATURES

○ Brand New Friend Edge

Expandable View with names and favorite status
Scrollable
Swappable Friend Edge and App Edge
Friend search
Chat status can now be changed to online / offline even easier
Option to hide offline friends
Improved context menu when right-clicking friends
Unified View of Friends: Favorite Friends and Other Friends now shown together
Drag-and-drop to remove or add friends to Favorites

○ Facebook Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications

Confirm and reject Friend Requests
View and reply to Messages
See Notifications and the associated item of interest (status updates, links, or photos)

○ Unified Facebook.com and RockMelt Experience

Universal chat experience from RockMelt – no more duplicate chat windows and friend lists
Initiating chats on Facebook.com will open chats in RockMelt
Universal Friend Requests, Messages and Notifications right in RockMelt – no more duplicates on Facebook.com

○ New Facebook App with Photo Album Viewer
○ Quick access to your own Facebook Profile
○ Better Chat

Previous chat history now shown when chatting with friends
Improved notification when chats are received
Simplified chat window

○ Easy status updater
○ One-click Quiet Mode button
○ Twitter: Option for growl and taskbar notifications for incoming tweets
○ (Mac) Scrollable App Edge so you can get updates from even more Apps
○ (Mac) Share Improvements

Quick image picker - just click on the embedded image to see all the ones that can be selected
Link titles and descriptions can now be edited

166 Bugs Fixed

Improved Twitter App reliability and performance
Improved syncing for App Edge contents and updates
More robust sharing
Improved spell check reliability
More consistent App Edge updates
Retain search engine preferences
Causes of several crashes