Rockmelt Blog

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.

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!

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

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.

Quiet Mode


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.

Localized Search

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.

Chromium 11

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!

42 Bugs Fixed

  • Improved chat performance
  • More reliable sync
  • Improved RSS / feed reliability in App Edge
  • Fixed several causes of crashes and freezes

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:

Integration with Email


 
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.

Expanded Twitter Links

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.

Faster Facebook and Twitter Updates

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!