With all the buzz surrounding the latest versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer, the public beta release of RockMelt, the social web browser, fell through the cracks.
RockMelt is based on Google Chrome, but integrates Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and a few other social apps directly into the browser.
We tried the private beta of RockMelt last fall, and it seems like there have been a few tweaks since then.
When you first start the browser, you are forced to sign in to your Facebook account. That kind of makes sense since RockMelt depends on Facebook so heavily, but it's a bit annoying if you want to browse without it.
We do like how easy it is to add your RSS feeds to the side, but it's still not better than using Google Reader or other RSS reader. You can also add apps like YouTube and Tumblr, but they seem pretty pointless since you're already in the browser and could easily visit the website.
Overall, RockMelt is a bit of a letdown. There's no killer feature to set it apart from Chrome, Firefox 4, Safari, or Explorer. Plus, even though it's based on Chrome, it's still lacking the recent updates Google added.
But the company is backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, so there's definitely some potential to innovate in the future.
We'll walk you through how to get the most out of RockMelt. But first, make sure you download the public beta here.
When you launch RockMelt, you'll have to sign in to Facebook. There's no way around this, but you can check "Keep me logged in to RockMelt" so you don't have to sign in every time.
RockMelt asks to be your default browser the first time you launch. Make sure to uncheck the box before clicking "Start RockMelt" if you don't want it as your default browser.
Here's the home screen. You can see all your Facebook friends in the toolbar to the left.
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