RockMelt - A More Social Web Browser

RockMelt is a Chromium based web browser that features integration with your social networks. Chromium is the open source project that aims to create "a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to experience the web". As Google Chrome is built on the same base code, the look of RockMelt is immediately familiar to Google Chrome users (which is well over a third of all internet traffic now). 

RockMelt's selling point (it's free by the way) is that it supports integration with all the big social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube... the list goes on, and on... and on. The Facebook integration is impressive as it includes your news feed, friend requests, messages and Facebook chat, all in the browser window. The layout is shown below in the picture from their website:

To try RockMelt head over to www.rockmelt.com or for a more detailed review see below.


The Chromium element also has it's advantages as it is compatible with Google Chrome themes, although I haven't tested this feature. One word of caution, RockMelt requests access to your Facebook account in the usual app access way in order to bring you these Facebook integration features. There are multiple access requests and you  cannot pick and choose which permissions you are prepared to give it as all are required to use the software with Facebook. RockMelt also requested access to a database used by Google Chrome, although denying access had no apparent effect, until you next load the application and are again asked for permission. There is no explanation as to why this is required?

RockMelt claims to be lightning fast and on test it did not load the page as fast as Google Chrome. It lacks the snappy feel of Google Chrome which retrieves pages with incredible speed and accuracy compared to any other browser, along with Firefox, which is fast for page downloads too, once it's started up.

In summary RockMelt is great for people who are permanently on Facebook, but for everyone else it's wasting their screen real estate and then constantly notifying them that their Facebook friend is bored. Try it yourself by downloading from www.rockmelt.com and leave your comments below, or on the Web Warp Blog Facebook Page.