I had to uninstall the first version of RockMelt’s browser because the social media features distracted from anything else you could possibly want to do online. So I didn’t have the highest expectations for today’s release of an improved browser.

Norton Antivirus derailed my first attempt to download and install version two from RockMelt’s website — and that happened again the three more times.Then I tried downloading it from Facebook and my computer froze, but I finally got it to work on the second try.

So far, the browser seems less annoying than the first version: the friend icons are significantly smaller, and the audio quieted down considerably. However, RockMelt needs to do away with the constant popups whenever friends post anything to their news feeds. That ought to be an opt-in feature — the choice to enable it needs appear on a menu of customization settings presented to you the first time you run the software.

As things stand, I would not want RockMelt version two as my default browser. It might make sense to run as an alternative to keeping Facebook open in a tab, while multitasking. Presumably the fact that this is still a beta means that the vendor is open to suggestion and perhaps that will include what I’m saying here.

While I uninstall this latest distracting application from RockMelt, readers, could you please share with us in the comments section whether you’ve tried the software yet and what you thought of it?

http://www.allfacebook.com/rockmelt-releases-updated-facebook-browser-2011-04