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Seamonkey 1.1 Released
stuuf writes "Version 1.1 of the Seamonkey Internet Application Suite is now available, with quite a few improvements over the 1.0 series. Some of the new features include spell checking in form text areas, a new tagging system to classify email, a better indicator for secure web sites and preview images for browser tabs. This release also includes many of the updates that have gone into the Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 branches. Check out the release notes and download page for more."
MacOS X DOES provide an inline spell checker, though I believe it only works for Cocoa apps, not Carbon, and I think they leave it up to developers whether to implement it or not (it's an option for certain types of controls, like text fields). There's also a spell checker on the Services menu, though its more for checking the spelling of individual words.
Seamonkey/Mozilla is much more customizable. I particularly like the ability to make key bindings, as well as define scroll ranges. Firefox tries way too hard to be minimal. Look at the preference page, there's barely anything there. Tons of features I found useful before Firefox came about were just cut. I don't want minimal, I like having lots of features.
I am writing a theme called SeaGnome for Seamonkey so it blends in nicely with GTK desktops. I have the Mail and Browser section but am still working on the remaining suite applications.n t=c_linuxseagnome.php
n t=c_linuxmonkeymenu.php
Try it out here:
http://markbokil.org/index.php?section=tech&conte
I also have written an extension for Seamonkey which allows you to collapse down the toolbars and provides a quick menu to often used features. Great to reclaim screen realestate while browsing.
http://markbokil.org/index.php?section=tech&conte
I think the FUD that the OP was referring to was not that Firefox and SeaMonkey do have some leaks, but that some people try to make "the memory leak" seem like a huge, obvious problem that is going unfixed. I've seen several posts lately saying something to the effect that "the memory leak" is not being addressed. The reality is that the leaks are being fixed. I also don't see any evidence that Firefox or SeaMonkey leak any more than other browsers. So there is FUD, and also you are not just imagining memory leaks.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
SeaMonkey 1.5 will be the next release. As per MozillaWiki:
The current working title for a release from that work is "SeaMonkey 1.5" (subject to change) with a release expected in 2007. (This work takes place on "Mozilla trunk".)
This is from the Gecko 1.8.1 branch, the same as Firefox 2.0. The 1.5a nightlies are from the trunk, which will be Gecko 1.9, the same as the Firefox 3.0 alpha/nightlies.
MacOS X DOES provide an inline spell checker, though I believe it only works for Cocoa apps, not Carbon, and I think they leave it up to developers whether to implement it or not...
This is not quite correct. The OS X spellchecking service, like all the other services, works automatically in Cocoa apps without any work on the part of the developer (as I understand) and functions inline. Developers can integrate it in additional ways as well and it can be included in Carbon applications, but the developers have to do it specifically. For example, Firefox3 alpha 1 includes the native OS X spellchecking with the same dictionary as all the other applicatons, despite not being a cocoa application.
There's also a spell checker on the Services menu, though its more for checking the spelling of individual words.
This is the same spell checker and uses the same dictionary. It is just a different interface for getting to that function.
There's a fairly extensive list of extensions that work with SeaMonkey, and two people are actively working on making Firefox-only extensions compatible with SeaMonkey when their original authors are too lazy or incapable of doing so themselves. (Obviously they won't have success with all extensions - some extensions would need to be re-coded from scratch, given how crappy the original code is - but they're good with responding to requests, and have done a lot of good work already.)
Actually, Mozilla has almost everything to do with SeaMonkey. They developed Mozilla 1.8, which SeaMonkey is still based upon. They host the source code, bug database, and releases. The core of SeaMonkey is shared with Firefox and Thunderbird so most Mozilla development directly improves SeaMonkey with no extra effort. SeaMonkey remains an official Mozilla project. SeaMonkey simply isn't a Mozilla product, which means that Mozilla doesn't drive SeaMonkey-specific development or provide support.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You can choose to download/install only the components you desire, in the installer.
Um, it doesn't use Firefox, it uses the less-than-clean UI of Mozilla. It looks similar to Netscape ver.5 Which is soooo 1995
It does default to the "Classic" theme, but it also comes with the "Modern" theme, which is much nicer. And you can download many other themes from addons.mozilla.org.
I'm sure that it is a great browser, but Mozilla needs to give us the option of which browser to use with the Seamonkey pack.
There is no way to do that and keep the integration, because SeaMonkey is a single executable. You could run Firefox as your browser. and run SeaMonkey for mail, irc and composer, but that would not be any more integrated than Firefox + Thunderbird + Nvu + the Chatzilla extension.
The other option would be to see if there is a theme for SeaMonkey that looks like Firefox, but a theme could not do things like add a separate search box next to the url field.
On a side note, it is probably not really correct to say "Mozilla needs to" in reference to SeaMonkey. Mozilla is providing CVS, bug tracking, etc. for SeaMonkey, but since the name change, SeaMonkey is no longer an official Mozilla product. Like Camino, SeaMonkey is produced and maintained by a separate community (although there is a fair amount of membership overlap).
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
I just upgraded my SeaMonkey and I didn't like this feature. I am usually a good speller, and I noticed the speed was slower with this real-time feature enabled.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
But it is a huge obvious problem that is going unfixed. My seamonkey trunk nightly builds take up > 600MB memory on a bad day and my machine thrashes like crazy.