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Mozilla Releases SeaMonkey 2.0
binarybum writes "Often forgotten, but the independent open source spirit lives strong in the once Mozilla project — now SeaMonkey. Version 2.0 is finally out and rivals Firefox with similar features but integrated email with a small footprint."
The Register has a short piece on the 2.0 release, which mentions that SeaMonkey is now based on Firefox 3.5.4. Stephen Shankland lists some of the features in a handy bullet-point style, too. I'm using the new release right now; it's crashed once — but only once — in several hours of use.
All we need is a web browser. Users need the flexibility to choose their own mail program. Besides, webmail is today's king. This is why "Seamonkey" is often forgotten.
one crash every couple of hours is where we're setting the bar now?
if this was a Microsoft product you'd be outraged and laughing about the ridiculous uptime.
Time to give SeaMonkey another shot!
it's crashed once -- but only once -- in several hours of use
As "several" could (potentially) refer to any number more than two, then it could (potentially) "only" crash 8 times a day, or 56 times a week, or 2912 times a year.
Not a terribly positive endorsement to be honest.
I do. I like its interface much better than FireFox. Crazy, I know. Unfortunately many websites run compatibility checks and freak out if your browser isn't FireFox, Safari, or IE. My main preference of all stupid things is that I have always hated Firefox's search bar. Too many years of searching via SeaMonkey's address bar I guess.
IIRC, SeaMonkey is actually the rendering engine testing ground for Firefox.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
I'm browsing with SeaMonkey 1.1.17 right now, I prefer they way it handles tabs over firefox.
Hope they didn't change that!
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
it's crashed once -- but only once -- in several hours of use.
flash ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I'm using the new release right now; it's crashed once -- but only once -- in several hours of use.
In other words, it's even less reliable than the IE I'm reading this on?
I've used Seamonkey as my default browser for a long time now, mainly because I like the user interface better. Seamonkey 2.0 now uses Firefox's printing system, though, and this is one of the main things I don't like about Firefox. I use lpr for printing, not cups, and I liked the fact that earlier versions of Seamonkey (and "Mozilla" before it) remembered any changes I made to the "lpr command" in the print dialog. Firefox uses gtk-print, which reverts back to the default lpr command every time you click print, even in the same session. I've reported this as a bug in the Seamonkey bugzilla.
Regarding crashes, I've seen another report of this at LWN.
I use it. My choices at work are IE8 or Seamonkey. I had used Firefox until I got a nastygram from the admin about it being unauthorized. I added on AdBlock and User Agent Switcher.
I hate the search bar in Firefox too, so I deleted it and set up keyword searches for the half-dozen search engines I use regularly. (If you're not familiar with this FF function, right-click on any search box and select "add a keyword for this search."
For example, "g" is my google keyword. To google something, I type
g something
It works like a charm.
This is just brine gecko...don't be fooled!
"Web-browser, advanced e-mail, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing made simple -- all your Internet needs in one application" ... for what reason do we need this all in one single application?
Wait, this is the final release and it crashed within a few hours?
That's... not good.
sic transit gloria mundi
Wow... I knew where this was headed, and yet I still couldn't believe it. An open source program that has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft crashes, and guess what, it's all MS's fault.
There's plenty of legitimate gripes with Microsoft. Blame them for a secretive culture, monopolistic practices, failure to follow standards, bugs, etc etc etc. But don't blame them for the failings of FOSS software. Next thing you know, MS will be the reason GNU/Hurd hasn't taken over.
SeaMonkey Composer is the best way to make WYSIWYG, What You See Is What You Get, HTML files.
Unless, of course, you want to deal with the quirkiness and huge expense of Adobe Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has more features, but SeaMonkey is usually all you need.
Use TsWebEditor for Tidying SeaMonkey HTML files.
Some of us are far more popular and have to deal with 3 or 4 emails per day. Bayesian based automatic tagging, filtering etc.
Webmail is king only for that 99% who are clueless, which is good, it means I don't get bothered by them.
Deleted
Petrus4 has a history of blaming anything wrong in the Linux world or FOSS world at large as being Microsoft's fault. KDE sucks? Oh that's cause of Microsoft. Gnome sucks? Oh yeah, that's always Microsoft's fault. Lather, rinse, repeat for any other program/distro/etc that he dislikes.
I remember a time, only a few years ago, where even one crash in several hours of use would be seen as unacceptable for software at a major version number release.
What the hell are you talking about? This has been a hallmark of FOSS software for over a decade.
Are you implying that FOSS is all about the crashes? I've got some BSD boxes that beg to differ there, bub
It's ironic. Microsoft could become insolvent tomorrow and vanish off the face of the Earth, and still, at this point, ultimately they would have won.
Yeah, cause it's Microsoft's fault that a bunch of anti-Microsoft script kiddies have been producing shitty software for longer than they've even had dominance on the desktop. *yawn* get a new schtick you fucking turd.
I mean either you're trolling or you..god please say you're a troll.
Instead, it's purely about pleasing the lowest common denominator of mindless end users. Whatever said demographic screams for the loudest, they get.
That pretty much sums up Linux development since when it started.
For cereal?
User Agent switcher will fix that problem for you.I keep it around myself, and have found it is MUCH easier to convert older folks to SeaMonkey than to Firefox, as they remember the old Netscape days and prefer its layout. I'll admit I prefer it for certain jobs, such as it is the browser I use for secure transactions. I just like the "feel" of SeaMonkey better than Firefox, which sometimes feels kinda dumbed down to me.
Of course it is the excellent Firefox extensions library that keeps me coming back to FF. Oh curse you and your large library of extensions goodness!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I hate the search bar in Firefox too, so I deleted it and set up keyword searches for the half-dozen search engines I use regularly. (If you're not familiar with this FF function, right-click on any search box and select "add a keyword for this search."
A pre-written list (chosen at random) for easy import.
I mean either you're trolling or you..god please say you're a troll.
Yeah because Microsoft has fuck all to do with Seamonkey's development, but it's clearly Microsoft's fault that it crashes. Totally logical argument.
For older machines I would suggest Kmeleon if you are low on RAM, and Kmeleon CCF ME if you have over 128Mb. Both are built on the Gecko engine and VERY fast, but CCF ME has built in ABP and since it is a standalone also makes an excellent flash drive browser, but if you are below 128Mb I've found the memory footprint of stock Kmeleon can't be beat. And both can be run on Win95 on up according to the FAQ.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's never been advertised as a lightweight alternative to Firefox. In fact it's the exact opposite - it's a browser suite for those that prefer the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink model. When Firefox (or Phoenix I think it was originally called) spun off from Mozilla, the original suite began a steady decline into obscurity. The bastardization that was Firefox focused on stripping away many of the useful features under the premise of trying to build a "lighter" browser (I think they failed, Firefox is still a huge memory hog). Finally, the Mozilla organization officially closed down the suite project and let it become resurrected as a community project and then was born Seamonkey - an effort to restore the glory of the all-in-one suite but still keep it on track with the code updates that went into Firefox.
I know it's hard for some of you to understand, but please be accepting in that there are some of us that just prefer it this way.
Learn your history - Firefox was supposed to be the lightweight alternative to the Mozilla Suite. Seamonkey is the continuation of the Mozilla Suite under a different name.
So, Firefox was the lightweight alternative to Seamonkey.
Except, Firefox started seriously competing with IE, started getting bloat, and for some time now has been a more heavyweight program than Seamonkey. All this despite the fact that Firefox only offers web browsing, while Seamonkey offers Web, News, Email, IRC, and HTML Editing.
A reason for this IMHO is that Seamonkey does not try to appeal to a general audience and thus has less pressure to add iffy features. That, and the lower popularity of Seamonkey probably means there are fewer developers trying to make their mark, which keeps things sane(r).
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Yeah, it makes Ubiquity toothless.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I have filed a bug under Debian where I am offering $250 if someone can get a .deb out before the end of next week.
If you are not already aware, the Firefux/Thunderturd/Seamonkey art licensing prohibits it's use under Debian/Ubuntu. As such, the packages must be renamed Iceweasle/Icedove/Iceape with new art.
> Users need the flexibility to choose their own mail program.
Could you please direct me to the RFC that stipulates this?
Maybe by choosing SeaMonkey they HAVE chosen their own email program.
Well, you got first post, at least.
--Richard
Overall it's pretty nice. Takes a while to load on older hardware, though. Maybe they could release just the browser as a separate component? ;-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I just type in whatever i want into the address bar and it searches google...
Or if I type "wiki Denny Crane" it goes straight to his page.
I think I just threw up a little. I hated Netscape more than I hate FF3. I'll stick to FF2 and Google Chrome.
When it asks you to import profiles, it will ONLY work if you select a profile that comes with Seamonkey i.e. default. This is not intuitive and counter to all previous upgrades.
You have to manual crate a new profile with the profile name you want, and then use the command line to import that ONE profile.
c:\%APPATH%\mozilla\seamonkey -P -migration
The profile name is case sensitive and MUST be in dbl quotes.
This was a pain in the ass for people like me that have a profile for each person in their home. It's LAZY DEVELOPMENT and the should be ashamed of themselves.
I know, you're thinking 'So you have to got o the command line, so what?" well that's a deal killer for a lot of people. There is NO GOOD REASON why this is a manual process.
The documentation that explains this comes across as hubris and with a too damn bad attitude. People want to know why OS hasn't defeated MS? it's because of shit like this, I actually considered loading outlook.
No, this is NOT a troll or flame bait, it's facts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Or have they actually, after years, done some fixes to 'NVU' aka Composer?
After some RTFA, I have to conclude this isn't the case, and Composer is as buggy as ever.
Funny how nobody even mentions it anywhere in any of the linked information, eh?
-taosk8r
That's weird. I would think pressing the tab key once would be pretty intuitive. I always found firefox to be a lot simpler to use than remembering keywords for different search engines.
:P
Ctrl T and then tab = new tab and my cursor in the google search box.
of course there's Option T if you're on a mac but.. meh. I figure most of you guys are on windows
Whoops I meant Command T. I don't really look at my keyboard anymore.
http://prefbar.mozdev.org/
First plugin I install for SeaMonkey: Home button, toggles for colours, fonts, images, JavaScript, Java, Flash, pop-ups; drop downs for Proxy settings, User Agent, window size - couldn't live without it.
Well, I certainly remember it well and fire it up from time to time. It was what I used before Firefox and Thunderbird came along. Now that 2.0 has gone gold, hopefully some new users will find it and be intrigued.
As we (at PortableApps.com) do with Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird, we've packaged it as a portable app so you can use it on your flash drive/portable hard drive or try it out without installing it locally. 10 languages are available.
SeaMonkey, Portable Edition 2.0 at PortableApps.com
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Go Fishcam!
"I'm using the new release right now; it's crashed once but only once in several hours of use"
When did crashes stop being an embarrassing programming mistake and become a metric?
Been using it since way back around M8, when it was still the Mozilla Suite. Thanks to the Seamonkey crew for keeping it alive. Firefox hasn't been faster in a long time, and the menus and configurability of Seamonkey offer far more configuration options. I deny cookies as my default, and allowing session cookies for a given site is a PITA on Firefox that requires diving through the preferences. In Seamonkey, it's right there in a menu, takes under a second. At the risk of starting a flamewar, Firefox reminds me a bit of Gnome - no options, because the developers don't think you can handle them. Seamonkey is a bit more like KDE - enough options in the dialogs to tweak it to your satisfaction.
I use both, but make sure that Seamonkey is installed on the machines that I spend a lot of time using. I haven't checked in a while to see if it still has about:kitchensink and the Book of Mozilla, but I loved having a browser that included everything and the kitchen sink.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
In other words, it's his porn browser.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
already a lost battle when you see chromium outperforming from far FF. So seamonkey is few years late...
This is essentially the JavaScript engine, which is fairly sucky in Mozilla projects.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The single most annoying misfeature to me with Seamonkey is that someone thought that editing pages in the web browser was such a heavily used feature that it deserved to be bound to a command key. Yeaaaah, no. Many times I have hit that stupid command-E by accident and had to interrupt my concentration to close it.
I'm providing these instructions for those of you who agree that this is not only a pointless feature, but worse than pointless because it's annoying. So open up a Terminal window and get cracking!
cd /Applications/SeaMonkey.app/Contents/MacOS/chrome
open -e locale/en-US/navigator/navigator.dtd
* find the three lines containing "editPageCmd"
* remove the "E" character inside the quotes for accesskey and commandkey, but leave the quotes and everything else intact
* save the file
zip -r -q -n "" en-US.jar locale
That's it. If you somehow messed up the file, Seamonkey will open up with only the Apple and application menus. Open up the file and try again.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I have been using Seamonkey since the beginning of September(the alpha) updating it nightly and I can tell you this browser is the sh!t. I have had only 6 crashes since I started using it. All six times I had over 20 tabs open and 5 out of the six times I was able to fully recover right back to where I was before the crash.(so in essence I only had 1 complete crash) The only problem I have with the browser is some fonts (Tahoma in my case) look jagged when set in an H1 or H2 tag. But generally this browser is much better than Firefox IMHO and it makes IE look like baby code in comparison.
Seriously dude, if you think seamonkey is "small" then send me some of what you've been smoking (likewise for firefox). These browsers are some of the largest programs on Linux. It is difficult to even get firefox started (using "ulimit -Sv") in less than 100MB of memory (seamonkey presumably requires more). I routinely run firefox/seamonkey sessions that range from 300-800 MB (lots of windows/tabs). (And limiting the amount of memory is also likely to produce inelegant terminations or outright core dumps -- a reported bug which has existed for 2+ years).
And don't even talk to me about "green"-ness. Open up 50-100 tabs in Seamonkey (somewhat more in Firefox using Noscript) and watch your CPU use climb (preventing the ondemand scheduler from reducing clock speed, electricity consumption or maximizing laptop battery life). I think this is because Mozilla has not optimized the gtk/glib polling functions (perhaps in part because they generally tend to dis' Linux). I'm a computer scientist rather than a rocket scientist and believe as a general rule that programs should not be paying a price (electricity consumption, CO2 emission, etc.) when much of the program (most tabs and windows) are inactive.
Both opera and chrome appear to have significantly smaller memory footprints compared with firefox/seamonkey. And if you really want "small", then we should talk about Mosaic or Netscape [1]. Now, I'll admit that opera and chrome lack some of the features that seamonkey has but it is clear (to me) that the folks developing the Mozilla based browsers have gone off the deep end in terms of using Javascript and thrown away concepts of efficiency. Chrome also appears to have a potentially much better process model than the Mozilla model (in that user's can adopt different process models for the type of browsing they do). I happen to open lots of tabs (and keep them open for days), though many of them may be on the same site. Chrome allows one to adopt the process model to this without the risk of crashing an entire (week old, many tab, takes 15+ minutes to restore) session which appears to be the common characteristic among Mozilla based browsers.
1. Mosaic or Netscape lack functionality for the "modern" web. But if one is dealing primarily with information (rather than video) one still is largely actually reading text and those browsers did work reasonably well (even with 15+ years of mileage). They actually are "small" and would still work for many applications. If upgraded to something like HTML 5 they would probably trump many "modern" browsers where the emphasis is on eye-candy rather than the simple delivery of information.
I tried it on Mac OS X.
1) You can't move the mailbox list to the right side. (I know, that's "standard" for GUI mail programs nowadays, but I hate that interface.. the other two choices available aren't any more usable, IMHO.)
2) When I bring up the Preferences, the menubar except for the Apple menu & app name went away -- not disabled, went away. What the heck?
3) I can't change the toolbar style (icons, icons & text, text only) via normal means -- control-click in the toolbar, nor go into Customize mode for the toolbar.
4) It was not obvious how to set up an account -- I expected that to be in the Preferences.
5) I think it expunged when I quit -- I had an alpine session running simultaneously (that's all kosher with IMAP). Maybe that's an advanced setting (even for Mail.app, you can turn that kind of thing off).
I would love to have a GUI mail program that had even just #1. GNUMail has it, but it starts up VERY slowly with a big mailbox.
I've been using Seamonkey since Mozilla suite was killed. Before that I was happy with Netscape Communicator suite. Never liked IE or Outlook.
It's funny to read some comments flaming this product. C'mon people, not everybody has the same needs and likes! You shouldn't be closed minded. For me, a suite like this, is very usefull. I like the browser and the mail client. Something missing in my opinion, a calendar component bundled, but I hope in the future will be added.
Personally I hate how firefox manages the tabs and also the search field . I'm used to search from the location bar of Seamonkey. I like pressing ctrl+2 and start the mail client or ctrl+5 and start the address book without taking out the hands of the keyboard and some other small things i'm used to.
Been with this V2 all day without any problems or crashes.
Firefox is still a huge memory hog
Not according to benchmarks at cybernetnews, dotnetperls, ghacks, etc., which find it lower than Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE especially as you open more tabs. Sounds like you have add-on issues.
I just upgraded a user from 1.1.18 to SeaMonkey 2, it went smoothly.
=S
Every single final version of browser out there even including IE has some feature like "tab recovery". Guess the reason for it?
If Mozilla organization had some vision and asked themselves "why does companies choose MS/IBM (Lotus) based solutions instead of us?".
Yea, all uses a browser now and check their gmail/hotmail, that is how companies etc. work these days right?
I love their attitude of being a purist, totally free, politically free distro... Oh wait! They allowed Mono junk to their distro for a simple note taking app right?
It's only 'fairly sucky' if you don't understand where the margins are and how they actually impact things.
One of the reasons Firefox gets fairly notably bad interactive user performance is 'single JS thread used for the whole browser, including UI'.
On the other hand, Chrome (on this machine at least) completes SunSpider in some 400ms, SM and FF around 800ms. Opera and most other browsers, which get very acceptable performance on 99% of things (production JS usage), are more in the 10000ms range. It's a series of specific microbenchmarks, remember, not the end-all be-all of JS benchmarks. At best, it can show where there are inefficiencies in code that CAN be called in tight loops (but more often is never called in such a way on real websites).
SeaMonkey essentially does (and has for years, albiet in a considereably less-useful form) fix all of the things that have been broken about Firefox's design since the beginning. Since it shares gecko rendering engine, and tracemonkey javascript engine (which is used in a less braindead manner in SM), it's not those features which are considered 'broken'.
It is, essentially for people who preferred the better efficiency of classic Mozilla Suite, or are tired of FF's 'quirks', without having to give up all of the familiar and useful extensions (like Ad Block Plus, NoScript, CookieSafe, GreaseMonkey, etc).
Nowadays, finally, you can get similar functionality to FF (with tab mix plus and lots of other 'convenience'/safety extensions) on SM with compatible extensions, just with deterministic behavior and considerably less memory usage when using more than five tabs compared to the bloated manic-depressive fox.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
From a technical point of view the biggest difference between FF and Seamonkey (AKA Mozilla Suite) is the XUL interfache of firefox.
With a litle bit of XML and Javascript knowledge it is possible to completely redesign firefoxe's user interface. To some extent, this is what add-ons do. In Seamonkey the application wold need to be recompiled for changes (except for some hooks in the menu AFAIR).
This is the main Reason IMHO why FF feels so bloated today. FF itself is still quiet lightweight. But all those extensions are (which are often badly written) add a lot of bloat to FF. Also, XUL and JS is certainy not going to performa as well as a UI written in C/C++.
Cheers,
-S
PS: by lightweigth (at the time of phoenix) it was not meant to have more performance but less features (browser only, many options removed) ... The inofficial slogan of the Mozilla suite was: "We have everything but a kitchen sink". Whoever has seen the perferences window will probably agree ;)
It's painful how badly the original article frames the relationship between Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. Here are a few basic facts about Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla, though not necessarily in exact chronological order...
- Netscape started Mozilla as an open source foundation on which future versions of Netscape would be based.
- The all-in-one browser suite was called Mozilla, and the rendering engine therein is Gecko.
- The Mozilla suite was the basis of Netscape 6 and 7.
- A browser-only version (Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox) was created.
- A mail/news-only version was also spun off as Thunderbird.
- Eventually Netscape 8 and 9 were also released, but based on Firefox rather than the suite.
- Thanks to the growing popularity of the standalone apps, the Mozilla suite was turned into an unsupported (by the organization/corporation, anyway) community project, and renamed to SeaMonkey to avoid confusion over who was developing it.
The main point to take away from this is Firefox and Thunderbird are based on SeaMonkey, not the other way around. A lot of code from Firefox and Thunderbird comes back to SeaMonkey, however, which is frequently a source of confusion for users.
I had used Firefox until I got a nastygram from the admin about it being unauthorized.
run away!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Petrus4 has a history of blaming anything wrong in the Linux world or FOSS world at large as being Microsoft's fault. KDE sucks? Oh that's cause of Microsoft. Gnome sucks? Oh yeah, that's always Microsoft's fault. Lather, rinse, repeat for any other program/distro/etc that he dislikes.
I blame Microsoft for the current state of Linux for two reasons.
a) Their programming methodology, for the most part, is terrible. FOSS programmers view it as something to be emulated. Thus, they have emulated it, and bloated, excessively complex train wrecks like PulseAudio or GNOME are the result.
b) They've conditioned users into adopting a number of bad habits, so that said users force FOSS developers to support said bad habits in Linux.
One example is the expectation of unnecessary things like 3D compositing. It's superficial, almost purely aesthetic, and adds nothing in the way of practical usability; yet users compare Compiz with Aero and scream about how such is necessary, and that it doesn't matter if Compiz is unstable, because it's such a must-have feature.
Another example is a terminal aversion to the command line, which is viewed by users (and ultimately, users) as something which actually needs to be destroyed entirely. Have fun watching where that design decision leads.