Ask Slashdot: Seamonkey vs. Firefox — Any Takers?

Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 05:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Look, it's a version number. Who cares?

Re:Seriously? by Synerg1y · 2012-10-23 05:08 · Score: 5, Funny

Add-on developers.
Re:Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 05:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think the point is you won't be getting interrupted every time you open the browser to update.
Couldn't care less if they just decided to skip to version 100, but I'm not using it again until they figure out how to be less annoying then a pop up penis pill ad.
Re:Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 05:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Ok, but what are you going to do in a week from now? :)
Re:Seriously? by Mitchell314 · 2012-10-23 06:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Use unsigned long long for version tracking. :P

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I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Re:Seriously? by Creepy · 2012-10-23 06:15 · Score: 2

That at least should get Firefox past the next couple of months, but I'm not sure what they will do after that.
Re:Seriously? by jellomizer · 2012-10-23 06:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

As someone who usually makes a snide remark every time Firefox goes up to a new version, it really isn't a factor if I am going to use the product or not. I just think it was a Lame attempt to seem cool compared to Google Chrome. You know, like that kid in Jr. High School who wasn't popular, but tries too hard to be so, in the attempt they end up looking even more uncool, in the same process he had alienated himself from the cool kids and the outsider group too.
Not that the version number will affect the quality of the software. However by doing this firefox isn't being true to itself. And these big number changes only confuse people trying to realise if they should bother to upgrade or not.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Seriously? by Jane+Q.+Public · 2012-10-23 06:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

"I just think it was a Lame attempt to seem cool compared to Google Chrome."
Why would anybody need to "seem" cool compared to Chrome? If you think a browser that was designed to help gather information about you and advertise to you is cool, that's your opinion I guess.

As Eben Moglen said recently in two videos on Slashdot, if you are interested in personal freedom and privacy, use Firefox. Period.
Re:Seriously? by tlhIngan · 2012-10-23 08:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Add-on developers.
And people who hate how the UI seems to change every version. One version things act one way, the next and it acts another way.
It's why people don't complain so much about Chrome because the UI tends to be fairly stable. With Firefox, it's a game of "what did they change this time around?".
Things like the status bar, the URL bar (autocomplete only does the domain nowadays rather than the full URL... very annoying), etc. I think 16.0.1 did something with the zoom control now as well... like ti seems to persist the zoom settings across site loads and windows...).
Re:Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 08:01 · Score: 2, Informative

Sea Monkey has trouble with add ons.
Nightly 19 doesn't.
My take. and yeah I use both.
Re:Seriously? by t4ng* · 2012-10-23 09:46 · Score: 2

if you are interested in personal freedom and privacy, use Firefox, with third party cookies and location info disabled, and AdBlock, Request Policy, HTTPS Everywhere, and BetterPrivacy add-ons installed. Period.
Fixed that for you. Firefox doesn't have great privacy by itself, but it can be made to have better privacy with add-ons and changing some of the default settings. But those add-ons and settings do have equivalents on Chrome. Chrome's sandboxing and integrated Adobe flash player updates might give it a slight edge on security, sometimes.
Re:Seriously? by hairyfeet · 2012-10-23 10:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

Its not just the UI changes, I have to support users on older systems as well as some netbook owners and as a netbook owner myself I can tell you that FF performance on low power systems frankly has been going downhill pretty badly. As an example the nettop I use in the shop, which with a Sempron 1.8GHz is frankly more powerful than any of the single core Atom netbooks, can play SD flash just fine and do multiple tabs...under any of the Chrome varaints. With FF the CPU slams to 100% on launch, slams to 100% when opening a new tab, even slams to 100% when scrolling through my bookmarks! And I lose about an hour on my E350 netbook if I use FF over one of the Chrome variants, again monitoring the CPU it seems FF just slams the hell out of these low power chips, in fact anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT seems to be slammed pretty hard in my tests around the shop. the whole UI becomes sluggish, FF itself feels like its in slow mo, its just not a pleasant browsing experience with the newer versions.
So while I agree that the UI changes are irritating frankly you could always learn where they put what this week, but the battery sucking and CPU hogging is a show stopper, at least for me and my customers. I've switched them all to Comodo Dragon but frankly testing any of the Chrome variants and it was pretty much the same, no CPU hogging or causing the whole UI to become unresponsive. if I had to guess I'd say they have bolted too much onto the gecko engine trying to keep up with Chrome's features and its just not cutting it, because I've tried all the forks and its the same story in Waterfox and Pale Moon and IceDragon, and frankly it wasn't doing this, at least for me, pre 5.0 which is where they really started to heavily keep up with Chrome feature wise.
Finally as for Seamonkey? Can't really say as I haven't used it in years, but as it has the same Gecko as FF I doubt it will be much different than using Waterfox or IceDragon, just a different wrapper on the same overworked engine. Frankly the only Gecko engine I've seen that still sails is Kmeleon, but that is so stripped down and isn't compatible with much so the disadvantages usually outweigh the advantages. that said if you have seriously old hardware that needs a modern browser Kmeleon really cooks, I stuck it on a 1.4Ghz first gen P4 for an older customer and she is quite happy with it, it does what she needs it to do and feels snappy.

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ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:Seriously? by dryeo · 2012-10-23 14:19 · Score: 2

It's been years since I've benchmarked them but at one time, on an Athlon 1800 and slow dialup (26.4) SeaMonkey used to display a Slashdot page in half the time as Firefox, both with the CPU pegged. Same source tree, same optimizations on the same compiler.
SeaMonkey never pegs the CPU now a days on a X6800 core2duo and still feels much faster then Firefox. Perhaps better caching as I'm still on the slow dialup where the limiting factor should be bandwidth.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Release weekly by vlm · 2012-10-23 05:07 · Score: 5, Informative

And they don't update their versions like crazy either

LOL they release weekly just like FF, only difference being they increment the version # by less than 0.01 usually, instead of 1 like FF. Big deal.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/news

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Re:Release weekly by Vlad_the_Inhaler · 2012-10-23 05:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

Seamonkey releases *Monthly*, along with Firefox - normally a day behind FF.
I use Seamonkey 80% of the time. They are often a release late in introducing new goodies but I see that as a good thing - new Firefox features are not always ready for the big time when first released. The UI does not change the way Firefox does, another good thing. I don't like having to work out the new way of doing something which worked perfectly well before.

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Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Re:Release weekly by NReitzel · 2012-10-23 05:51 · Score: 4, Interesting

What Vlad said.
I use a browser (seamonkey in fact) daily, however, perhaps 5% of my work involves looking up stuff on the internet, and almost none of my work involves "browsing" for something. Seamonkey is just functional. No Windows Dressing (sic), no Ferrocious Lion, just solid day to day use.
It ain't pretty, but it ain't broken, either.

--
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
Re:Release weekly by Lonewolf666 · 2012-10-23 06:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Seconded.
I also like the UI better than that of Firefox - the latter is a bit too eager to hide everything in drop-down menus. While that does save some screen real estate, I prefer the Seamonkey approach that leaves some more controls in plain sight.

--
C - the footgun of programming languages

Default Interface by confusedwiseman · 2012-10-23 05:08 · Score: 2

The interface in the screenshots remind me of Netscape! for some reason.

Re:Default Interface by AuMatar · 2012-10-23 05:25 · Score: 2

Because it is. Mozilla Suite was Netscape. SeaMonkey is the old Mozilla Suite. So the lineage is direct (although stuff has obviously been added). The question in my mind is what would you want out of a browser GUI that wasn't in Netscape/Mozilla? I haven't seen a single feature that's worth adding in any of the newer browsers, UI wise.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Re:Default Interface by confusedwiseman · 2012-10-23 05:38 · Score: 2

Over time, browsers have evolved to utilize screen space more efficiently. SeaMonkey still has the massive navigation bar at the top with bookmarks. Consider current versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. All have reduced the size of the navigation buttons at the top to allow focus on the content of the webpage. The ironic part is that now, people have cheap access to large screens. The first time I used Netscape, I think it was on a 13 inch monitor.

There's no feature that I feel is left out that should be demanded. I was hoping to encounter a discovery like the first time I found mouse gestures in Opera. Something different and fun for me to become attached.
Re:Default Interface by AuMatar · 2012-10-23 06:04 · Score: 2

The navigation bar isn't that big, and can be minimized. But really the amount of screen space you save is negligible and I want that bar open- the back button is something I use every few minutes. The icons could probably be made a bit smaller, but eh, why bother?
Something different/new isn't the point of SeaMonkey. The point is *not* integrating all of the new fluff of Firefox/Chrome/Opera on the outside and keeping the same UI that's been working for 15 years. It's a browser for those of us who are sick of changes for the sake of change.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Re:Default Interface by AuMatar · 2012-10-23 08:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't know about you, but when I'm using a graphical program like a web browser, my right hand is on the mouse, not the keyboard. The vast majority of the time I'm reading, not typing. Also, backspace to go back is a horrendous mistake in browser design- for every time I've used it and meant it, there's been 3 times where I hit it accidentally while typing a post somewhere and lost all my content.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Re:Default Interface by yurtinus · 2012-10-23 08:28 · Score: 2

Yup, save all that space in your browser so that the Gmail website can waste it with its big empty blue bars!

OK, I feel better for letting that off my chest.

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+1 Disagree

I love it by AuMatar · 2012-10-23 05:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

It doesn't have the asinine upgrade cycle of Firefox, it doesn't have the horrible GUI of firefox, and it's UI is stable. And that's what I want- I've been using a web browser for almost 2 decades, I don't want it to change unless there's a HUGE benefit. The last time that happened was tabs. Oh, and it crashes less, uses less memory, and seems to be more responsive. I see no reason for Firefox to even exist when SeaMonkey is such a better project, except that it keeps the idiots in charge of Mozilla busy.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?

Re:I love it by LordLimecat · 2012-10-23 05:58 · Score: 3, Informative

https://wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey:Release_History#SeaMonkey_2.3_and_beyond
Stable releases will be more frequent (6-week release schedule) but with fewer changes, eliminating the need for minor releases. The aim is to release the stable versions right around a week of the release of the equivalent Firefox and Thunderbird.
You were saying? (and for the record, 2.2 was released a year ago)
Re:I love it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 06:02 · Score: 3, Informative

When I started using SeaMonkey I was afraid of having to ditch my beloved trifecta of add-ons, but I found that Adblock Plus, NoScript, and Ghostery are available for SeaMonkey. Not sure about Pentadactyl.

Re:*Crickets* by vlm · 2012-10-23 05:10 · Score: 2, Funny

5 Minutes and no takers?

They're all trying to use seamonkey to fake the user-agent string so the apple keynote can be viewed.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger

Memory hog? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 05:16 · Score: 2, Informative

Firefox is not a memory hog anymore. In fact, it is one of the most (if not the most) frugal mainstream browsers today.

People should stop spreading 5 year old information without bothering to check first.

Re:Memory hog? by fahrbot-bot · 2012-10-23 05:41 · Score: 3, Funny

Uh, say what? I regularly hit 800 MB with just 5-6 tabs, ...
Browse p0rn sites w/thinner girls. It uses less RAM.

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Re:Memory hog? by BZ · 2012-10-23 06:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

That's showing about 400MB RAM usage, and about 800MB address space. But address space includes mmapped files and reserved address space that is not actually backed by memory; it only matters for purposes of running out of a 32-bit process's 4GB address space.
So OK, 400MB memory usage. Of this, about 260MB was actually allocated by the browser (see "explicit"; the rest seems to be things the OS is putting into the process memory space space (e.g. the code of the browser, the code of the libraries the browser links to, etc).
Of this 260MB, looks like about 70MB is RAM used by your extensions (17MB for adblock plus, 6MB for https-everywhere, etc). Another 30MB looks like it might be JS GC heap fragmentation from those extensions.
Another 40MB is the yahoo mail tab; almost all of this is the various JS gunk it's doing.
7MB is Wired.
About 6MB for Slashdot.
Another 5MB for about:addons, and about 15MB for the browser UI.
30MB unknown to about:memory.
16MB in-memory cache for the bookmarks and history databases.
10MB images.
7MB web workers used by ghostery.
That accounts for most of the memory listed as far as I can tell.
Re:Memory hog? by BZ · 2012-10-23 07:12 · Score: 2

Ah, 350MB in task mgr would match the ~400MB resident metrics from about:memory.
And again, about 100MB of that is not even Firefox itself...
For the rest, the basic problem is that web sites are doing a _lot_ of JS, as are the extensions you have installed. So they're using a lot of memory for all those JS objects. :(
It would be interesting to see how much memory other browsers use on that set of sites, for what it's worth.

Hello AdBlock devs?? by rodrigoandrade · 2012-10-23 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

I need ABP to block Slashvertisements!!

Re:*Crickets* by leromarinvit · 2012-10-23 05:19 · Score: 4, Funny

They've already used their 5 minute data allowance for this month.

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Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.

Re:It has a WYSIWYG editor by jones_supa · 2012-10-23 05:22 · Score: 2

Actually I remember a year or two ago someone in Slashdot claiming the WYSIWYG editor of Seamonkey being one of the best. Dunno though, have not tried it.

Seamonkey is fine and stable but..... by gelfling · 2012-10-23 05:31 · Score: 3, Informative

The latest turn of the crank is highly incompatible with most add ons. 75% of existing add ons, easily are incompatible. It's a bit less clunky and sluggish than FF.

Re:Extra features prevent use by bolthole · 2012-10-23 05:34 · Score: 2

SO, you cant use a web browser then? what a shame.

(There are web-based irc clients/gateways. all that's required is javascript. cf: http://webchat.freenode.net/ )

I've been using it since the beginning... by c.r.o.c.o · 2012-10-23 05:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

I started off on Netscape, then Mozilla and now Seamonkey mainly because they all had a similar UI and set of features. When everybody was moving to IE6, I stuck with Netscape Communicator 4.72 for years while Mozilla was completely rewriting the code base. I think the first Mozilla I ran was M18. And when Mozilla decided to release FF as their main project, I switched to Seamonkey.

I still use an email client, so if I were to use FF or Chrome today I'd have to install two programs instead of one. There is another benefit. I always had Linux on my desktops, but not on laptops due to their weird hardware (try getting Optimus working in Linux). Mozilla and Seamonkey use the mbox file format both in Windows and Linux, so moving mail between the OSes was simple after a reinstall. Just copy over the files and you'd be done. I think Seamonkey is still the only cross platform email client.

That should be enough, but there are other reasons.

The bookmark structure in Seamonkey has remained the same since Communicator and until recently moving to a new computer was as simple as replacing an html file in the profile folder. Now it's a bit more complicated, to the extent that I have to import/export that same html file.

Seamonkey also has a lot of extra config options in the Preferences window compared to FF. In this respect FF feels completely dumbed down. I am aware FF and Seamonkey have virtually the same options in about:config, but modifying things means looking up values instead of just clicking an option.

TL;DR? I'm just too lazy to retrain my muscle memory with a new browser when I've been using Seamonkey and its predecessors for at least a decade and a half.

Re:I've been using it since the beginning... by colfer · 2012-10-23 07:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

Seamonkey is also convenient is you want to run another Mozilla browser alongside Firefox and not have to take any measures to keep the profiles separate. So it adds one to the number of browsers you can just install and run with no special setup and thereby split some of the advertiser & Facebook tracking that is so annoying.
Seamonkey and Thunderbird also keep the Mozilla team somewhat coherent in developing the common codebase, though increasingly build issues are wasting a lot of time for those two now unpaid projects. Mozilla has three projects it supports with paid developers: Firefox, the Firefox OS and Firefox Mobile. It dropped Thunderbird recently from that group and it's not clear how the TB team is going to handle rapid release vs. extended service release. Lots of tricky work for unpaid developers to keep up with an intricate codebase continually special cased for the three paid products, and to match Chrome innovations.
Seems to me Seamonkey developers are the ones most concerned with making current features work predictably for users.

Re:It has a WYSIWYG editor by LordLimecat · 2012-10-23 05:54 · Score: 5, Funny

I dont always do WSIWYG HTML, but when I do, I prefer Seamonkey
FTFY

I do by chebucto · 2012-10-23 06:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

I never switched from Netscape, really -

Netscape
Mozilla Suite
Seamonkey

The switch from Mozilla Suite to Seamonkey was made against a cacophony of support for Firefox. Firefox then was like Chrome now - lean, mean, the future, in a word: cool.

People bitched and moaned about how the Mozilla Suite (and, by extension, Seamonkey) was burdened by bundling its mail, news, chat, and html edit programs together; people wanted a lean-and-mean browser.

The tables are turned now, though. By avoiding all the pointless cool chrome (to use an expression), Seamonkey has managed to stay feeling light and purposeful.

Add to that the fact that
- the UI is stable
- the version numbers are sane (and the release schedule is sane, unlike what the current top post on this story says - maybe one minor release per month. very manageable)
- the prefs don't talk down to you
- it has mail and chat attached by default (I like that!)
- it has a single address/search bar
- it uses Gecko, so under-the-hood it's up-to-date
- when you spawn a new tab, the new tab appears at the extreme right, instead of displacing the existing tabs by spawning to the immediate right of your current tab
- the new-tab button is fixed in the extreme left of the tab bar, and doesn't jump around depending on how many tabs you have open atm

There are probably other things I could list. But in general, it _is_ a browser for people who know what they want: a browser that has a perfectly workable UI and does not change based on fashion. And a browser that has a modern HTML engine.

Unless and until the HTML engine becomes stale, I see no reason to change. I like my menu bars, I like spending a few extra horizontal pixels up to have back, forward, reload and stop buttons, I like having an attached mail client. Good design is good design no matter what decade it is.

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The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.

Re:Nope by cant_get_a_good_nick · 2012-10-23 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative

A billion years ago.. well, maybe not.... This is all from memory. I didn't have anything specific to do with any of these groups, though my job depended on HTTP, HTML and web server programming, so I kept an interest.

Netscape as a company was toast. They had been beaten by IE, they weren't moving servers (I used Netscape's webserver once, and found it was pretty clunky compared to Apache even in those days). As they shrank, they what code they could to the Mozilla project.

So, now you have these smart and fast engineers, and with less corporate management you can let them run free and produce the greatest browser ever! Well, not really... it looked like Navigator, but with no market researchers telling them no, they're free to jam even more features in it. Lets keep usenet there, even though only geeks know what an NNTP server is. Lets keep mail and a web browser together. And lets add IRC chat, cause everyone uses IRC right? As for the shiny stuff under, lets rewrite COM to be cross platform! Lets write a cross platform XML based GUI! In short, it was a mess. It was crash prone, and even the shiny cool tech under was shiny and cool (the XML based GUI layout engine has been copied by many now, including Microsoft) it was not ready for prime time. It was just too big, too bulky to get right. And too much for the timelines they wanted to use. The fact that they coded a lot of other tools (Bugzilla, Tinderbox) didn't help timelines either. They had good ideas, its just the three goals "code everything", "code perfectly", and "release early and often" just don't mix.

As it stuttered, a group of Mozilla folks forked some of the code and made a lean mean browser. Since they thought Mozilla was bogged down, they wanted to rise from the ashes of Netscape and Mozilla, and called their fork Phoenix. Even early on, it was fast, lean, and got a lot of attention. Very early, it was obvious that this was the direction of Mozilla. Then the name changes. Eventually, Phoenix tech, the guys that make the BIOS on your box sued. They might want to have a webclient in the BIOS, and a Phoenix web browser may be confusing. OK, lets call it Firebird. And then we call the mail client Thunderbird, very cool. But wait, there is already an OpenSource project called Firebird. So, we get Firefox.

Re:Nope by squiggleslash · 2012-10-23 06:15 · Score: 4, Informative

Mod up informative.

BTW Firefox is built upon that XML-based GUI thing (XUL), that was one apparently bloated thing that apparently the Netscape people got right.

I rather liked the original Windows installs of Phoenix too. You just unzipped it to whereever you wanted it. Want to uninstall it? Delete the directory. That was it. Nicely minimal. Wish more applications were like that.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.

I use it daily... for years! by Nomaxxx · 2012-10-23 07:00 · Score: 2

I use SeaMonkey as my daily browser/mail client. I know quite a few people who use it too (girlfriend, neighbor, family, ...), where I worked before, we used Mozilla Suite with FTP calendar for employee schedules. In fact I just followed the natural evolution: Netscape Communicator -> Netcape -> Mozilla -> Mozilla Suite -> SeaMonkey. Fun fact that I still have more or less the same interface in front of me for 15 years while benefiting of latest technology. I still use the same profile too even if I switched mail box providers a few times over time. Mozilla split this suite to separate browser/mail client apps to compete with Internet Explorer/Outlook combo and it worked great. But I wasn't fan of the way they dumbed down the browser app to make Firefox, removing many great features (initially, it improved with time), it really was a step back. And I really love to have one application only for all my Internet needs (well I use Bluefish for web dev, not SeaMonkey's built-in editor, and I don't use the integrated IRC client as much as I did a few years back). I have only one extension installed, and that is Lightning (calendar). We use a common calendar (stored online) with my girlfriend so anyone can add future activities. It's an awesome piece of software, better suiting corporate needs than Firefox. Too bad Mozilla doesn't push it more. It's really overlooked. :-/ By the way, I also like the fact the address bar and search bar are common. It saves space and is very convenient. To run a Google (for example) search on a word, just type it in the address bar and click the Search button. Or even faster, type in the word and press down, enter. Fast and easy! I suggest anyone to give it a try, it has a lot going for it! ;-)

Re:It has a WYSIWYG editor by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 07:01 · Score: 2, Informative

The WYSIWYG editor, called "Composer", started with the old Netscape browser and has been updated somewhat since then, but is not what anyone would consider a fully functional, modern, web page editor. Still, it has some advantages. It's free, for one thing, and pretty easy to use and good for teaching the basics of creating web pages to beginners, who would panic if they had to understand HTML. Another advantage is that it works the same on both Windows and Macs, so it's easy to teach a class to people who use either system. One more advantage is that the FireFTP add-on works with SeaMonkey, so beginning web developers can have a complete editor, browser, and FTP client in one package.

Re:It has a WYSIWYG editor by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-10-23 07:01 · Score: 2

Its pretty bad. It hasn't changed significantly from Netscape's version. Its what you see is what you get. Instead of What you see is what you would actually want to show people if you are using your real name (WYSIWYWAWTSPIYAUYRN).

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Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.

How about this radical idea? by otuz · 2012-10-23 09:27 · Score: 2

How about making Seamonkey even faster and simpler by removing everything except the browser? Then replace the bloated Firefox with that, what could go wrong?

Not yet, but I've thought seriously about it. by jonadab · 2012-10-23 09:50 · Score: 2

> The successor to the original Mozilla Suite, it has a full-
> blown email/news/RSS client, Chatzilla, and an HTML editor.

All of which nobody wants from Mozilla. We just want the web browser. I already have, from other sources, a *much* more feature-complete mail/news reader (Gnus) and an overwhelmingly better HTML editor (Emacs with some custom elisp that I wrote back in the nineties; one very major advantage this has over an HTML-specific editor is that it works when I'm writing snippets of HTML embedded in other kinds of files, such as in server-side Perl code), and if I had any use whatsoever for an IRC client I hope someone would smack me back to my senses.

Really, I just want the browser.

With that said...

> Also several other default features that would require separate extensions for Firefox.

Yes, I know. It took Firefox well more than a year just to have extensions _available_ for some of the features that I relied on heavily in the old Mozilla suite, and I refused to switch over to it until the extension manager changes that allowed you to upgrade the browser without having to find and install all your extensions again from scratch (sometime around FF 1.5 IIRC). Using the suite, I'd need about a third as many extensions as I need in Firefox, because the rest of the things I use extensions for were built in out-of-the-box in the suite.

> And they don't update their versions like crazy either;

More to the point, they haven't been gratuitously dorking around with the UI trying to see how screwed up they can make it for the last three years.

So yeah, I've thought about it. Currently, I find that Firefox 2.0.0.20 with NoScript is still adequate for my needs, but its days are obviously numbered. The nail in its coffin will be the CSS features that it doesn't support simply because its Gecko version is too old. The most important of these is probably display: inline-block, since sites that rely on that can have quite seriously messed up layouts (and, frequently, overlapping text) when it's not supported. Eventually, I'll have to upgrade because of that. (There are also some Javascript performance issues, but I find that the number of sites I ever use where I actually _want_ the functionality that the Javascript provides can be counted on the fingers of one hand without resorting to clever math tricks. Lang-8 is the main one. So I just use that site in a different browser. Sorted.)

And yes, if the Firefox team doesn't eventually quit playing around with the UI like hyperactive third graders and produce something solid and reliable, it is entirely possible that Seamonkey will be my upgrade path. Chrome is obviously unsuitable for my needs (because it's even less customizable than IE and furthermore lacks a number of features I'm not willing to live without), and while I use Opera on the side for certain things, I would have grave reservations about making it my primary browser. I've also checked out Epiphany, Midori, Flock, Galeon, and several others. So far, Seamonkey looks like the best bet, if Firefox doesn't eventually find its way back to a place where I can meet it.

If I thought I had anywhere near the C chops for it, I might attempt to fork Firefox 2 and update it to use a modern Gecko, but I'm nowhere near enough of an application developer and have nothing like enough knowledge of C to realistically attempt that kind of undertaking. (I have some programming background, but I mostly write glue code, personal utilities, and server-oriented non-GUI stuff. I'm a network administrator, not an application developer.)

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Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.

I use it. by antdude · 2012-10-23 10:18 · Score: 2

I have been using suite web browsers since early Netscape days. Even Mozilla (the name of its web browser) before renaming to SeaMonkey. I like having my newsreader, e-mail, web browser, etc. all at once and integrated. Extensions can be a problem since not all work in it. :(

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Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).

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