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Mozilla The Internet Software

SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha released 236

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-add-water dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha was released last week. Users of the Mozilla Suite or Netscape should check it out - it contains numerous new features and bugfixes when compared to Mozilla 1.7, but offers the same basic look and feel. There are a few screenshots on the SeaMonkey blog showing off some of the features. For those who don't know, SeaMonkey is the continuation of the Mozilla Suite after the Mozilla Foundation ceased shipping new releases."
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SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha released More

SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha released

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  • what's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AWG ( 621868 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:15AM (#13594588)
    1. Can someone explain why this exists? I thought Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird[/Nvu] were basically better versions of what existed in the original Mozilla platform? Why is this continuing to be developed? Who is their target audience here?

    2. Do they really expect Netscape users (e.g. people on AOL that don't know any better) to download something called seamonkey?

    • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:31AM (#13594633)
      Firefox / Thunderbird are certainly cleaner than the suite, but you lose some benefits of integration. For example, the suite allows you to middle click on a link in an email and open it as a new browser tab. Or you can edit the page you're viewing from the menu. Or create a single wallet which holds passwords from your browser and email app. Or have a disk and memory footprint of one app instead of many.


      I admit you could probably live without some of these things, but then again they all add up. I know that I really miss the middle-click behaviour on emails when using Firefox and Thunderbird.

      • I know that I really miss the middle-click behaviour on emails when using Firefox and Thunderbird.

        Firefox offers a very similar function. Set the following option and any links you click in your email client (or any other app, for that matter) will open in a new tab (provided Firefox is set as your default browser).

        Tools > Options > Advanced > Tabbed Browsing > "a new tab in the most recent window"

      • While I avoid the stand-alone apps under Linux for exactly the reasons you're giving. OTOH, I'm posting this from my OSX box and there clicking on links from Thunderbird mail automatically opens a new tab in Firefox, so I wonder why this isn't the default in the Linux versions.

    • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:50AM (#13594677)
      "Firefox" is only supposed to be better by the simple virtue that a few thousands of people said it was better. That diverted resources from Mozilla, and rendered FireFox better by slowing down Moz.

      I never understood that. Firefox is a backstep on Mozilla, and mostly an ego trip.

      I prefer Mozilla for the following reasons:

      a/ I use every single day a browser, and email client, and, sometimes, have to compose simple HTML pages. I seldom use IRC, but when I need it, I use ChatZilla (no need to download and track yet another piece of code).

      b/ I don't like to upgrade. I have better things to do with my life. Not having to track a browser and an email client is godsend. Mozilla took care of most of my online needs (okay, it could have included some additional applications)

      c/ I use three different platforms (Win 2K, Mac OS X and FreeBSD). Having the same software on all three was very handy, even if it is less great than the native software.

      d/ I don't like to track plugins. Firefox is ridiculous in that area. It does very little out of the box, but is so configurable that it is a usability nightmare. You have to spend *hours* drilling into hundreds of extensions, trying them, restarting the browser, to get something that may fit your needs. Upgrade are painfull, as extensions often stop working, and, as the browser is now splitted into dozen of components, you cannot count on functionality beeing always present (extensions come and go). It is a waste of time.

      To get a suitable replacement of the one-shot mozilla download, you have to get Firefox + a random number of ill-named extension + a separate email client + an HTML editor. This take more time, use more RAM, is less nicely integrated, and follow conflicting release schedules.

      For me, mozilla = FreeBSD, while FireFox+Extension+Thunderbird+Nvu+... = Linux.

      Both have their use. I just happend to prefer FreeBSD philosophy.

      • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Monday September 19, 2005 @06:24AM (#13594756) Homepage
        a/ I use every single day a browser, and email client, and, sometimes, have to compose simple HTML pages. I seldom use IRC, but when I need it, I use ChatZilla (no need to download and track yet another piece of code).

        I'd, on the other hand, prefer to update only the IRC client when there is a flaw in the IRC client, rather than 4 packages. You know how long it takes to compile Firefox and Thunderbird?

        • Re:what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by laffer1 ( 701823 )
          Yes, but if there is a flaw in the rendering engine you have to recompile firefox and thunderbird anyway. I actually prefer the user interface with firefox and that is the primary reason I use it. I use firefox in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. I use thunderbird in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. The only platform that firefox and thunderbird suck on is Mac OS X. I think the code is less mature and often crashes on my ibook.

          As a netscape user for most of my time on the internet, I was very sad when I learned

      • Re:what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Willeh ( 768540 ) *

        I don't like to track plugins. Firefox is ridiculous in that area. It does very little out of the box, but is so configurable that it is a usability nightmare. You have to spend *hours* drilling into hundreds of extensions, trying them, restarting the browser, to get something that may fit your needs. Upgrade are painfull, as extensions often stop working, and, as the browser is now splitted into dozen of components, you cannot count on functionality beeing always present (extensions come and go). It is a w

      • Fair comment but.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Unski ( 821437 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @06:53AM (#13594823) Journal
        while I can understand that The Kitchen Sink suits you nicely, and offers a consistent Kitchen Sink across platforms, I do fear there is something of the luddite in these statements; Firefox is a backstep on Mozilla, and mostly an ego trip. Firefox is the first piece of OSS software that I both liked sufficiently enough to recommend it to my girlfriend, to my dad, to my mum, and also that has remained a favourite of two of the three listed. If by 'ego trip' you mean the necessary and useful refinement of the interface offered by Mozilla'a previous offerings (read: netscape, moz. suite) to something that is readily comprehended by non-geek users, I have to agree with you there. Indeed, may the collective ego of all firefox developers continue to expand and to do useful things like: - developing and refining platform agnostic windows, menus so that non-geeks never have to become aware of the fact that their browser is somehow not quite like Windows. - letting them clear History, Saved Form info, Passwords, Download history, Cookies, and Cache, all with one button. - letting them choose the download folder, so they're not prompted where to save every download My point really is only that, pehaps banally, there are different horses for different courses and that firefox, clearly, is something much better than the mere ego trips of developers. End users don't care about the politics of browser development. They don't care that, in fact, firefox is the bastard grandson of netscape, indeed, they are more likely to use it if they don't know that. The emerging profile of the firefox user is that of the IE/Win user who has got fed-up of spyware, and have become receptive, over a long time, to the fuss in the computer press about this other browser. And they damned well wouldn't be interested in the ugly bloat of The Kitchen Sink.

        • Re:Fair comment but.. (Score:3, Informative)

          by CTho9305 ( 264265 )
          letting them choose the download folder, so they're not prompted where to save every download
          Edit->Preferences, Navigator->Downloads, "Automatically download files to the specified folder".

      • Re:what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Mr_Silver ( 213637 )
        I don't like to track plugins. Firefox is ridiculous in that area. It does very little out of the box, but is so configurable that it is a usability nightmare. You have to spend *hours* drilling into hundreds of extensions, trying them, restarting the browser, to get something that may fit your needs. Upgrade are painfull, as extensions often stop working, and, as the browser is now splitted into dozen of components, you cannot count on functionality beeing always present (extensions come and go). It is a w
      • Keep in mind that the longterm plan is to have Firefox and Thunderbird launch from XULRunner. (I assume Nvu could also do this.) This will solve the RAM issue, and also mean that the underlying codebase can simply be updated once for all apps.

        And most of the developers "diverted to Firefox" are still working on the same Gecko engine and underlying technologies that powered the Mozilla suite. The number of (paid) people hacking Firefox specific stuff isn't really that many.
      • Try running mozilla and firefox on grandma's pc with 256 megs of ram running on a 450mhz processor? Now tell me which one you would prefer Grandma to run?

        Even on my system with 512 megs of ram I notice that firefox is snappier and I prefer it over mozilla for that reason.

    • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tet ( 2721 ) <slashdot@nOsPam.astradyne.co.uk> on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:56AM (#13594690) Homepage Journal
      I thought Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird[/Nvu] were basically better versions of what existed in the original Mozilla platform?

      The simple answer is that they're not better versions. I was eager to switch to Firefox (or Phoenix and later Firebird as it was then), as I don't use anything from the suite other than the browser anyway. But when it surfaced, it turned out to be a poor substitute for the real thing. Mozilla was and continues to be a better browser. That's why I use it.

      I'm sure that with the addition of various extensions, I could probably get Firefox up to the same level as Mozilla. But Mozilla does it all out of the box, and I don't have to go around hunting for addons, or spend ages customising it in about:config.

      • I've downloaded every major FireFox release, from 0.6 or so, and tried each of them out for a while, but I always come back to Mozilla in the end.

        It seems to be more stable for me, and I actually use most of the parts of it at least occaisionally. If you leave Mozilla Mail running all the time (which one tends to do with mail), then you can get a browser/composer/IRC window fast, much snappier than FireFox startup. It seems there's always a few fiddly little settings (like turning off animated .GIFs) that
    • Can someone explain why this exists?
      Those free AOL cd's need to be filled with something.

      Besides, it's easier to tell users to click seaclunky/setup.exe than first firefox/setup.exe, next thunderbird/setup.xe etc.


    • Can someone explain why this exists? I thought Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird[/Nvu] were basically better versions of what existed in the original Mozilla platform? Why is this continuing to be developed? Who is their target audience here?

      I'm still a user of the suite and see no point to move other than TBird extensions like SyncKolab. Yes I have tried Firefox. I have it installed on other boxes here. I don't want to use it for day to day use. Ever. Personally if I were to migrate, it wouldn't be to FF or TB.

      F

    • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xander2032 ( 719016 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @07:11AM (#13594899)
      That's the thing. They aren't "better" versions.

      I'd like for someone to show me how Firefox and Thunderbird are "better" than Mozilla/SeaMonkey.

      Things I've observed...

      Mozilla and Firefox take the same amount of time to start, they render at the same speed as well, and in no way is Mozilla sluggish when compared to Firefox.

      I have yet to see how Firefox has a "smaller footprint". On my system Firefox seems to use more memory when loading the exact same pages as Mozilla.

      So if Firefox isn't faster, isn't "smaller", etc.. Then how is it better?

      And I only use the suite as a browser. I don't use it for email, irc, etc... Although sometimes I will use Composer for a quick and dirty web page.

      As for the UI. The default themes that ship with Mozilla/Seamonkey are just horrid! However, there are MANY third party themes that look great. I use the pinball theme here. Mozilla looks grea with it!

      Sure Mozilla doesn't have the customizable menus that Firefox does. but I've never found that to be an issue?

      I'm quite happy with Mozilla how it is.

      Also... Mozilla is/was by no means a "failure". When Mozilla announced they were "dumping" Mozilla, they said that the number of users was in the "low millions".

      I don't know about you, but an OSS app that has a few million users is a pretty good success!! And it definitely deserves to live on. Which is why the SeaMonkey project was started.

      There's still a demand for Mozilla and quite a large user base.

      I personally think Mozilla would have done just as well as Firefox if MoFo had put the same level of advertising into Mozilla as it did Firefox.

      I've been a supporter of Mozilla for years now, and I continue to test SeaMonkey nightlies and submit bug reports.

      But yes... They could have come up with a better name than SeaMonkey. ;) lol

       

      • Re:what's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drew ( 2081 )
        As for the UI. The default themes that ship with Mozilla/Seamonkey are just horrid! However, there are MANY third party themes that look great. I use the pinball theme here. Mozilla looks grea with it!

        UI != themes

    • Re:what's the point? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bunratty ( 545641 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @07:16AM (#13594917)
      1. Can someone explain why this exists?
      Here are just a few answers to that question [mozilla.org].
      2. Do they really expect Netscape users to download something called SeaMonkey?
      No, mostly users of Mozilla 1.7.x will download SeaMonkey.

    • Re:what's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CTho9305 ( 264265 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @08:30AM (#13595268) Homepage
      I personally strongly prefer SeaMonkey... there are a bunch of reasons. I've used it (well, the Mozilla suite) for a few years and am more used to it, and I see more eye-to-eye with other SeaMonkey developers.

      Firefox is somewhat annoying to use, because lots of little things are just different (for example, if you type something in the URL bar, SeaMonkey will open it in a new tab if you hit ctrl+enter, while Firefox uses alt+enter; Firefox's download manager has annoying default behaviors; having a separate search bar instead of just searching from the URL bar means both your URL bar is smaller and you can see less of what you type when you search for something; find-as-you-type has a weird dialog in Firefox; many other things). If you haven't used SeaMonkey before, though, some of these won't be a problem for you. Another annoyance is that Firefox changes a lot between each release - the fact that the options window was redone basically from scratch between FF1.0 and FF1.5b means that a lot of things are in different places now. A nice thing about the suite is that since it's integrated, you don't have to set all your preferences twice (in the browser, and in the email client).

      As a developer, I don't like some of the practices used in Firefox... for large patches, their philosophy seems more like "include the patch and let users (people who use the nightly builds) find bugs" whereas in SeaMonkey we do more up-front code review. When porting Firefox patches to SeaMonkey, I've had them be rejected because the code quality I copied wasn't good enough, so they had to be cleaned up. I really don't like the way the "lead Firefox developer" (Ben Goodger - in quotes because that title is really unfair to the other Firefox devs) seems to do his big patches... in the cases I've looked at, he checked in patches that either were entirely broken (when he rewrote the options dialog, it didn't work at all and was mostly invisible (see-through, I'm not kidding)), or full of bugs that a few minutes of testing would find (the info bar that alerts you to blocked popups, blocked extensions, missing plugins, etc. had a lot of bugs I came across when I ported it to SeaMonkey).

      A lot of Firefox's popularity probably just comes from the fact that it's new and therefore "cool" or interesting, whereas the suite looks similar to Netscape 4. It seems that the new name "SeaMonkey" is actually generating a little interest though, which is kind of cool.

      If you're into testing lots of extensions, Firefox makes it easier (specifically, uninstalling extensions in SeaMonkey is hard), but the thing about SeaMonkey is that I don't need extensions with it, so it isn't really a problem. I have one extension (FlashBlock) that I've used for years and never needed to uninstall... and I used autoscroll until recently (autoscroll will be integrated in SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta, so I don't need the extension any more).

      Anyone who tells you Firefox is faster is probably confused or buying into hype. Every recent test I've seen has SeaMonkey starting up faster (even without QuickLaunch, which makes it launch almost instantaneously - a feature Firefox doesn't have), and they use the exact same rendering engine, so pageload speeds are the same.

      I'm not sure how they compare in memory use, but in my experience, the cache and webpages themselves tend to use significantly more RAM than the interface itself, so I wouldn't expect much difference. People like to say SeaMonkey is "bloated", but if you also use an email program, however, SeaMonkey is going to be a LOT smaller than Firefox+Thunderbird, because it shares a lot of data, while FF+TB duplicate a lot. A quick test showed Firefox alone was ~21MB at launch, and SeaMonkey ~22MB. Opening the mail client for SeaMonkey only bumped it up to ~28MB though, while Thunderbird is going to eat another 20MB or so for itself.
    • Lets set:

      I could not book mark in Firefox like I could in Mozilla. Firefox had modal windows that would not die. Some of the ease of anti-corprate pr0n blocking (ads) was *removed* from Firefox.

      Thunder...bird had similar problems and ate some of my mail.

      There were other UI issues. It's damn near takes a programmer to convert *back* to mozilla. I did not appreciate this.

      Firefox and Thunderbird seem to hate each other. Try sending an entire webpage like you can in Mozilla. Wow, the button is gone. Try pasting

  • You know what day it is! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:17AM (#13594593)

    Avast me mateys! Aargh! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day! [talklikeapirate.com]

    Aargh! Me SeaMonkeys! Aye, they waited for the right date to announce it.

    Bljarne!

  • SeaMonkey 1.0? What an odd name (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gringer ( 252588 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:22AM (#13594606)
    I would have preferred something like 2.0, because I've always associated SeaMonkey with the Mozilla Application Suite (which was up to 1.7.11, last time I checked [mozillazine.org]). From a brief glance at the project page, it looks like it has similar functionality to that suite ("all-in-one internet application suite").
    • Seamonkey was prevented from using "Mozilla Application Suite" by mozilla.org, which makes sense because they "own" the word Mozilla, and using it would infer that mozilla.org still supported newer versions, which it doesn't.

      Same goes for v1.8. mozilla.org strongly recommended against using 1.8. And since they have kindly offered to host the souce, dist, bugs, etc for Seamonkey, you pretty much have to do what they recommend. Even 2.0 would be tricky, because people might think it's a upgrade from "Mozil
    • I agree that Mozilla Application Suite would have made much more on the corporate users then SeaMonkey. Serious people will probably skip this app entirely, even before they find out what it is all about.

    • I don't get it. Is there still a Mozilla? Does this compete with Mozilla?

      Why is this not Mozilla 2.0 or 1.8 or some other number?

      And why did people split out and make different components? Netscape / Mozilla were great because all your net needs were taken care of: browsing, email, web authoring, and eventually IM. Now things don't work together.
    • Would have made total sense. Firefox browser along with Mozilla suite. Foxzilla suite.

    • I had the same confusion when Open Source Netscape was branded Mozilla and announced they were working toward a 1.0. To me, Netscape Navigator/Composer was already Mozilla and had always been, and it was at version 4.x going on 5.x+.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:22AM (#13594607)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I know most people don't care about this, but i really do, and it prevents me from using a lot of software. Mozilla's UI is hideous. It always has been. It doesn't look good on any platform that i've ever used it on

      Sucks to be you.

      Yet another Mac fanboy whining about the "hideous" interface, or the look of the widgets, or whatever insignificant little thing that makes your life unliveable with anything but the "perfect" Apple interface.

      I guess I'm just dense, but doesn't this get down to the level of n

      • Re:The interface is gross (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Watts Martin ( 3616 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @03:16PM (#13598419) Homepage
        Actually, he never said he was a "Mac fanboy," you just apparently made the assumption that only Mac people would complain about interfaces. What's worse, you made the assumption that the only complaints about UI design have to do with aesthetics. I'm sorry, but I complain about interface design much more frequently based on usability.

        Based on your tone, you're preparing some comment about how only namby-pamby GUI users would ever care about that. But ask why people who have strong preferences for Emacs over Vim or vice-versa have such a preference. I can guarantee that "Emacs has a much prettier interface that matches my drapes nicely" is not going to come up very often. Now, ask why there are people who prefer NEdit, or BBEdit, or another full-featured GUI editor over both of those. I can guarantee that you for 99% of those people, it's because all of the functionality they need is wrapped up in an interface they find more intuitive, faster to learn, and faster to use.

        UI "prettiness" is subjective, but a lot of usability principles aren't. NEdit will always be faster for a new user to learn than XEmacs. This isn't a slam on XEmacs or its functionality or on users who've become comfortable with it and have little reason to change, but NEdit is not less functional because it is easier to use.

        And, yeah, Mac people tend to be more sensitive about UI design than some others. That may be because they're all nitpicky whiny bastards. Or, it may be because they've had twenty years of programs largely designed by people who put a lot of thought into how good interface design makes programs more intuitive and usable. Frankly, I wish free software developers would get down off their "the console is god" high horses and listen to the whining just a little more.

  • The point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TuxPaper ( 531914 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:27AM (#13594625)
    Wow, first two posts here are asking what' the point is.

    The point is that it's a continuation of the Mozilla suite. Just because mozilla.org is too busy to handle the project, doesn't mean that a lot of developers don't want to code for it, nor does it mean that a lot of users don't want to use it.

    Who's the target? Simple: People who have Mozilla 1.7.

    Why? Same reason people use Mozilla 1.7.

    Sure, Firefox is leet and is made by leet ex (and current) Mozilla developers, but it was not made as a replacement for Mozilla.

    People who hate Firefox's simplistic options (or hate being uber-leet and going into about:config to change even the simplest config options) are the target. People who want a mail/news app bundled with their browser are a target. People who dislike the attitude of the leet Firefox developers when they first started up are targets.

    Go ahead and troll rate me for calling Firefox users/developers leet if you want. I remember distictively when Firefox first came out, the users were bragging they were leet.
    • I remember distictively when Firefox first came out, the users were bragging they were leet.

      I remember that, too. During recess, they would all gather around the swing set and the teeter-totter and tease us:

      We are lee-et and you-ou're no-ot.
      Neiner, neiner, nei-ner!.
      We use firefox and you-ou do-on't.
      Neiner, neiner, nei-ner.

      And the Principal never did anything.

      Good times.

    • Re:The point (Score:2, Funny)

      by noamt ( 317240 )
      Go ahead and troll rate me for calling Firefox users/developers leet if you want.

      It's spelled 1337.

      Troll!

    • Re:The point (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Accipiter ( 8228 )
      Sure, Firefox is leet and is made by leet ex (and current) Mozilla developers, but it was not made as a replacement for Mozilla.

      Uh... Yes it was.

      • Re:The point (Score:3, Insightful)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 )
        Uh... Yes it was.

        Then where are its composer and integrated mail/newsgroups apps?

        -Eric (who still uses Mozilla because of it's convenient composer functionality and it's better security than Firefox)

        • Re:The point (Score:3, Informative)

          by Accipiter ( 8228 )
          The point was that Firefox replaces the browser component, Thunderbird replaces the mail/news component, etc. You already know this, though. You're just trying to be an ass.

          Also, learn yourself some grammar. The word "it's" isn't a goddamned possessive.

  • Please keep the name "Mozilla" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 19, 2005 @05:47AM (#13594671)
    Everybody knows the name, and seamonkey is a really bad name for a browser
    • They can't because of the trademark. Only official mozilla foundation products can be called mozilla.
    • Just call everything mozilla and tack on the name to the end - like Mozilla Seamonkey. There should be an order to it - alphabetical names, so after SeaMonkey comes SeaOtter, then SeaPenguin - that way people know which version is the latest. Major upgrades can then switch the first part of the name , e.g. Mozilla SeaRabbit ->maj version change -> Mozilla TrenchApe. Obviously the names will need some more work, but a naming scheme will ease confusion for the masses.

  • Address Book (Score:2, Interesting)

    by WhyteRabbyt ( 85754 )
    Can someone explain give a good justification for the fact that, although the 'old' Mozilla has been broken up into component parts, the Address Book is still part of the mail program?

    I dont want to have to fire up a mail program just to get someone's phone number.
  • Okay the browser is called SeaMonkey... Humans "may" have evolved from monkeys... and the Internet is mostly used as a redundant porno delivery service.

    That is a perfectly named browser!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Bloat? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by porneL ( 674499 )
    Opera 8 manages to fit:
    * browser
    * mail
    * newsgroups
    * chat
    * bittorrent client
    * other smaller features (gestures, panels, SSR, slideshow...)
    * ad banner everyone is scared of

    in 3.7mb.

    SeaMonkey is much bigger package, and any major difference is having WYSIWYG editor (which I wouldn't use for anything other than occasional HTML mail).

    I think SeaMonkey could do better.
  • What's the image shown in the installer supposed to be? Is it a sheep on a yacht? I fail to see how that is a "SeaMonkey".

  • I am not sure if this is new to SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha, but I am very impressed to see that the GRE installer no longer needs to close down all Gecko based clients in order to install itself on Windows. I expect that it will need to shutdown a GRE it replaces, but I always use different directories for each version.

  • Your Alpha, My Beta (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @08:21AM (#13595213) Homepage Journal
    This release is not an "Alpha" relase. "Alpha" means "released only to those who designed or developed it", not just "not finished". "Beta" likewise means "released to people who did not design or develop it", people outside the development team. Tested, but only just barely. A "master" release means "tested complete and ready for publishing".

    Netscape's "0.9x Beta" releases in 1994-5 forever changed the marketspeak of these release designations. "Beta" just means "not finished" in that language. But the same people also made "Under Construction" mean "please rely on our new software". It's a marketdroid scam to get you to impatiently accept unacceptably broken software.

    It's probably too late to reclaim "Beta" from a generation of kiddies who think it means "new and cool". But we can't let the ghost of Netscape destroy the "Alpha" boundary. The distinction between Alpha and Beta is even more important than Beta vs Master. Software is never really finished, especially in the era of open source and user extensions. But the feedback from development team to their product is blind to many results that outsiders provide in real Betas and Masters. Without that critical perspective, or without distinguishing between that outsider perspective and insider lingo/preconceptions, software will never get a chance to grow up.

    We've developed these Alpha/Beta/Master phases after decades of experience developing and rolling out software. We can't afford to discard the discipline that got us here, just as we're scaling up all our operations, and losing many of the in-person artifacts we use to know how to work on these products. Don't let "Netscape" strike again.
    • We've developed these Alpha/Beta/Master phases after decades of experience developing and rolling out software.

      And they've worked so well for us, too. I mean, our desktop software today is much more reliable than the batch processing software run on mainframes thirty years ago, isn't it? No? Oh.

      The Alpha/Beta disctinction was mostly arbitrary. Every large project that ever used them, from Apple's Mac system software team to tiny shareware developers, has abandoned them and moved to a progressive build numbe

  • XMLterm (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @08:55AM (#13595422) Homepage Journal
    XMLterm [sourceforge.net] was originally part of the Netscape suite. It was a CLI that displayed icons, a CLI/GUI hybrid that looked really promising for a "distributed desktop". Some few hackers are continuing to pound away at the app, but it appears SeaMonkey has cast XMLterm adrift. Maybe if it gets more developers it will benefit from freedom from their long release cycles.

  • ONCE and for all (not really)... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by enmane ( 805543 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @10:08AM (#13595999)
    I want to know how much RAM is used up by the FF & TB combo and how much is used by the Mozilla suite with web browser and email client opened.

    That's what I thought.. SHUT-IT!

    FF is fine for those that don't need an email client but once you need both the suite is better suited. I've done both and I'm back at the suite due to the smaller memory footprint.

    It's amazing how ignorant people are. They will say FF and TB are better because they are smaller. Yeah, smaller downloads individually. Now look at what is happening to your system when you run them both.

    The sad part is that the proponents never post a comparison between the two that highlight this fact or even want to discuss it. I'd rather see FF & TB die than the Mozilla Suite. If SeaMonkey disappears then I'll probably use Opera or some other suite. Feel free to mod me down since only the ignoramuses get modded up. Stuff that is just downright dumb gets modded as "insightful" and comments that lend weight to an argument get modded down.
    • Feel free to mod me down since only the ignoramuses get modded up. Stuff that is just downright dumb gets modded as "insightful" and comments that lend weight to an argument get modded down.
      So what does it say about your post, since it ended up being modded up?

    • Re:ONCE and for all (not really)... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drew ( 2081 ) on Monday September 19, 2005 @03:00PM (#13598283) Homepage
      FF is fine for those that don't need an email client but once you need both the suite is better suited. I've done both and I'm back at the suite due to the smaller memory footprint.

      Good for you. Meanwhile, I've done both, and stuck with Firefox and Thunderbird because I like the the way they work better. How much RAM do they use? I haven't the foggiest. Disk space? Not really sure... Does one load faster than the other? Not that I can tell. Maybe by a tenth of a second or two. But I wouldn't know which; my watch only has a second hand.

      Personally, I don't see much need for better integration between my email and web browsing. As long as a new browser opens when I click a link in an email, and a new email message comes up when I click a mailto: link in my web browser, I'm happy.

      That said, I would love to use Mozilla as my primary browser again if they can sort out some of their serious user interface shortcomings, because I do have some issues with Firefox, but last I checked (1.7.1?) they still had a long way to go to even match Firefox, much less surpass it.

      And for the love of ${deity}, please come up with a better name. I don't care what it is- I'm assuming that there are good reasons that the "Mozilla" name has been dropped, but come on guys, you could have tried harder than that.
  • As far as I can tell, it's the same developers working on the same code to release a product targeted at the same user base. I don't get why the Foundation needs to disown it. They seem to be totally lost in terms of organizing their project nowadays.

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