Mozilla Releases SeaMonkey 2.0 185
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.
Who cares anymore? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
SeaMonkey Composer is the best... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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You're welcome.
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Re:SeaMonkey Composer is the best... (Score:4, Informative)
I confirm most of this story, except that I'm French, not German. ;-)
The way I see it, Nvu was a trademarked fork of [Mozilla|SeaMonkey] Composer: it's been designed in a way that made it incompatible with the Mozilla trunk, probably on purpose. The KompoZer project aims to backport most of the Nvu code to the Mozilla codebase — hence the upcoming merge with SeaMonkey.
KompoZer will remain a standalone app: it will be built on SeaMonkey 2.1, and SeaMonkey Composer should have most of KompoZer's features and bug-fixes.
-- Fabien Cazenave, KompoZer lead dev.
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WYSIWYG was a new feature in the word processors in the early 90s but in HTML is has never been true.
That said, the Composer is a great and very useful feature for copying and pasting text from an HTML page.
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make WYSIWYG, What You See Is What You Get, HTML files.
As a ex-professional web developer, I have to say: You're doin' it wrong!
HTML has nothing, I repeat, NOTHING to do with looks. If you so much as THINK about looks while writing HTML, you completely and utterly fail. ^^ :)
(Yeah. Really.
CSS is for the looks. HTML is about structuring your code, by adding markup that explains what it is you have there. So software can make sense out of it. RDF or other ontologic languages would be an extension of that idea.
That's the best way, to test if the webdev you want to
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SeaMonkey Composer is the best way to make WYSIWYG, What You See Is What You Get, HTML files.
From what I read, no one even merged the Nvu code improvements back into the Composer source tree, much less the improvements to Nvu that now form KompoZer [kompozer.net]. Besides, there are other up-to-date and free WYSIWYG editors for HTML. Do SeaMonkey Composer for example even support modern HTML standards and cross-browser validation?
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I don't see the benefit of using webmail instead of a client and IMAP? A client can give me notifications, and search faster. I can use it offline. And I can integrate all my mail accounts together.
There are plenty of very good mail programs out there, just choose the one that sucks the least (Sylpheed/Claws for me).
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If you want to be productive, check your mails at most twice a day (in the morning and evening), and disable auto-checking. Use IM for everything else where you can set your status to DND.
Totally Your Opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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
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Bingo.
I thought I liked having my email & web browsing integrated, but apparently I've had it forced upon me without realising it...
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Some people enjoy using Outlook even if webmail is king.
However, until Lightning and Thunderbird get a better overhaul, Seamonkey will never catch on. The calendar and mail interface is mediocre at best compared to Outlook 2007.
Its sad that we use Open Office at the nonprofit I work at, but still use Outlook.
Re:Who cares anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Users need the flexibility to choose their own mail program.
They have that flexibility. They can use Firefox.
Besides, webmail is today's king.
I don't know about you, but I can't stand webmail.
Companies care (Score:2)
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?
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I haven't found any email client that is as usable and nice as gmail.
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wait... I hear something coming....
Whhoooosssshhhhh.
Re:Do you get like... 2 mails per day? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, you're OK with that? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Seriously, I was going to say the same thing. Crashing once with a few hours of use is pretty iffy...
Of course, it depends on what crashed it. But still. The bias towards liking it is obvious, too.. "but only once."
That's like saying that I got a virus in Windows - but only once. So Windows is actually really secure! ...
I am a software tester. If the software I test crashes and I am inclined to think it was a problem with the software, I actually am paid to try to reproduce the problem... not pass it o
Re:Really, you're OK with that? (Score:5, Insightful)
here's reproducability for you
1. install adobe flash player
2. browse the web with any browser, especially visit sites with flash content. For extra daring attempts, open multiple tabs with flash content at the same time.
3. the crashes!!!
That being said youtube doesn't normally cause crashes for me, so it is probably shitty flash applications from shitty websites.
i hope to god something has replaced flash in 10 years.
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My wife leaves Firefox open on Vista with 50+ tabs open, some with flash & some with pdfs, for weeks on end. It actually rarely crashes, much to my amazement. Usually after a few weeks it starts acting a little weird, I close a few tabs, shut down Firefox & re-open (it's set to keep all the tabs) and it takes a couple of minutes for all the tabs to load. Then it's good for another few weeks.
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Firefox 3.0 seems very stable on my WinXP system. I can have it open for day-after-day and not encounter problems. The only time I restart is when the memory usage grows above 300,000 K (either real or virtual/HDD memory).
In contrast Opera 10 crashes every other day. K-Meleon CFF is extremely unstable, and I'll probably uninstall it.
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I've been using the betas at work as well (layout, etc, who moved my cheese, git off my lawn) and the only thing that ever crashed any of the betas (fixed now) for me was navigating away from a site with a java applet. Of course, this is my work computer, so it's not like I went to any weird websites or anything.
Totally forgot this existed... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Time to give SeaMonkey another shot!
No thanks. I tried it when I was a kid. They are just brine shrimp. Nothing special, definitely not monkeys, and don't waste your money by giving them another shot.
50% ? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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Even giving the benefit of the doubt and calling it 8 hours, that's still once a (working) day, or 5 times a (working) week. Still not acceptable.
Of course, extrapolating a statistic out of such a small sample size (2 or even 8 hours) is somewhat premature. That may have been the only crash in 10,000 hours, just so happens it was at the beginning. Or it normally would crash 5,000 times in a year, and he just went to "safe" sites. Neither extreme seems likely, but merely possible given the low sample siz
Glad to see! (Score:2)
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!
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In seamonkey, when I have a group of tabs open, and I invoke "Bookmarks:Bookmark This Group of Tabs" it saves a bookmark list entry so that when I select it, it opens the tabs immediately. This seems to be the behavior a sensible user would want.
In firefox, when when I have a group of tabs open, and I invoke "Bookmarks:Bookmark All Tabs..." it saves a bookmark list entry so that when I select it, a menu rolls down with links to the individual tabs, and then at the bottom, there
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Speaking of bookmarks, when I installed SM 2.0, it of course used the bookmarks from the previous SM version. But what I'd like to do is compare it with firefox, which I've been using a lot and thus have a big pile of bookmarks.
So is there any way now that I can tell SM to load FF's bookmarks, without throwing away all my old SM bookmarks? I poked around in the bookmarks stuff a bit, but couldn't find it. I suppose I could trash my SM bookmarks and SM entirely, and do a clean install, but then I'd lose m
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Export your Bookmarks from Firefox (Organize Bookmarks --> Import and Backup --> export HTML) Then go to the Seamonkey Manage Bookmarks --> Tools --> Import --> file etc. Your Firefox bookmarks should be a folder at the bottom of your bookmarks.
Don't forget to backup your profile before playing
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Your version is outdated for v1.1 series. v1.1.18 exists.
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Seems to be the same. The new-tab button is still in its fixed position on the left-hand side.
The interface looks the same, except for a few differences
- The classic theme button icons look more firefox-like and less netscape 3-like (bad thing, in my books). A theme can solve that.
- There is now an rss icon w/ drop-down list on the right hand side of the address bar. So far its been unobtrusive.
- The url-guessing algorithm has been changed; it's now supposed to guess based on URL and page title. Not sure ho
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The Javascript is much faster over the 1.x series. For instance, loading slashdot.org no longer brings up the dialog 'the javascript on this page is too convoluted and is taking too long. we're going to make you click okay just for the hell of it'.
Hopefully it doesn't crash as much as Seamonkey 1.x. I never figured out what was causing the crashes, possibly the gcc version I was using or maybe Flash. In any case, I will gladly make Seamonkey my backup browser to Chrome (goodbye, Firefox, I won't miss yo
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Yes, themes has been moved to the add-on manager, just like in firefox.
flash ? (Score:4, Insightful)
it's crashed once -- but only once -- in several hours of use.
flash ?
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Interestingly, I noticed Firefox no longer crashes because of flash. I don't know who fixed it (Mozilla or Adobe) but the last crash must have been more than 6 months ago.
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I've been getting a lot of Flash crashes on AMD64 Karmic the last couple weeks.
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On linux platforms it is unstable because Flash and Pulse Audio do no play well. Firefox would be doing everyone a favor if they allowed users to block flash from sites the same way you can block images from specific servers.
hmm (Score:2, Funny)
In other words, it's even less reliable than the IE I'm reading this on?
More similarity with Firefox isn't all good (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [lwn.net].
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I use lpr for printing, not cups
Well, I can see another way of solving your problem...
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You should probably file a bug on gtk-print instead.
I use SeaMonkey as my main browser, and the only time I have crash problems is during the alpha phase, and even then it usually isn't bad.
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Maybe there is a global setting for Gnome that allows you to set the default print command. I agree that this is not acceptable interface design. State is a very useful concept. Especially for printing setup.
this is a scam! (Score:2)
This is just brine gecko...don't be fooled!
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This is just brine gecko...don't be fooled!
Mmmmm . . . Brined gecko . . .
Why?! (Score:2)
"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?
Re:Why?! (Score:5, Informative)
Because a lot of people like having that integration.
You don't? Then use something else and quit whining.
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Because some people want it that way?
There are a lot of alturnatives. If you're a Mozilla fan boy, just use FF if that's all you want. And of course there are always Safari, Chrome, Opera, and even IE...
SeaMonkey might not be for you - don't use it. But it does have a feature set that clearly some people want. Just because it's Open Source, don't feel that you are *required* to use it.
It did what once? (Score:5, Informative)
That's... not good.
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I've been running the Betas & RCs of SM 2.0 for the last couple of months on Windows 7 x64, Ubuntu 9.04 & Windows XP SP3, and while I got regular crashes on closing the browser if I'd been using Flash (Seems to be fixed in the final so far) I didn't have any non-Flash related crashes.
I don't know why Timothy felt the need to make the comment other than to put a negative spin on the release;
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If it has a tendency to crash, that's relevant information, not "spin".
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It crashed once on his computer; without any context it's just a dig.
I can guarantee you for *any* release of software that at least one person will have had it crash on them within a few hours.
All browsers crash (Score:2)
Every single final version of browser out there even including IE has some feature like "tab recovery". Guess the reason for it?
No iceape for Debian/Ubuntu yet (Score:2)
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.
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Maybe Debian, but Ubuntu uses Firefox.
Debian (Score:2)
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?
Nice suite (Score:2)
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? ;-)
WARNING for users with several profiles (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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SeaMonkey, Portable Edition 2.0 for USB drives (Score:3, Informative)
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 [portableapps.com]
Hold on. (Score:2)
"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?
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Since Adobe invented the Flash plugin and Sun invented the Java plugin.
Still prefer the suite, just for the browser (Score:2)
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 remin
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It still has the Book of Mozilla (I think it's part of Gecko, as Firefox has it too), but about:kitchensink hasn't been included for a long time. You can install an extension to have that back, though! Here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/seamonkey/addon/742 [mozilla.org]
How to disable command-E (Edit Page) (Score:2)
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 cracki
been using it for 2months (Score:2)
Not small and not green (Score:2)
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 dum
mini-review on OS X (Score:2)
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 Customiz
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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 [cnet.com] list (chosen at random) for easy import.
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Yeah, it makes Ubiquity toothless.
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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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://prefbar.mozdev.org/ [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.
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Re:Not based on Firefox, other way around (Score:4, Informative)
No. The rendering engine is Gecko, and until this release, Seamonkey was stuck with the same version of Gecko as as FF v2.
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I'm also working from memory, but I think that Gecko is the engine. Firefox used to be the engineering test-bed browser component for the Mozilla suite, but end users decided they liked the light and fast standalone browser.
-Peter
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The funny thing is that Firefox is now considered quite bloated by some and projects like K-Meleon strive to create a lightweight variant of Firefox.
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I'm also working from memory, but I think that Gecko is the engine. Firefox used to be the engineering test-bed browser component for the Mozilla suite, but end users decided they liked the light and fast standalone browser.
-Peter
Firefox... light... fast... That's news to me.
Time to suffer the wrath of Mozilla fanboy mods.
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CLOSE, but Phoenix (Firefox's original branding) was a project started to deliberately slim down the browser and focus on it exclusively rather than worrying about other functions like email and HTML editing - ie, it was intended to be an end-user product from it's inception rather than a rendering engine testbed (as the Gecko rendering engine and the Mozilla suite predated Phoenix by quite a bit).
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No, FF was a project started by two guys who wanted a lightweight browser based on Gecko. Unlike the other projects with the same thing in mind (epiphany, k-meleon, galleon, etc) it became very popular, and became the official browser.
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This whole subthread is nuts. How is SLASHDOT, of all places, not aware of Mozilla/Firefox/SeaMonkey history? And it isn't even old history!
Mozilla is the original (retroactively called Mozilla Internet Suite)
Firefox is the preferred second child
SeaMonkey is Mozilla's new name because the Mozilla Foundation doesn't like it any more
1998
Netscape starts on version 5
Netscape decides to go to version 6, writing everything from scratch - the engine was NGLayout, which became Gecko
Netscape forms the Mozilla organi
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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.
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Firefox is not a huge memory hog (Score:2)
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.
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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 rea
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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 ext
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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.
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Anyone can do a keyboard shortcut. I'll be impressed when they put MNG back in; it'll be a demonstration that Mozilla has finally overcome its internal childish squabbling.