SeaMonkey,
a new browser project under the Mozilla.org umbrella is available
in version 1.0 alpha. The goal of SeaMonkey is to provide that
traditional browser suite.
Ten years ago, at the dawning of the Internet as a mass
participation phenomenon, there was Netscape Communicator, the
overwhelmingly most popular choice in Internet software.
Communicator included a browser (Navigator), an email client
(Messenger), and an HTML authoring module (Composer), thus enabling
users to do most of their Internet-related work in one
application.
Then Microsoft Internet Explorer came on the scene and shifted
the dominant paradigm to single-purpose applications. Explorer was
only a browser, and for email you could use Microsoft Outlook
Express. Web authoring required another application, and so on.
This motif suited me fine. I was (and remain) a Eudora email
fan, so I never really used the Messenger module in Netscape
anyway, and I preferred Claris Home Page or a good HTML-savvy text
editor for Web authoring.
However, many Netscape users liked the all-in-one approach,
which Netscape Communicator has stuck with to this day.
Netscape is no longer being developed for the Mac, but
Mozilla.org, which was formed in the late 1990s to develop Netscape
5, finally released Netscape 6 to the public. Mozilla.org have also
offered a suite browser called Mozilla that incorporated the
classic Netscape multi-module motif, but with a cleaner, interface
and fewer commercial bells and whistles.
In the early 00s, Mozilla began developing a new browser called
Firefox, which adopted the Internet Explorer single-purpose
application motif. Also available was a companion, freestanding
email client called Thunderbird. Firefox and Thunderbird were
supposed to replace the Mozilla suite, but the latter continues to
be available in version 1.7.x, and it still receives updates - but
perhaps not for too much longer.
The SeaMonkey project
Internet suite fans need not worry. A new browser project under
the Mozilla.org umbrella is working on keeping a suite available -
the SeaMonkey suite. The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to
deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the
application formerly known as "Mozilla Application Suite". Their
first public preview alpha version became available in late
September.
At this SeaMonkey point looks almost exactly like Mozilla 1.7,
as well as including a Netscape Communicator style email client, a
WYSIWYG web page composer, and an IRC chat application. But
underneath the hood much of the core code is shared with the
Firefox 1.5 Beta browser.
While the SeaMonkey 1.0 preview is alpha software, I've been
using it for most of my workaday browsing for more than a month,
and have found it to be just as stable as Firefox. It may not be
quite as fast (there is probably some optimization left to do), but
it's not much slower, and it has the solid, competent feel users
have come to expect from Mozilla browsers.
If you are a fan of Mozilla or classic Netscape, you'll feel
right at home in SeaMonkey.
I'm delighted that the SeaMonkey team has chosen to continue
offering a Mac OS X version in their development plans.
- There seems to be in small trend back toward suite browsers,
with Opera recently adding email, newsreader, and instant messaging
clients with Opera 8.x. The downside of that of course is size,
SeaMonkey is a pretty big download at 13.2 MB.
As a browser, I find SeaMonkey very pleasant to use. Like the
other Mozilla Gecko-based browsers (except for Camino), it doesn't
support OS X Services and doesn't have Opera's wonderful
"resume last session" feature. Aside from that, it does pretty well
everything most of us need a browser to do, and it does it
well.
One thing I especially like about SeaMonkey is that it starts up
really quickly - perhaps the fastest-starting OS X browser
currently available.
Mail & Newsgroups
SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha does not presently include official
SeaMonkey artwork, as the SeaMonkey project is still open to logo
submissions from its community. The new logo will be selected from
these community and integrated into the upcoming SeaMonkey 1.0
Beta, which will be the last version before SeaMonkey 1.0 ships
later this year.
I did not check out the mail and HTML authoring modules other
than to open them for a quick look, but I anticipate that if you
are a user of Netscape/Mozilla Mail and/or Composer, you will feel
right at home in SeaMonkey's version of those programs.
SeaMonkey Composer
System requirements:
- Mac OS X or later (10.2 or later recommended)
- PowerPC processor (266 MHz or faster recommended)
- 64 MB RAM
- 36 MB of free hard disk space
- Link: SeaMonkey
- Link: Firefox
- Link: Camino
- Link: Eudora
- Link: Opera
