SeaMonkey For Windows 1.0.6

“Everything old is new again” goes the expression, and this is certainly true with Mozilla’s Seamonkey, a rebirth of the Mozilla Application Suite, which was a rebirth of the original Netscape Internet Suite, which was an outgrowth of the original Netscape Communicator. Seamonkey based on the Firefox 1.5 browser code, complete with the new API and latest version of the Gecko rendering engine, combines a Web browser, email client, IRC client, and HTML editor into one package.

Seamonkey will seem awfully familiar to anyone who has used Netscape since version 4 or so, right down to the browser buttons on top and the module selection buttons below. On the surface, most modules seem to have changed little, but it’s what’s underneath that’s important, and that’s the tight code base that makes Firefox and Thunderbird as fast and solid as they are.

You might be wondering why there’s even a need for an all-in-one Internet suite. The original idea of making a standalone browser (Firefox), email client (Thunderbird), HTML editor (Composer), and IRC client (ChatZilla) was so that a user had to install only what she needed, saving memory and hard drive space. Ultimately, many Firefox users were also using Thunderbird, which meant the Gecko rendering engine and other common files were being installed and run twice, which defeated the whole purpose of splitting up the apps in the first place. Additionally, some enterprises still relied on an all-in-one suite. Hence, Seamonkey

The app works well, though due to its icons, it feels old. There’s no meaningful Help file, and Seamonkey-specific themes and extensions are few. Still, if having just one icon to start all your Internet apps appeals to you, you’ll like Seamonkey.

URL: www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey
[tags]Browser, SeaMonkey[/tags]