Long time ago when Netscape spawn Mozilla (the browser), Firefox spawned as optimized, streamlined and brand new (avoiding Navigator image) version of Mozilla. Add it's cool name, people have no hesitation to migrate and yet it was the first succesful open source browser to gain so much userbase. Later Mozilla renamed to SeaMonkey probably because it become more like a "stepchild" (in term of popularity) of MoFo thus confuse users if named after the maker. That time I tried SeaMonkey 1.x and still not impressed (lack important compatibility and feature from it's sibling) but appreciate the stability. With Firefox 3.0 I start annoyed by it's bloatness and lead me to use K-Meleon for a while only to found that XUL is one of the culprit in Firefox. Then I move to Opera 10 cause it's more faster, neater and slim, I also use Chrome on occasion though. Chrome browser really know how to treat a noob, too bad I'm not, afterall it getting bloated too quick for a 4 year old browser. After more than a year with Opera I personally doesn't like how it render ftp page or how it freeze too often (though not crashed). To summarize:
Firefox (gecko) : Designed to be a noob browser which slowly but surely taken over by Chrome
Chrome (webkit) : New rising star of noob browser. Even dummies could use it :)
Opera (presto) : Still the smallest and best UI design (they always came up with groundbreaking idea). Not actually a noob browser IMO.
IE (trident) : Rhetorically have the best integration with Windows! Oh IE9 is promising but I'm stuck with XP :(
Safari (webkit) : No, don't talk about Mac-specific on Windows. That's not how it works and conversely don't talk about how IE runs on Mac.
See? every browser have it claws, and in this case Firefox is really threatened by Chrome. Lets go back to Mozilla era, where it's known as the "Internet Suite" seriously this is really the concept that Netscape brought to be "different" in the market. But this is almost synonym to bloat right? Yes, it valid up to version 1.x where it neither better or faster (not in page rendering) than Firefox 2.x and early 3.x in browser term alone. But version 2.x of Seamonkey and the release of Firefox 4.0 really show the opposite. Thanks to the evolution of Firefox's dreaded XUL, SeaMonkey (still with its suite) is now faster and slimmer oh and with some extension compatibility in Seamonkey I can ditch Thunderbird and Sunbird instantly too by using only two most important addon: Adblock and Lightning (1.0b1) no more extension madness. There still some future feature that missing in 2.0 but it should be on the same level as Firefox 4.0 in the upcoming SeaMonkey 2.1. But "suite" isn't only SeaMonkey's ace, Opera is working hard to fill this niche as well but still far from being useful currently.
Time to promote SeaMonkey! Promote the "Internet Suite"!
I'm surprised that MoFo was once want to killed SeaMonkey.. huh? I bet they will need it more than ever now. My wishlist?
1. Make easy access for important preferences like in Opera
2. Integrate SamePlace? or make new integrated IM? Upgrade composer with kompozer (I heard they working on it) and bundling lightning by default. Then.. (S)FTP Client, Web copier, some sync. widget with many popular webapps, support Tor etc.. OK now that's bloat :)
3. Rename SeaMonkey! that's really a disservice as the mother of Firefox and originally the first GUI browser. Say Tarantula? LOL
4. Use separate process (maybe not for each tab like IE/Chrome) for each component for better stability.
You show your stupidity,
ReplyDeleteSeaMonkey is an opensource build of the old mozilla suites. It is not controlled by mozilla foundation what so ever, it is only hosted by them.
The project was originally called buttmonkey, seamonkey is a tribute to that.
Yo kiddo, newbie linux zealot is forbidden to make an insult here. Now go and take a chill pill will ya!
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