14 DAY TRIAL // Once upon a time, there was a Web browser called Netscape Communicator, and it ruled the land. After the end of the first browsers war, its kingdom lied in ruin, but from its ashes a new project was born - Mozilla. After a long time, Mozilla Application Suite became a five headed dragon that included a web browser, an e-mail and news client, an HTML editor, and an IRC client, and today we're going to talk about its follower, called SeaMonkey.
SeaMonkey comes from Mozilla and is the open source and cross platform Internet suite that we're having right here, right now. Its components are the same as those that could be found inside Mozilla Application Suite, and that shouldn't be something out of ordinary, since SeaMonkey is based on Mozilla Suite's code.
OK, so... this program's last version is 1.0.6, but since it has such a long history behind, that shouldn't make you think SeaMonkey is a premature application. Its setup package has 11.9MB in size and I can say that this "monkey" was very easy to install, and once you know this, the road towards the interface and features is open, so let's hit the pedal to the metal!
The classic layout of the interface reminds me of Netscape Communicator, and I am sure that this is not just a random happening. As you can imagine, SeaMonkey is a skinnable application, so it can become whatever you like, as long as you have the required skills to create the skin you are dreaming about or that visual theme is already available, of course... Unfortunately, the program comes only with two built-in themes, Classic and Modern, but there are more available on the official website, of course!
The main part of this suite is the Web browser, and I must confess that I was amazed by its page rendering speed. Although I can't call SeaMonkey "fastest browser on Earth", the tests I ran made me think that this one here is slightly faster than Firefox 2, and this result is almost unbelievable, but you can also check this for yourself and share the results with the rest of us here...
If you are curious about the features included in this browser, than I must tell you that you get multiple tabs, cookie, image, popup and form managers, as well as a useful password manager, and a Web page translation feature has also been added. This one uses Google's translator, and all you have to do to use it is open the Tools menu and click the Translate Page item.
Web developers and testers can enjoy the Java and JavaScript Console, as well as the DOM Inspector and JavaScript Debugger. To be honest, after seeing most of the features of this program and reading about its history, I expected it to eat a lot of memory, but I was really surprised to see that things look fine, much better than expected.
If you share your computer with other people, you can save the trouble of having different Windows user accounts and just create a profile for SeaMonkey that will store your messages, settings and other personalized information.
Leaving the browser behind, I will tell you that the IRC client available here is nothing new, but the latest build of the notorious ChatZilla that a lot of people are already using as a Firefox plugin.
The email and newsgroups client is really easy to use and reminds me of Thunderbird, but has a different look and most important of all, I wasn't able to spot any plugin or skin support here (anyway, the look of the suite's components is affected by the skin chosen inside the browser, and the XPI extensions can be opened using it, but there's no menu entry for managing them, you have to use the Preferences area's Scripts & Plug-Ins advanced tool).
At last, the Composer and Address Book come to close the circle of this Web suite, and although the Composer won't replace Dreamwaver or even NVU, basic HTML editing is one step closer now. I can't understand why they didn't include the Address Book inside the email and newsgroups client (that was just a personal question), but I guess things look good this way too.
Are you a power user? If this suite seems a "thin" one, better check the Preferences area and think again! Location Bar Autocomplete, Domain Guessing, mouse wheel behavior settings, the ability to handle common image formats or the brilliant Remote Profile Storage features that enables you to store your user profile information on a Roaming Access server and retrieve it for later usage are only some of the hidden treasures of this application! These being said, the time has come to draw the conclusions and check the screenshots, as usual...
The Good
SeaMonkey is fast, easy to use, highly customizable and has a light system resources usage. You can use this suite for most of your Internet related tasks, and there's nothing you have to pay for it, sometimes not even attention, because sometimes, the program seems to think for you...
The Bad
Despite the excellent features that I have found here, I was amazed to see that the mouse gestures are not available, and the plugin management is not as easy as in Firefox.
The Truth
A while ago I started to wonder what happened to the Mozilla Application Suite, but now I have the answer, and I am sure its offspring can go higher than ever before. Needless to say, this application suite is a "must try", so get it as soon as possible. Mozilla Application Suite is dead, long live SeaMonkey!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
