Mozilla's suite of browser and email programs is getting a makeover. The new suite, dubbed SeaMonkey, contains an Internet browser, email program, IRC chat client and a basic web page maker. Mozilla's goal is to develop a package that is "stable enough for corporate use", while keeping the familiar look of its previous Mozilla Application Suite.
Included in the suite is the familiar web browser that is built on the old Netscape Navigator code. Project leaders have stated that the browser will not migrate to looking like Thunderbird or Firefox. Rounding out the package is an email/newsgroup reader, "chatzilla" the IRC chat client and a web page creator. Currently, the creator can only handle basic pages and is not meant to compete with the heavy duty editors like Macromedia's Dreamweaver.
The 1.0 Beta for Windows weighs in as a 11.6 MB download. Of course, there are also Mac and Linux versions. Keeping with the open source traditions of Mozilla, SeaMonkey's source is freely downloadable. Brave testers can download nightly builds for the above mentioned operating systems. Unlike other beta tests where users lazily play around with the software, SeaMonkey take people into the action with a debugging toolbar that has dozens of separate tools like Flush Memory and "Show the build configuration".
Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.
