SeaMonkey All-in-One Internet Application Suite

[nullhole]

I stuck around using it for longer than I probably should have. The integrated chat and mail clients were useful. The HTML editor not so much, and didn't appear to get much attention.

One of the main things I miss is the LCARSTrek theme by KaiRo. Unlike any other LCARS browser theme, I found it to be usable on a day to day basis. Sadly it isn't available for Firefox.

https://www.kairo.at/download/mozskins

[hales]

I also miss using both Seamonkey and themes :( I wasn't a fan of LCARs, but Earlyblue was great.

> The HTML editor not so much, and didn't appear to get much attention.

I found it useful. Firefox's inbuilt HTML editor features are worse, they don't have floating table editing. Nowadays I use Thunderbird to write HTML whenever I don't want to do it by hand, almost the same thing.

[nix0n]

> The HTML editor not so much, and didn't appear to get much attention.

I highly recommend SeaMonkey's HTML editor to anyone who would otherwise be tempted to write HTML in MS Word.

It doesn't have a ton of features, but the webpage will be readable both in rendered and in source form.

I used to use it heavily when creating MS Help .chm (Compiled HtMl) helpfiles.

[musicale]

It's nice to see a web browser with an integrated editor - a feature of the original WorldWideWeb browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb

[judge2020]

Not the exact same thing, but:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/de...

[j45]

It’s a great way to get readers and consumers to become writers and creators

[xacky]

Seamonkey used to be simply be known as "Mozilla" or "Mozilla Application Suite", and was the original browser by Mozilla before they decided to spin off the code into the "Phoenix" and "Thunderbird" projects. Originally the plan was that Mozilla was a browser for developers and that consumers would use Netscape. However AOL laid off the Netscape developers in 2003 and focus was switched to making Phoenix, which was then called Firebird the main product of the Mozilla project, and it become known as Firefox in 2004. I was around for the original 1.0 releases of Firefox and Mozilla, and after it was clear that Firefox was more popular than the Mozilla Application Suite it was spun off into the Seamonkey project, taking the name from the original codename used in the development of the browser. In recent years, the legacy code of Seamonkey means that its rendering engine hasn't kept up with Firefox, meaning that most modern sites don't work with it anymore, but it is an interesting historical browser who's user interface hasn't changed much since the 2000s, compared to Firefox which changes its user interface regularly.

[infotainment]

I love that this project exists, it’s amazing to be able to use a browser that is, in essence, unchanged from the early 2000s.

I just wish there was a Mac ARM build…

[ashildr]

Does it really make any difference for software like this whether it‘s running in emulation or native?

[worewood]

Seamonkey needs more love so they can keep up the engine with the web. The Netscape vibes is something I dearly miss.

[qwerty456127]

It would feal so great if whoever owns Netscape now could donate the trademark to Mozilla to use instead of SeaMonkey :-)

[looopTools]

It is AOL

EDIT: woops nope it is Yahoo now XD

[cowmix]

This still has the best SOCKS5 proxy abilities, even over normal Firefox. This browser + "ssh -D" has saved me many times working in highly restrictive networks.

[Elbrus]

> This still has the best SOCKS5 proxy abilities, even over normal Firefox

Could you please elaborate a bit on what exactly do you mean by that?

E.g. in Firefox one can do the following:

- Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels in Putty connection options.

- Add a dynamic tunnel there.

- Start the session.

- Then enter 127.0.0.1 and the chosen port as a SOCKS v5 proxy in Firefox options.

Congratulations! A poor man's VPN is ready.

An extension like FoxyProxy can be added for further convenience.

What can be done in SeaMonkey on top of that?

[Gormo]

Simpler even than Chromium-based browser's `--proxy-server="socks5://127.0.0.1:10000" argument. I use that all the time with SSH.

[ajtjp]

I keep an install of SeaMonkey 2.49.5 on my desktop. It's my preferred platform for browsing FTP and Gopher (the latter with the OverbiteFF add-on), and is the last version of SeaMonkey that has full NPAPI support, useful if I find an old site with a Java applet, or would for some reason need Silverlight. And being based on Firefox 52, it still works with most web sites as well; more recent versions would work even better with modern web sites.

I should try its HTML editor, it might be a nice upgrade from writing my HTML pages in Notepad++.

The vintage UI is part of the charm. Admittedly the "Stop" button is less useful than it was in the '90s, but I'm a believer that we've lost more than we've gained with the trend towards low-chrome browser designs.

[SpaceL10n]

Why not VSCode? It's support for extensions are great. Emmet for rapid HTML scaffolding, inline hex color preview, autocomplete for attributes, and not to mention great multi-line editing support. And, of course, CoPilot which can write/edit HTML so much faster than I can type. Can you tell I'm a fan?

[unlog]

I have ported multiple tab handler from piro to seamonkey back in the day, I miss xul so much, the browser used to be a very powerful tool

[sharpshadow]

It seems like a lot of Firefox addons are not longer compatible with Seamonkey after Firefox changed their addon functionality and Seamonkey is still using a old Firefox version. The old addon system was more powerful so I guess they kept it also for backwards compatibility of existing addons. But now the new addons won’t work and the old ones are old and probably not longer maintained.

Usually all email clients have a good web version nowadays which make the integrated email less interesting.

To make this project live again it would need to break backwards compatibility and adjust to the Firefox release cycle.

Overall it would be a good candidate to integrate with AI.

[integricho]

Or those could be precisely the reasons that would kill it for good. Putting AI tech in every product is not a good idea, just riding the hypetrain.

[Dwedit]

Extensions explicitly designed for the old extension system still work.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock-for-firefox-legacy

Also works with Pale Moon. There are even special builds of Pale Moon that will run on Windows XP.

[BirAdam]

I love SeaMonkey, but I do wish it could handle more modern sites, maybe with Goanna?

[blue1]

I have been using Seamonkey since when it was called Netscape, but there are so many sites that do not work with it that I been forced to switch to Firefox. I still use Seamonkey for my mail though, I prefer it to Thunderbird.

[infotainment]

Doesn’t it use the same engine as modern versions of Firefox?

[bitzun]

IIRC I set this up for my grandmother way back in the day because she wanted a netscape/mozilla equivalent. I'd be interested to know what kinds of folks use it today.

[Thoreandan]

An, Netscape Communicator

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I'm surprised it's still around.

It's always been a cool project, but I've personally, never found much use for it.

[dopp0]

I really miss the animation Netscape had at the time. The comets and all...

[B3QL]

It's weird how you spell Emacs :P

[looopTools]

I really like the concept of SeaMonkey, but the project needs some major UI updates and way more love to be relevant today.

[hulitu]

This definitely no. The reason i use it is the UI. Firefox, Chrome, Edge UI is a mess, a disgrace of UI design. I had to edit the user.css to get scrollbars at reasonable width.

[helboi4]

Strong agree. Concept sounds great. The UI looks like something out of 2005 and that's just not okay. It simply cannot be relevant while looking like that and updating its UI would not have to cause any loss in functionality. It's honestly a waste of time for devs to be working on something that looks like that, since you're cutting out half your audience.