SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 / 1.1.17

SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 / 1.1.17 offers users a community effort to develop the SeaMonkey all-in-one internet application suite (see below). Such a software suite was previously made popular by Netscape and Mozilla, and the SeaMonkey project continues to develop and deliver high-quality updates to this concept.

Containing an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools, SeaMonkey is sure to appeal to advanced users, web developers and corporate users.

Powered by Mozilla Under the hood, SeaMonkey uses much of the same Mozilla source code which powers such successful siblings as Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, Sunbird and Miro. Legal backing is provided by the Mozilla Foundation. 

Major Features:

1. Browser ("Navigator")
   • Tabbed browsing gives you a better way to surf the net. You no longer have to open one page at a time. With tabbed browsing, open several pages at once with one click. Plus, your homepage can be multiple pages, in tabs.
   • Popup blocker lets you surf the web without interruption from annoying ads.
   • Image Manager lets you block images to remove offensive images or speed up the rendering of web sites.
   • Find as you type gives you another way to navigate a page. Just start typing to jump from link to link or to find a word or phrase within a page.
   • Plus all the features a modern browser should have including: Advanced security settings; Password, Download, and Cookie managers; Themes; multi-language and multi-platform support; and, the latest in Web Standards.
2. Mail & Newsgroups
   • Junk mail controls helps you take back control of your e-mail from spammers. SeaMonkey's adaptive junk mail control gets smarter with use and is personalized to the e-mail that you receive.
   • Manage your mail with customizable Labels and Mail Views. Color code your e-mail to help you prioritize. Sort your mail with views to help you through your e-mail much faster.
   • Multiple Accounts support helps you manage all your mail through one interface.
   • SeaMonkey Messenger includes Enterprise ready features such as S/MIME, return receipts, Address Books, LDAP support, and digital signing.
3. Composer: SeaMonkey's powerful yet simple HTML editor keeps getting better with dynamic image and table resizing, quick insert and delete of table cells, improved CSS support, and support for positioned layers. For all your documents and website projects, Composer is all you need.
4. IRC Chat ("ChatZilla")
   • Chat on IRC networks with this simple yet powerful IRC client. Multiple networks and channels are easy to keep track of in a familiar tabbed interface.
   • You can change the look and feel of the chat with motifs; choose from several built-in motifs, many more downloadable, or create your own with CSS.

Enhancements:

• The same browser core and web feature support as Firefox 3.5.1,a reworked download manager, including support for cross-session resumable downloads, localized builds - Windows/Linux/Mac packages are available in 15 languages officially (two additional ones are experimental) from day 1, feed preview and improved feed subscription from the browser,fully customizable mail/news toolbars, mail archiving support,
• The Internet browser at the core of the SeaMonkey suite uses the same rendering engine as its sibling Mozilla Firefox, with popular features like tabbed browsing, popup blocking, find as you type and a lot of other functionality for a smooth web experience.
• SeaMonkey's Mail and Newsgroups client shares lots of code with Mozilla Thunderbird and features adaptive Junk mail filtering, labels and mail views, multiple accounts, S/MIME, address books with LDAP support and is ready for both private and corporate use.
• Additional components include an easy-to-use HTML Editor, the ChatZilla IRC chat application and web development tools like a DOM Inspector and a JavaScript debugger.
• If that's still not enough, SeaMonkey can be extended with numerous Add-Ons that provide additional functionality and customization for a complete Internet experience.
• SeaMonkey switched to Toolkit, the same backend Firefox uses internally. Due to this change SeaMonkey is now much closer to Firefox as far as user profiles, add-ons and functionality of user interface elements are concerned.
• The default location of user profiles has changed. Legacy profiles, e.g. from SeaMonkey 1.x, are migrated automatically, excluding third-party add-ons (extensions and themes). The old profile will not be touched (instead, copies are made).
• The new Add-on Manager allows to install, update, disable and remove extensions (add-ons), themes and plugins using the same mechanisms Firefox uses. This should ease extension management and development considerably.
• Session restore (crash recovery) has been added. Now, when SeaMonkey crashes, all your browser windows and tabs will be restored automatically or on request (including data entered in web forms!). In addition, users can select to always restore the browser windows and tabs from their last open session when starting SeaMonkey.
• History is now stored in a better database solution, so that it can easily keep more information, and the location bar determines which addresses to autocomplete and/or show in the drop down menu with a smarter algorithm based on what you type, searching in both URL and title of visited pages by default.
• Toolbars in the browser and the main MailNews window are now fully customizable.
• Additionally, the icon size and whether to display icons and/or text can be chosen separately for every major toolbar in in both the browser and MailNews components via their context menu.
• The MailNews component now includes support for reading RSS and Atom feeds. The browser detects feeds offered by web pages, can preview them and offers different ways to subscribe to them. For subscribing to the feed in the MailNews component, an account for feeds needs to already be created there.
• Password Manager was switched to an improved version, allowing easier searching, and notification bars replacing modal dialogs for remembering logins.
• Download manager has been completely reworked, including support for cross-session resumable downloads,
• Gecko, the rendering engine used in SeaMonkey, has seen many improvements since the version used in the last stable release. Changes range from a better graphics backend (Cairo/Thebes) to improved support for fonts, CSS, DOM and JavaScript. SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 passes the Acid2 test and most of Acid3 and includes all the new web-facing features also included in Firefox 3.5, such as audio/video elements, downloadable fonts and JIT-compiled JavaScript.
• Most of the icons in the default theme have been exchanged for newer images that fit better with the look of modern desktop environments.
• Support for Windows 95, 98, Me and NT 4 was dropped. GTK 2.10 is now required on Linux/UNIX. Support for Mac OS X 10.3 ("Panther") was also dropped.
• Do not try to import IE favorites on Mac
• Make Cmd+T open a new window when no browser windows are open
• Move caret to beginning/end of url bar or text box when pressing up/down arrow key
• Improve Mac installer (.dmg)
• Implement Mail.app importer in MailNews core
• Implement Mail.app / 4.x Mac Communicator like versions of the "move/copy" menus
• Enable Mac OS X system address book per default and add UI
• Make Dock icon show new mail at the same time as the Growl alert
• Add Growl integration for mail alerts on Mac OS X
• Add roundness to context menus for Mac OS X 10.5
• Select folder with new mail when clicking on Growl alert