Ask Slashdot: Seamonkey vs. Firefox — Any Takers? 302
Rexdude writes "Firefox continues to be criticized for their new versioning system and being a memory hog. People talk about Chrome, IE9, Opera as alternatives — but do Slashdotters ever use Seamonkey? I've never seen anyone mention it in any discussion on browsers. The successor to the original Mozilla Suite, it has a full-blown email/news/RSS client, Chatzilla, and an HTML editor. Also several other default features that would require separate extensions for Firefox. And they don't update their versions like crazy either; the current version is 2.13.1. I've been quite happy with it so far — it's snappier to use than Firefox. How many people on Slashdot use Seamonkey, and what has been your experience? (Note — I'm not affiliated with the project.)"
I love it (Score:2, Interesting)
It doesn't have the asinine upgrade cycle of Firefox, it doesn't have the horrible GUI of firefox, and it's UI is stable. And that's what I want- I've been using a web browser for almost 2 decades, I don't want it to change unless there's a HUGE benefit. The last time that happened was tabs. Oh, and it crashes less, uses less memory, and seems to be more responsive. I see no reason for Firefox to even exist when SeaMonkey is such a better project, except that it keeps the idiots in charge of Mozilla busy.
Re:Release weekly (Score:5, Interesting)
Seamonkey releases *Monthly*, along with Firefox - normally a day behind FF.
I use Seamonkey 80% of the time. They are often a release late in introducing new goodies but I see that as a good thing - new Firefox features are not always ready for the big time when first released. The UI does not change the way Firefox does, another good thing. I don't like having to work out the new way of doing something which worked perfectly well before.
I've been using it since the beginning... (Score:5, Interesting)
I started off on Netscape, then Mozilla and now Seamonkey mainly because they all had a similar UI and set of features. When everybody was moving to IE6, I stuck with Netscape Communicator 4.72 for years while Mozilla was completely rewriting the code base. I think the first Mozilla I ran was M18. And when Mozilla decided to release FF as their main project, I switched to Seamonkey.
I still use an email client, so if I were to use FF or Chrome today I'd have to install two programs instead of one. There is another benefit. I always had Linux on my desktops, but not on laptops due to their weird hardware (try getting Optimus working in Linux). Mozilla and Seamonkey use the mbox file format both in Windows and Linux, so moving mail between the OSes was simple after a reinstall. Just copy over the files and you'd be done. I think Seamonkey is still the only cross platform email client.
That should be enough, but there are other reasons.
The bookmark structure in Seamonkey has remained the same since Communicator and until recently moving to a new computer was as simple as replacing an html file in the profile folder. Now it's a bit more complicated, to the extent that I have to import/export that same html file.
Seamonkey also has a lot of extra config options in the Preferences window compared to FF. In this respect FF feels completely dumbed down. I am aware FF and Seamonkey have virtually the same options in about:config, but modifying things means looking up values instead of just clicking an option.
TL;DR? I'm just too lazy to retrain my muscle memory with a new browser when I've been using Seamonkey and its predecessors for at least a decade and a half.
Re:Release weekly (Score:5, Interesting)
What Vlad said.
I use a browser (seamonkey in fact) daily, however, perhaps 5% of my work involves looking up stuff on the internet, and almost none of my work involves "browsing" for something. Seamonkey is just functional. No Windows Dressing (sic), no Ferrocious Lion, just solid day to day use.
It ain't pretty, but it ain't broken, either.
I do (Score:5, Interesting)
I never switched from Netscape, really -
Netscape
Mozilla Suite
Seamonkey
The switch from Mozilla Suite to Seamonkey was made against a cacophony of support for Firefox. Firefox then was like Chrome now - lean, mean, the future, in a word: cool.
People bitched and moaned about how the Mozilla Suite (and, by extension, Seamonkey) was burdened by bundling its mail, news, chat, and html edit programs together; people wanted a lean-and-mean browser.
The tables are turned now, though. By avoiding all the pointless cool chrome (to use an expression), Seamonkey has managed to stay feeling light and purposeful.
Add to that the fact that
- the UI is stable
- the version numbers are sane (and the release schedule is sane, unlike what the current top post on this story says - maybe one minor release per month. very manageable)
- the prefs don't talk down to you
- it has mail and chat attached by default (I like that!)
- it has a single address/search bar
- it uses Gecko, so under-the-hood it's up-to-date
- when you spawn a new tab, the new tab appears at the extreme right, instead of displacing the existing tabs by spawning to the immediate right of your current tab
- the new-tab button is fixed in the extreme left of the tab bar, and doesn't jump around depending on how many tabs you have open atm
There are probably other things I could list. But in general, it _is_ a browser for people who know what they want: a browser that has a perfectly workable UI and does not change based on fashion. And a browser that has a modern HTML engine.
Unless and until the HTML engine becomes stale, I see no reason to change. I like my menu bars, I like spending a few extra horizontal pixels up to have back, forward, reload and stop buttons, I like having an attached mail client. Good design is good design no matter what decade it is.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who usually makes a snide remark every time Firefox goes up to a new version, it really isn't a factor if I am going to use the product or not. I just think it was a Lame attempt to seem cool compared to Google Chrome. You know, like that kid in Jr. High School who wasn't popular, but tries too hard to be so, in the attempt they end up looking even more uncool, in the same process he had alienated himself from the cool kids and the outsider group too.
Not that the version number will affect the quality of the software. However by doing this firefox isn't being true to itself. And these big number changes only confuse people trying to realise if they should bother to upgrade or not.
Re:Memory hog? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's showing about 400MB RAM usage, and about 800MB address space. But address space includes mmapped files and reserved address space that is not actually backed by memory; it only matters for purposes of running out of a 32-bit process's 4GB address space.
So OK, 400MB memory usage. Of this, about 260MB was actually allocated by the browser (see "explicit"; the rest seems to be things the OS is putting into the process memory space space (e.g. the code of the browser, the code of the libraries the browser links to, etc).
Of this 260MB, looks like about 70MB is RAM used by your extensions (17MB for adblock plus, 6MB for https-everywhere, etc). Another 30MB looks like it might be JS GC heap fragmentation from those extensions.
Another 40MB is the yahoo mail tab; almost all of this is the various JS gunk it's doing.
7MB is Wired.
About 6MB for Slashdot.
Another 5MB for about:addons, and about 15MB for the browser UI.
30MB unknown to about:memory.
16MB in-memory cache for the bookmarks and history databases.
10MB images.
7MB web workers used by ghostery.
That accounts for most of the memory listed as far as I can tell.
Re:I've been using it since the beginning... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seamonkey is also convenient is you want to run another Mozilla browser alongside Firefox and not have to take any measures to keep the profiles separate. So it adds one to the number of browsers you can just install and run with no special setup and thereby split some of the advertiser & Facebook tracking that is so annoying.
Seamonkey and Thunderbird also keep the Mozilla team somewhat coherent in developing the common codebase, though increasingly build issues are wasting a lot of time for those two now unpaid projects. Mozilla has three projects it supports with paid developers: Firefox, the Firefox OS and Firefox Mobile. It dropped Thunderbird recently from that group and it's not clear how the TB team is going to handle rapid release vs. extended service release. Lots of tricky work for unpaid developers to keep up with an intricate codebase continually special cased for the three paid products, and to match Chrome innovations.
Seems to me Seamonkey developers are the ones most concerned with making current features work predictably for users.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)