SeaMonkey:New for 2.0

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This page is for detailing what new features we are incorporating for the 2.0 release. This page is not for requesting new features for the 2.0 release.

New Profile Location

Due to the big change in the back-end code which would also require new profiles to be located in a different place, it was decided that all existing profiles should be explicitly migrated rather than just using what is there already. This has several advantages. One, in particular, is to clean up old profiles (some of which will have been around since 4.x,) but also it helps to reduce the possibility of conflicts between old and new profiles that might arise due to planned changes in the back-end.

The new locations are (depending on the resolution of bug 393620):

New Profile Locations
Operating System Folder
Unix ~/.mozilla/seamonkey/<Profile Name>
Windows  %APPDATA%\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles\<Profile name>\
Mac OS X ~/Library/Application Support/SeaMonkey/Profiles/<Profile name>/

Profile Migration

The profile migration dialog will come up on the first start of a SeaMonkey 2.x on your machine. It will allow you to migrate your existing settings into a profile called "default".

If you wish to migrate more than one profile or set the profile name, run SeaMonkey with the following arguments (it needs to be run twice):

  • -createProfile <ProfileName>
  • -P <ProfileName> -migration

Note: spaces in <ProfileName> are NOT permitted with -createProfile. Instead, use -ProfileManager and create the profiles using the GUI.

New Features

This list may change at any time and the final list will be in the release notes once 2.0 is fully released.

There is currently no time schedule for when 2.0 will be released, however as there are likely to be many new features in the release, (mainly due to the toolkit transition), we thought we'd start listing them here.


New for SeaMonkey 2.0
Feature Description Bug Reference
Add-on Manager The add-on manager provides both Theme & Extension options in the same way as Firefox and Thunderbird. This will allow extension and theme developers a much better environment than the previous extension capabilities. bug 272429?
Add-on update notification As part of the add-on manager SeaMonkey will now automatically notify you of updates to installed addons. -
Thunderbird profile migration You can now migrate your existing Thunderbird profile into SeaMonkey. bug 329744
Form Manager replaced by Satchel Instead of the old form manager, when you type in forms now if you've previously entered values in similar fields you'll be presented with a drop-down list of options. bug 304309
Read-only integration with Mac OS X Address Book The Mac OS X address book can now be accessed (read-only) from within the Address Book of SeaMonkey, so it can be used for auto-complete, address lookups etc. bug 203927
Feed support (viewing and subscribing) RSS and Atom feeds can now be viewed and subscribed to through either the browser or MailNews component. bug 415372 bug 255834
Customizable Toolbars (browser and MailNews) You can now customize the toolbars in the browser and MailNews components bug 394288 bug 471372 bug 413385
Places-based history The new history backend can store more data and is used for the location bar results now. bug 382187
Audio/Video support SeaMonkey now natively supports playing Ogg and Wave files (directly and with HTML5 audio/video tags). bug 422538 bug 449315
Crash recovery (session restore) SeaMonkey can now save open windows and tabs for later restoration in the event of a crash. bug 36810
New Download Manager The new Download Manager features resumable downloads (even across sessions) and many other improvements. bug 472001
Undo Close Tab/Window Recently closed tabs and windows can now be reopened (through Ctrl+Shift+T/Y shortcuts or File menu). bug 350416 bug 354953 bug 510890
Better Faster IMAP IMAP messages are now downloaded in the background and changes (delete, move, tag) replayed when going online. Additionally, the disk cache is used for messages that were viewed but not downloaded. bug 436615 bug 435153 bug 141606 bug 450456
Tabmail Mail and News messages can now be opened in tabs, similar to the web sites in the browser. bug 460960

Themes

With the new add-on manager we have new themes. We don't migrate themes (or extensions), so SeaMonkey 2.0 will default to the Classic theme (now known as the "Default" theme).

If you want the Modern theme, just go to Tools->Add-on Manager, select Themes, then Modern, and Use Theme, one restart and you'll be there.

Extensions

Now we have the new add-on manager we are able to package some of our optional components as extensions. This is more in keeping with the new style, and enables users better control over what they have included and enabled in SeaMonkey.

The current list of extensions bundled with SeaMonkey 2 is:

The Debug And QA UI extension may be disabled in releases, though that hasn't been fully decided yet.

Note to Extension Authors

Now that SeaMonkey is a XUL app, extensions which supply contents.rdf files and chrome.manifest files will be broken if the chrome.manifest does not explicitly define what is in the contents.rdf file (e.g. overlays, content etc).

The reason is that in the new SeaMonkey builds, contents.rdf files will be ignored if chrome.manifest files exist. If you need to define application specific overlays etc then Chrome Registration will tell you how to do it. http://developer.mozilla.org also has details on updating your extension in this article: Extensions support in SeaMonkey 2.

Please test your revised extension in the latest SeaMonkey (links above) before updating your max version.