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I'd like to understand the reasons why people are interested to keep SeaMonkey alive. I know mine (BenBucksch) are very different from those of some users.

Please try to be specific. To help with decisions, don't just say "I like the UI better", but say why.

Council

Christian Biesinger

What I want in Seamonkey...

I want a browser for "me" not necessarily for "everyone"
- Focus on "power users"
Less focus on extensions, default install should contain stuff people want
More control and choice to the user
Integrated Browser and Mail/News-Client (needs not be same process, but should work well together, share settings, etc)

Chris Thomas

I personally strongly prefer SeaMonkey... there are a bunch of reasons. I've used it (well, the Mozilla suite) for a few years and am more used to it, and I see more eye-to-eye with other SeaMonkey developers.

Firefox is somewhat annoying to use, because lots of little things are just different (for example, if you type something in the URL bar, SeaMonkey will open it in a new tab if you hit ctrl+enter, while Firefox uses alt+enter; Firefox's download manager has annoying default behaviors; having a separate search bar instead of just searching from the URL bar means both your URL bar is smaller and you can see less of what you type when you search for something; find-as-you-type has a weird dialog in Firefox; many other things). If you haven't used SeaMonkey before, though, some of these won't be a problem for you.

As a developer, I don't like some of the practices used in Firefox... for large patches, their philosophy seems more like "include the patch and let users (people who use the nightly builds) find bugs" whereas in SeaMonkey we do more up-front code review. When porting Firefox patches to SeaMonkey, I've had them be rejected because the code quality I copied wasn't good enough, so they had to be cleaned up. I really don't like the way the "lead Firefox developer" (Ben Goodger - in quotes because that title is really unfair to the other Firefox devs) does his big patches... in the cases I've looked at, he checked in patches that either were entirely broken (when he rewrote the options dialog, it didn't work at all and was mostly invisible (see-through, I'm not kidding)), or full of bugs that a few minutes of testing would find (the info bar that alerts you to blocked popups, blocked extensions, missing plugins, etc. had a lot of bugs I came across when I ported it to SeaMonkey).

A lot of Firefox's popularity probably just comes from the fact that it's new and therefore "cool" or interesting, whereas the suite looks similar to Netscape 4. It seems that the new name "SeaMonkey" is actually generating a little interest though, which is kind of cool .

If you're into testing lots of extensions, Firefox definitely makes it easier (specifically, uninstalling extensions in SeaMonkey is hard), but the thing about SeaMonkey is that I don't need extensions with it, so it isn't really a problem. I have one extension (FlashBlock) that I've used for years and never needed to uninstall... and I used autoscroll until recently (autoscroll will be integrated in SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta, so I don't need the extension any more).

Anyone who tells you Firefox is faster is probably confused or buying into hype. Every recent test I've seen has SeaMonkey starting up faster (even without QuickLaunch, which makes it launch almost instantaneously - a feature Firefox doesn't have), and they use the exact same rendering engine, so pageload speeds are the same.

I'm not sure how they compare in memory use, but in my experience, the cache and webpages themselves tend to use significantly more RAM than the interface itself, so I wouldn't expect much difference. If you also use an email program, however, SeaMonkey is going to be a LOT smaller than Firefox+Thunderbird, because it shares a lot of data, while FF+TB duplicate a lot. A quick test showed Firefox alone was ~21MB at launch, and SeaMonkey ~22MB. Opening the mail client for SeaMonkey only bumped it up to ~28MB though, while Thunderbird is going to eat another 20MB or so for itself.

Developers and QA

Ben Bucksch

Reasons to keep SeaMonkey

Developed 2 browsers based on it and need to keep them thriving

Problems with Firefox

Extreme instability code-wise (impossible to base derivates on it)
'We're not accepting patches' shows general attitude of some developers

Desired changes to SeaMonkey

Cleaner UI (at least removing redundant UI)
make browser and mail client different processes
Change the name or make a pro version for small business networks. Because proposing a suite called Seamonkey to a business or institution board room meeting just doesn't carry a professional sounding tone and translates akwardly. How about a name that carries no overt connotation? or is more serious sounding. Eg. Torq, or Seahawk or ...

Alex Vincent

Our company's corporate product uses Mozilla Application Suite (not Mozilla Firefox). For various reasons, the 1.7.x series was not adequate for our needs. Further stable builds are in my employer's interest. (I should note I'm not being paid to work on these Mozilla releases.)

Mariya

I have been using Seamonkey suite in our corporate environment (about 5 computers) without any problems for the last 6 months and we must say that all of us are quite happy with the Interface, and more importantly the speed of opening web pages is significantly faster than with FireFox or IE. In addition, the mail client handles IMAP much better than Thunderbird. With Thunderbird we often have missing text in some emails. ie. the email is present but the text disappears completely which is quite irritating as you have to logon to the web UI to locate the missing email. Another remarkable thing about Seamonkey is the speed of searching emails is very fast (equivalent to Eudora). We definitely think there should be more development put into Seamonkey.

One most desired feature would be to use the plugins from Thunderbird / FireFox like delete duplicated emails, session manager and the Down them all plugin as these do not seem to work well / install in Seamonkey suite.

R.J. Keller

Most of what Biesinger said. I'd like the ability to click on Edit this Page and it opens in an editor without eating up more memory with a new application instance and really prefer seamonkey over Firefox. I believe it has a lot of potential.

Changes I'd like to see/implement in Seamonkey

I'd like to rewrite the Help Viewer documentation, which is badly needed.
prefs are poorly organized.
new review policy that sets XUL and JS changes to require only review and no review necessary for module owners.

End Users

sendpage

AFAIK, Firefox with Thunderbird is still missing two extremely useful features of the suite:

"Send page by email" (yes, I know there is such an extension, but it isn't easily setup correctly by most users -- in SeaMonkey IT JUST WORKS!)

"Quick Launch" (yes, I know there is a "Minimize to tray" extension and a patch that supposedly makes it work like Quick Launch, but it fails miserably -- in SeaMonkey IT JUST WORKS!)

There are others, but these two alone are enough reason why I must have SeaMonkey installed, even if I use it only as an alternative to FF/TB.

Of course with a better extension manager in SeaMonkey 1.5 (suiterunner), I might just reverse that order, making SeaMonkey the primary tool.

Isaac

Firefox is supposed to be the best browser. Thunderbird is supposed to be the best e-mail client. Or at least they try to be. So it makes sense that I would use both e-mail and browser. Yes? Makes sense? (Who doesn't keep an e-mail client and browser up nowadays anyways?)

Well, if I always use both browser and e-mail, why not just use the SeaMonkey suite? So far to date, neither Firefox or Thunderbird has demonstrated ANY compelling reason to switch. Yes, it looks a bit different, yes there are a few different options. None of these are something that can't be in the suite. Fire up Firefox+Thunderbird together and they chew up more resources than just the suite itself.

So how about tell the users why they might want to choose the individual components instead of the suite? Firefox and Thunderbird have not even come close to meeting the goals of being smaller, faster, lighter. Worse, it doesn't even look like a trend is going in that direction. I could use Firefox + my own e-mail client, but Firefox appears just as fat as Mozilla, so why not use that? Plus with the suite, the e-mail and browser play nicer together (e.g. open links in new tabs in the background).

Owen Marshall

I can't really lump myself into the developers category; the best I can do is QA and documentation!

Personally, I prefer the SeaMonkey UI, and the tight integration between each component. I also think Firefox feels more like an exclusionary team rather than an open source project. But that's just me ;-)

What I would like to see:

An update feature like Firefox, but a little more intelligent -- for example, in-place upgrading using the XPI's rather than downloading the installer... that may be totally impossible but would be awesome! I may learn Mozilla just to try implementing something like this

OK, that is what I would really love to see!

---

What do you prefer about the SeaMonkey UI? -- BenBucksch

I have an autoupdater that I could contribute. It doesn't use XPIs (at least not yet), but just compares files, though. But I am generally very interested in updater solutions. -- BenBucksch

Davide Baroncelli

Well, I'd love to contribute, but I'm mainly a java server-side developer, and I'm afraid it would take some time before I could really do something useful for the suite. But I absolutely prefer it to FF: not for the "suite" thing, though: I do prefer the browser. I never use mail (using Eudora), chat (no IRC) or anything else (for web development activities I'd rather use NVU ;) ).

Why mozilla? Well: 1) Multizilla 2) Multizilla 3) Multizilla 4) Deeper configurability than FF (even wider with Multizilla...) 5) Searches from URL bar 6) Did I mention Multizilla?

David Madore

I can't stand the firefox user interface (the worst offender is the separation of search bar and URL bar: why anyone would actually like this waste of precious screen estate simply beats me; the sidebar is also pretty useless in comparison to seamonkey's). But it also looks as though many useful mozilla features (aka "bloat") were made into extensions in firefox, and, well, extensions just don't work seamlessly and they're a pain to install (random example, venkman: things may have changed, but last time I checked it didn't work very well with firefox, and probably not at all with thunderbird).

To summarize, it's not so much that I like seamonkey (though I do, and very much) than that I dislike firefox/thunderbird.

Vladimir Simovic aka Perun

I like the Websuite-Concept (all-in-one). Because when im online i'm using the Browser, the Mail, the Adressbook and from time to time the IRC-Client (Chatzilla). And why should i now install 3 different Programms for this. Since the first time on the Web (around 1997) i'm using a Websuite (at this Time Netscape 4.x) and from Aug./Sep. 2002 Mozilla 1.0. For very short time, between NN 4.x and Mozilla 1.0, IE6&OE. But this was pain in the neck. :-)

So i hope the Websuite-Concept will continue in some way. Otherwise i will switch to Opera. For me a Browser is not only a Webbrowser. For me a Browser is also a webworking-tool and a PIM.

My "wishlist" for the future is better integration between Seamonkey and Open Office, a small RSS-Reader and maybe anstead of Composer a Codeeditor (something like [Mozedit]) and if possibe a notes-function.

And so far is possible i will help to this Project. I'm Enduser but there are Ways how also Enduseres can help.

Alexander Rabtchevich

I use Mozilla from the first public builds, so I got used to its interface and features.

All-in-one product. One should not search for and download plugins, which provide rather basic functionality on the one hand and are not guaranteed, tested or supported on the other hand.
All-in-one product. The initial idea of FF, TB creation was to decrease the resources consumption. But this could only be done via shared libraries used by all products. That was not done. So now Mozilla consumes less or equal memory than FF on the same PC and if TB is ran the memory consumption exceeds Mozilla's.
All-in-one product. The integration between browser and mail allows to open links in mail in browser tabs and vice versa. Also it's only one program instead of two opened which notifies of new mail.
Convenient interface to settings adjustment. There are some "commonly used" settings like paths to user settings, cache and mail directories that user is to have the ability to adjust. This is only the most misunderstanding shortage of FF compared to Mozilla.
Text only apperance also shows the small icons. This is very convenient while saving the space.
The ability to bookmark a group of tabs via convenient interface. The ability to open group of tabs in new tabs. Also I'd like to see the FF ability to open each bookmark directory as a groop of bookmarks.
Classic default interface compared to "childish" FF's. This also concerns the bookmarks editing interface.
Very good history manager. Also I'd like to have the ability to "undo" tab closing, which may happen accidentally. There is the issue for this wish with lots of duplicates. (Added note: undo tab closing is already implemented in the excellent Multizilla extension.)
Much more stable and polished product than FF+TB.

What I'd like to see in Mozilla:

Integration of the latest nui code instead of the current composer.
Virtual folders as in TB.
RSS client.
SVG and maybe Mathml support.

Long live Mozilla!

Nikulin Pavel aka FUBAr

I use mozilla since very old times when opera was very popular becaus NN became
 very decrepit.Mozilla was like a fresh air in ages of total
 comercializatoin. Now mozilla was killed by stupid mofo becaus casual
 FF can give more users.

REMEMBER - OPERA IS A DARK SIDE :-)

Renard Benoît

I have used Mozilla since version 1.2, because of recommendations from a fellow message board poster.

Why I like Mozilla:

Tight integration between browser, mail client and IRC client.
Complete interface, with many options.
Rock-stable.

How I would like to see Mozilla evolve:

Start using the new toolkit.
Fix many bugs, no matter how unimportant to the overall product. Some of these can be annoying to certain users.
More Mac-friendly. They deserve as much support as the other users.
After fixing current problems, start to implement new features.

Matthias Berndt

I use the Suite, because

I'm used to it
The Suite is a lot more stable than the single Apps
I only have to install one version of the GRE, while FF, TB, SB, NVU require their own (though afaik this will be fixed soon)
The preferences dialog is about 1000 times better
I can install everything at once, but i don't have to.
The modern theme looks a lot better than the default Firefox theme (IMO)

I'd like someone to

add the following features from FF:
- The new search dialog
- the Extensions Manager
- the ability to open a bookmark in a new tab by middle-clicking it
- the update features
- configurable toolbars
make the "modern" theme the default.
activate SVG and MNG support and add the MathML fonts to the package
add synchronisation features for PDAs, cellphones (Siemens! I have an SL55) etc. to the mail component. This should be fairly easy under Windows)
i heard that the bayes spam filter in TB works better than the one in Mozilla Mail, so somebody might integrate the one from TB in the Mozilla Mail component.
add an option to choose whether document.all support should be detectable (document.all==true) or not (document.all=false)
make the receive email button get the mail from all the accounts instead of just the main account (or make this configurable)
make the account settings in the mail component clearer (SMTP Server configuration, IMHO it's nonsense that by default you don't have to specify an SMTP Server for every account. Every decent email provider has SMTP-login enabled nowadays)
when i install the mozilla language pack (i'm german) and then upgrade Chatzilla, it won't work anymore unless i set the language back to english, this should be fixed by separating the Chatzilla Language Packs from the Moz Suite language packs. After all Chatzilla is not a real Mozilla component since it's available as an extension for FF, too.
add a better Bookmark Management
make the Extension API as similar to Firefox' as possible, so that extensions without "official" Seamonkey Support work.

That's it for the moment. Oh, and PLEASE DON'T just bundle the separate apps into a "new" suite, for at least FF s***s far too much

Oscar C. Lee

I have chosen Mozilla Suite for a number of years over not just Firefox/Thunderbird/Nvo but all other solutions that are available because it has browser, mail client, HTML editor, and IRC client all integrated as one unified open source solution. Combined with the brand and marketing powers of Mozilla Foundation, it is unique and irreplaceable to IT and business communities alike.

What I would like to see in SeaMonkey in the future: RSS reader.

KDS Sahambi

I volunteer to work with R.J.Keller for improving Help Documentation. One of the most important reasons I like Seamonkey is because of its superior Bookmarks Manager(BM). One important feature missing from the BM, is highlighting of some sort for 'active bookmark folder'. Porting Seamonkey to the XUL toolkit would be best thing to happen as it will allow all new features Firefox has with the added feature of being a single application. Composer misses a robust implementation of publishing via ftp. An ssh option in the publisher would be great to have.

Dan Mellem

I like getting all of the features in one, supported installation instead of depending on 3rd-party extensions.
I hate sidebars and tabs. Some of it can be changed with about:config in Firefox but many of the windows were removed.

Juergen B.

I'd like to have seperate processes for browser, mail, news, irc, etc., allowing individual installers, but integrating into existing other parts of the suite (without downloading the full suite!).
FF/TB sucks as they are completely seperate products.
Seamonkey shall remain highly integrated, but allow transfer of Mozilla settings (TB, FF, etc.) back into the "suite" (including security features - passwords, certificates, etc.).

Pavel Alexeev

I use Seamonkey because:

i can edit web pages with Composer (this is great for the simple htmls),
all components use (and load in memory) only one set of gecko libraries,
mozilla is faster than ff, eats less memory and has less memory leaks,
mozilla has more preferences in "Edit -> Preferences".

What i (and my friends who use ff instead of mozilla because of this) missed is the text field autocompleting like in ff and IE (not only for the text forms and address line like it is currently in mozilla).

Donald Axel

I use Mozilla (seamonkey? If I had known that name I wouldn't have used it;-) because:

Some years ago I read articles by "Joe Burns, ph.d" about webdesign and Javascript, and he wrote about the strange fact that nobody has asked the common user how a browser should be. You can have the newest Internet Traveller or Tourist or Explorer "which is so much improved", but none of these improvements were based on what customers want.

I prefer Mozilla because it gives me most security and I think (I am not sure) that you can tweak the security settings more with Mozilla than with Firefox.

I have installed a third party extra which blocks flash. Mozilla is easy to configure and the results are satisfactory. Therefore!

Mike Feeney

I prefer the browser in Seamonkey to Firefox because

It doesn't constantly look for favicon.ico files it shouldn't be (annoying to me as a website owner).
It has an easy to find option for making animated GIFs only loop once or not at all. In Firefox I have to edit about:config and it doesn't seem to save the preference between sessions.
Shift+Enter in location bar does Save As.
Find works the way I expect (and prefer) it to.
Bookmarks management is a lot better (at least since the Moz1.8 alphas).
Interface is a bit less gaudy.
Menus are organized better.

By #4, I am referring to what happens when I press Ctrl+F, although I like being able to find links as I type too. It helps me use the mouse less (I hate using the mouse).

Also, I like using Composer as a simple and convenient word processor for documents that are going to end up online.

Joseph Kiser

I've been using the suite off and on since Milestone 14, and it's been my default browser since version .9 something. It is sad to see the Mozilla Foundation turn its back on the product that spearheaded this movement for so long. I love the new features in 1.8b; the startup time is much better than previous versions, virtual folders are a godsend, and the program feels so much more mature than Firefox. That's not to say that Firefox isn't a good browser, it's just that I've been using the suite for so long and appreciate integrated e-mail (new message notifications when the email client is closed) without having to load two separate programs.

There are only a few features I can think of which would, in the future, make this program (whatever its name ends up being) even better. First of all, the default theme should be changed. I'm not sure to what yet, but the old Netscape purple icons are dated, and reminiscant of the Windows 95 days. Nothing over the top (like Modern), just something that blends in with the operating system (using the system scrollbars/fonts/colors) and has aesthetically pleasing icons. I like the icons on the Camino browser; maybe we could use these as a reference point.

Another thing that I would like to see is that the Bookmarks menu be redone in such a manner that when one scrolls through the list, the bookmark options (Bookmark this Page, File Bookmark, etc) stay at the top of the list. I have hundreds of bookmarks saved, and it would be nice to be able to scroll through them without having these options disappear.

Finally, it would be nice to have an option to block images on certain pages, but keep them loaded on others. This would be very helpful for those of us who use tabs. Maybe a toolbar icon, or an option in the right-click menu would help. When I have several tabs open, it's counterproductive to have to go to Edit>Preferences and switch images off on one page, and then have to go through the motions again to turn them on in a new tab.

Vito DiLuminoso

For me, it's all about integrability.

I've been using the integrated Mozilla package in one form or another since the Mozilla 4.x code base (Netscape Communicator 4.5 was my earliest install). I have come to rely on the integrated browser, mail, and HTML editor (Composer) in the daily work I do; the Moz suite provides seamless functionality between those components. It would be a serious inconvenience to lose it.

I do a lot of research on the web, and I report the results of that research to associates via encrypted e-mail. With Mozilla's tight integration between the Navigator browser and Composer editor, I can easily annotate any web page and save the annotated page directly to my local drive. The mail app's embedded HTML editor lets me copy entire web pages directly into an e-mail message and edit them. Similarly, when I receive HTML messages, I have complete interoperability with the browser and Composer. The flexibility that the Moz suite offers in generating and receiving messages with highly structured visual content provides a uniquely flexible, high-bandwidth, secure information transfer channel. In fact, I'm not the only one who recognizes that value. I'm one year into a 7-year research project whose associates are distributed across the planet on multiple platforms. The decision to specify Mozilla as the approved secure messaging and browsing application was unanimous.

The built-in message encryption is absolutely essential. I recall the transition period when OS X was first released and Mozilla 1.0 was not yet a reality. There were zero available options for built-in message encryption for OS X...well, except for some PGP implementations that destroyed all HTML by grinding it up into plain text. Netscape 6.x was available, but in addition to all its other deficiencies, it didn't support encryption. That was a deal killer. I ran every other application that I could in OS X, but when it came to all things webular — browser, mail, and HTML editing — I ran Communicator 4.79 in Classic. It was a bit of a nuisance, but at least it worked. Eventually, the Moz 5.0 code base came to the rescue, first with the pre-release of Netscape 7.0, and then shortly thereafter I learned about Mozilla 1.0. Ever since then I've been a Moz addict. I much prefer the Mozilla suite to Netscape.

Yes, I keep my installs of Firefox and Thunderbird current. At one point I configured them as the default mail and browser apps on my aging PowerBook, where the longer launch time of the Moz suite is noticeable. But before long the intrinsically deficient non-integrated functionality of those standalone apps sent me back to the Moz suite. There is simply nothing else that works as well, is as stable, and provides all the features I need in a single well-integrated package.

Improvements? Here's my wish list:

User-defined keystroke commands. I probably don't need to say any more about this one, a/k/a the legendary Bug No. 57805: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57805
A better color picker; the one in the Moz 4.0 code base was awesome, so that would be a great objective to shoot for in future builds. In the meantime, if it has to be a fixed palette, it should include at least the 216 "web safe" colors in the complete HTML true color chart.
At the very least, use the FULL color picker in Preferences — like the one available in Composer and Mail that allows user-specified hexadecimal color codes — so that I can specify the colors I need if they're not among the 70 presets.
Include the option to set the color palette to apply to all the apps in the suite. For example, I've never understood why there's no BLUE: "0000FF" in the palette. I use blue all the time, and every time I need it in Composer or Mail, I have to open the palette, enter "0000FF" in the text box, and click OK. It would be handy enough to be able to do that for custom colors that don't already appear in the palette, but I'm talking about BLUE here. I'd like to see blue added to the standard palette, but there'd be less need to change the colors in the standard palette if the entire palette could be user-defined at the application level.
A "repeat (action)" command, similar to Command-Y/Control-Y in, say, MS Excel's Edit menu. It's an Edit menu command with its own keystroke assignment that takes the drudgery out of actions that must be applied repetitively. Changing the color of selected text is one example, but it really could apply to just about anything that can be done in the HTML editor.
A return to both types of message receipts: "server" and "message displayed". The server receipts were lost in the transition from the Moz 4.0 code base. They were very handy in determining whether the message actually reached the destination server, which is more information than you get with the message displayed receipt when the recipient's mail client doesn't support it, or it's not configured to respond. Even if the recipient opts not to honor the request to return the receipt, a server receipt lets you know that, at the very least, the message made it to the server.
The ability to change message receipt request status for each individual message, via a checkbox or toolbar button in the mail composer window for each message. Currently, the only way to turn message receipt requests on or off is in Preferences, either globally or per mail account. I turn it on globally, but it would be nice to have the ability to turn it off for a specific message—say, when posting to a newsgroup or mailing list—to avoid getting a million receipts. Turning it off globally in preferences imposes the requirement to remember to turn it back on; it's easy to forget to do that.
- Excuse me... have you tried, in message window, Options menu -> "Return receipt"? Or I'm missundertanding you? --Sergiodf 15:24, 9 Nov 2005 (PST)

I was delighted to learn that further development of the Moz suite is being supported by a core of loyal devotees. I will do whatever I can to help as a tester for OS X builds.

Garth Wallace

There are aesthetic/technical reasons, sentimental reasons, and philosophical/political reasons.

I find the Mozilla browsing experience much more satisfying. Windows load faster (Firefox still doesn't, and may never, have quicklaunch), and the prefs don't treat me like a child. The Firefox UI is supposed to be geared "more towards end-users", but the Firefox team seems to think that end-users are subhuman morons who can barely be trusted not to swallow their own keyboards. Furthermore, when I'm using the 'Net, I'm Using The 'Net, web and email (and news and frequently IRC), so having an integrated program makes perfect sense for me; moving to separate programs with less functionality and a larger combined footprint, on the other hand, is stupid.

As far as sentiment goes, I've been using the Suite and occasionally submitting bugs for years. Milestones were still M-integer when I started using it. Seeing it get officially abandoned midway through a development cycle feels like getting punched in the gut.

Finally, it feels like the Mozilla Foundation and the community around it have been hijacked by a small cabal to push their pet project. There were promises that Firefox and Thunderbird would eventually replace the Suite when they could be integrated through the GRE/XULrunner and used as a drop-in replacement for the Suite without being a downgrade; that hasn't happened yet, and the FF/TB teams don't even seem to be working towards it. I want to see the suite thrive, because it'd be a big middle finger at Ben Goodger et al. who cribbed a bunch of work off of an open-source project, then turned around and told the contributors that they weren't welcome anymore.

My wishlist, if it matters:

the return of MNG
better bookmarking (automatic updating for dead and moved pages; frame state; aliases)
better news support (GNKSA compliance; spoiler marks) - news has always been a bit of an afterthought in Netscape and Mozilla
better support for printing CSS
address book/chatzilla integration - of all of the components, Chatzilla feels the least integrated: this would let it take advantage of the other components

Oh, and I'm going to continue to refer to the Suite as Mozilla in private. As far as I'm concerned, Firefox and Thunderbird are just spinoffs, and Mozilla predates the MoFo anyway.

Ryan Germann

I like it because components are integrated: CTRL-N from any module opens new browser, CTRL-M opens Mail Message, CTRL-2 opens mail client etc. Also because it's got more sophisticated options and control over the functionality.

I would like it more if client-side time management tool was integrated (not asking for sophisticated work-group scheduling at this point).

Would also like superior Palm integration (I'm looking to ditch Act 4.0 and move entirely to Mozilla, with integrated calendar and address book)

Would LOVE it if the "Quick Launch" taskbar item added "Compose Email Message", so I could send an email message without first having to launch MailNews or Navigator.

Would also like to have Mail News have the message list full width, with the folder tree and message display panes side by side... the message list needs the widest possible display, but there is no fourth "window layout" option for this. waahhhh.

Srikanth. S.

I totally support the Web suite concept. A stable and tightly integrated suite that combines a browser, mail client, Chat client and a PIM (calendar) with a small memory footprint, designed for the power users is what we want. It will be excellent if all these can work from within a single tabbed window. The initial success of FF/TB will vanish with the next release of IE/OE with novice users deserting them.

Ken Arromdee

It's the usual reason for me. I like having the preferences there, and even finding out what extensions I want can be a major pain.

Desired changes to Mozilla? Mostly fixes to annoying bugs and misfeatures. Mozilla still doesn't have "show image", a vital part of web browsing at 56K. Cutting and pasting to Xhas been weird for five years, and bookmark selectionfor as long. In a way fixing these things is like having lots of preferences--it's more useful to advanced users and people on unusual setups (well, not bookmark selection).

Binny Avasthi

I am always running both the browser and mailer and FF and TB seem to consume more memory than mozilla suite. After the decision of MoFo to stop suite I tried to go to FF and TB but had to revert because it was just too much hassle.

I would like a feature to have multiple proxy preferences which can be changed easily. I need to connect to internet through multiple ways and all of them have different proxies. Currently I have to change them in preferences every time I connect from somewhere else.
I would like to see if download manager can be extended to have some kind of download accelerator functionality bu opening multiple sockets and doing byte range. If I could get some pointers on where the relavent code is, I could look to work on it
I would want to see vcal vcard attachments automatically transferred to addressbooks and calendar applications

Good Oleg

Sometimes I'm trying to do GNU+Linux code more platform friendly. Features (from firefox):

Interactive search in history and documents
Yes, extension manager
And more in preferences like cleaning cookies, cache, etc.

Brent Gomes

The one single thing I'd like to see from Firefox incorporated into SeaMonkey is Live Bookmarks! I like Mozilla/SeaMonkey over Firefox for one single reason: MultiZilla.

Amit Gurdasani

Why I prefer Seamonkey over Firefox/Thunderbird/Sunbird:

Lower resource utilization—splitting up the applications does no good if you don't also share all the components across applications. They're already shared libraries; as long as the shared libraries aren't, you know, shared across the apps, it does no good if you use more than one at a time.
Faster—As of right now, Seamonkey starts up and runs faster than Firefox.
No less-is-better attitude—Firefox at least echoes a recent trend I've seen in the open source world where it's considered to be a good thing to lose settable preferences to favor usability for new users. I'm not a new user, and I want my preferences.
Maturity—the Firefox folks are a little too gung-ho on increasing their marketshare and adding half-baked features (livemarks? ick) while not focusing on the core of the product. You have old bugs such as 47475 that are showing movement on Seamonkey but the Firefox people simply aren't interested in more "boring" featuresets that may have appeal for more people.

What I'd like to see in Seamonkey:

More customizable toolbars—the ability to move around toolbars is pretty useful if you want to save some space.
Extension manager—There's already an Extension Uninstaller extension available that can be used to manage extensions, but there's no real substitute for something like this built in—it doesn't make sense to be able to install extensions easily but find it difficult to uninstall them.
Proper complex text layout support—Despite many efforts to get it right, complex text layout still doesn't work properly on X11 builds. There's an effort to get it working, but progress seems to have stalled. It'd be great to have it work.

RW

I want an application which combines the best of FF1.5/TB 1.5 and maybe lightning. Basically an application which does everything, (BUT NOT IE) A small footprint will be helpful. RW best descibed as an end user

Sergiodf

I am user of both Firefox (at work) and SeaMonkey (at home).

Since always i used Netscape communicator, and that's the main reason why i use SeaMonkey at home (at work i must use Exchange and, therefore, Outlook).

I think separate apps are a very good thing (the UNIX approach: do one thing and do it well). But, IMO, get an axe and chop an application is not the best way.
Maybe in FF/TB 3.0 we can get a fully integrated suite of standalone programs (2.0 shared gecko, 3.0 well supported messaging protocol via DDE on Windows, DBUS on KDE/GNOME, whatever on Mac OS... ok, ok, i know i am dreaming)

Mav Block

I love the idea of having intergrated apps. I have always loved intergrated apps. Recently I switched away from my Windows world to a brand new iMac. My life was changed. I started putting design before function (which really screwed up my workflow). I started using Safari and Apple Mail. That is where I went wrong.

Then I tried Firefox and Thunderbird. I could not STAND eiether one of them. Finally, I have settled on SeaMonkey. Why? You ask?

1. Its intergrated. I love having mail, calendar, irc, address book, and browser, all in one app.

2. IT'S FAST! SeaMonkey was faster than Safari, Opera, and FF in ALL of my tests.

3. Sidebar. I cannot get enough of that search sidebar!

4. No Favicons. Most people LOVE Favicons. I really, really, don't!

5. It's more Open Source then Firefox- in my thought, at least. It just really seems that nowadays there really isn't much developer, end user communication.

6. It combines everything I love about the gecko rendering engine with everything I love about app intergration!

beoenduser

I really like that Seamonkey has everything I need, e-mail, addressbook, browser, and page editor. I prefer how it works over how Firefox works. In Firefox, I did not like the way the sidebar opens. I prefer just to hit 1 key (F9) and have my bookmarks, addressbook, history, etc all there. I like how it all works together so smoothly.

What I'd like to see: A Calendar included. I've read how the calendar extension has been abandoned and I'm very angry about that. I like the calendar extension very much and I depend on it.

I'd also like to see Seamonkey be able to handle extensions labeled for Firefox without a hiccup. There's some cool extensions on Deviantart I'd like to use but they don't work for my Seamonkey on Windows. They only work for my Seamonkey on Linux. -- Beoenduser 17:51, 5 June 2006 (PDT)

vavasthi

I seem to be always running a mail client and a browser. If I run both the firefox and thunderbird, they cumulatively take more memory. Also I think eventually it should be possible to have a calendar integrated better into a suite that has both the browser and mail client e.g. moving an appointment from google calendar to enterprise calendar.

Tony Mechelynck

The way I see it, Suiterunner (SeaMonkey 2, which is still supposed to be "pre-alpha") has finally brought together the good points of Firefox & Thunderbird (such as the add-ons subsystem) with those of Netscape 4 (such as integrated browser & mailer, and no-nonsense Preferences). It even beats them all by adding a built-in chat client and (at least in nightly builds) the so-called "Debug & QA UI".

crobc

I was planning to switch to FF/TB since upgrading 3 PCs to a new Linux, but went back to what is now SeaMonkey because the FF bookmarks have been made into some database. I don't want to spend much effort figuring out how to use some synchronization tool (I pass the same bookmarks file between multiple computers) so I like SeaMonkey now because the bookmarks are just the same old simple .html file.

Also, FF 3.0 and 2.x (on my openSuse Linux, at least) seem incapable of doing something as basic as sorting the bookmarks correctly. This bug also makes be uneager to use FF.

Overall, I concur with users who think that FF is generally more buggy than the Moz codebase. I seem to experience more wierd bugs and crashes with FF. So stability is much more important than all the newest features.

ncaton in SF

I want an integrated email and browser. So I use SeaMonkey. I want my address book on my harddrive, and I like seamonkey's address book. It has many of the admirable features of Outlook without the bloat or the risk of viruses taking it over. Personally I also prefer multizilla's infinitely customizable remembered tabs to Firefox. Perhaps the same tab functionality is there in Firefox, but I haven't found it. One enhancement I would like is for Sunbird to be fully integrated, so that I could right click on an email and make it a task or an event. Also the limited functionality of Sunbird's repeated event mechanism is frustrating - some events repeat monthly on the first Friday, but that option would appear not to be available. So the repeated event moves ever further from the actual date the longer it repeats.

Finally I appreciate the speed of Seamonkey. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer (ick) take forever from the same location be that home wireless or office cable. The open in IE tab is terrific for keeping me from having to use IE for real for those websites, mostly big corporate, that just don't work except in IE.

Administrators

Wolfgang Wiese

As an administrator in an university I have to install and support software for web, mail, news and so on. Unlike the combination of Firefox and Thunderbird, the suite is much more admin-friendly, cause its more userfriendly: Users get an intergrated suite and cause of long years Netscape4 and after that Mozilla, they are known to it. Its much easier for users and administrators to set up the proferences of the suite for workstations. Unlike administrators or developers a normal user can't even understand how to call "about:config" or even use it! Firefox is only helpful for public surfstations, where we dont wan't to provide many functions.

Also as administrator I cannot argue against users why to install a combination of firefox and thunderbird until they dont show up with the features of the mozilla suite. I have to give my users something that is an improvement against the previous version (what ever its name is). But with firefox - how many plugins will I have to install until I get the features the users already have with mozilla suite? In case of making a choice, i would either stay on mozilla 1.8beta or have a turn to opera...

Felix Miata

When you buy a car, you don't buy an engine one place, a body somewhere else, and an interior still somewhere else. You buy an integrated package that efficiently combines all you need for road surfing. The same concept of integration applies to web surfing.

The web suite concept made sense when Netscape first became one, and it still does today. Integration makes many things easier, and easier is something quite popular among PC users.

Windoze users bring me their trojan, virus and spyware ridden puters to fix. I fix them, then make it easier for them to not break them again by installing one swiss army knife, Mozilla Web Suite. It enables me to install and show them one single program that prevents or reduces a multitude of continued M$ sins. Mozilla mail follows standards by not inducing Jeopardy writing style, providing standard email quote markers, and creating and retaining references, among other things. Since I use it myself, when they ask questions, I generally know the answers, or where to point them to find them. To ask their questions, if they want they can just click the CZ icon on the statusbar to catch me on moznet. To use their personal web space, they can just click the composer icon on the statusbar, and create a page far more compliant than anything Word or Frontpage have ever done.

Netscape and Mozilla users who use them because they are an integrated suite don't deserve an end to further development, or the complications of extensions and what to/not to install to get back what they're accustomed to after a supposed "upgrade".

Mark Dowling

We transitioned from Netscape 4.79 to Mozilla over the last while. The FF/TB effort, as previously noted, has concentrated on each application separately, with little attention to synergy between them. Projects such as Sunbird are tucked in a corner and Composer has been outsourced to nvu. A Mozilla-Win32 based on MSIs is a very attractive prospect, but this must be accompanied by full documentation on how to lock down both default preferences and ongoing enforcement via policy. This documentation should not be left to enthuasiasts but an integral part of the Mozilla product. It is ironic to me that the company I work for will not use Mozilla beyond end 2005 as we have embraced a groupware scenario coupled with Firefox but for companies who wish to look at IMAP/iCal as a solution, the lack of progress in decoupling Gecko from individual apps to reduce resource usage and encourage links between each MoFo application will leave an ongoing gap for MAS to fill. It would be interesting to see MAS have links to other OSS projects to extend the feasibility of single source supply for small and medium enterprises.

Marketing and UI

Vitor Domingos

As marketing and UI engineer, i must say there are a couple of reasons that we'll like to see going on the Mozilla Suite:

All-in-one wonder (mozilla+addressbook+mail)
Perfectly integrated with all the plugins and extensions avaiable
Faster than FF
Good UI, preferences in place
Good marketing value so far
It's my browser since i remember :)

For the future, I'd like to see more integration with OpenOffice.org, maybe joining efforts in one "true and full" office suite.

One suite, many platforms

Keith Burnett

Reasons for using

All in one package for Web so one thing to load.
Similar on Windows and Mac OS X
Intertia; I paid money for Netscape 2 and have used Mozilla as alternative to MS IE since 4.0 on Windows

Wishlist

Change composer to get rid of those
tags
Re-animate the calendar
Add notes facility
Blogging extension using Composer would be neat

SeaMonkey:Reasons

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