Mozilla Question: Seamonkey vs Firefox & Thunderbird...

[Bill Sconce]

On Fri, 09 Jul 2004 21:28:56 -0400
Brian Chabot <brian at datasquire.net> wrote:

> Just an interesting question I've been ponderring that I thought I 
> mmight gain some insight from the folks here...
> 
> I've been a long time user of Mozilla (SeaMonkey)... Recently I've been 
> playing with Firefox & Thunderbird.
> 
> The new stand-alone apps look pretty and keep many of SeaMonkey's 
> excellent features, but I'm rather dismayed at the lack of decent 
> integration between them.
>           [...]


Firefox is a great browser.  I've been using and tracking it since
Seamonkey days, partly because it enabled using the same browser on
my own machines (always Linux) and on clients' machines (sometimes
Linux but sometimes unspeakable misery).  The evolution of Mozilla/
Seamonkey to Phoenix to Firefox has been gratifying.  Our community
has done well.

Increasing bloat has been a downside.  (Of course.)  No one could call
Firefox lightweight any more.  But a browser today NEEDS many of the
features which Firefox offers.

As far as the question of modularization into separate apps is concerned,
some users use other mail clients.  For them it's a plus not to drag
along the overhead of integrated-everything-else.

I use Sylpheed in my shop.  When a clients' setup is that unspeakable
other stuff I've had to use an unspeakable other mail client.  For these
situations it has been a correct decision by the Mozilla project to
make the browser separate.

A small side point: in recent weeks we've actually seen recommendations
by security pundits that people who use the unspeakable browser should
consider switching - and to Firefox specifically.  That recommendation
was facilitated, if only a little bit, by a browser switch not being
encumbered by mail-clilent considerations.

All << $.02, just offering some thoughts on the one side of the
"argument".  It's not an argument, really.  For other situations an
integrated suite is preferred.  I'm just glad that we have Firefox,
and glad to see that our Free Software community has managed to
smash the formerly  "leading" browser.

-Bill