SeaMonkey is a free and open-source Internet suite. It is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite, based on the same source code, which itself grew out of Netscape Communicator and formed the base of Netscape 6 and Netscape 7.
SeaMonkey was created in 2005 after the Mozilla Foundation decided to focus on the standalone projects Firefox and Thunderbird. The development of SeaMonkey is community-driven, in contrast to the Mozilla Application Suite, which until its final version (1.7.13) was governed by the Mozilla Foundation. The new project-leading group is called the SeaMonkey Council.
Compared to Firefox, the SeaMonkey web browser keeps the more traditional-looking interface of Netscape and the Mozilla Application Suite. It also retains the legacy XPCOM-based add-on system which allows the user to extend SeaMonkey by modifying add-ons for Thunderbird or the add-ons that were formerly compatible with Firefox before the latter switched to WebExtensions.
Components SeaMonkey consists of a web browser (which is a descendant of the Netscape family),Jens Oliver Meiert. The Web Development Glossary: More Than 2,000 Key Terms for Developers. Frontend Dogma, 2020, p. 315. an email and news client program (SeaMonkey Mail & Newsgroups, which shares code with Mozilla Thunderbird), an HTML editor (SeaMonkey Composer) an IRC client (ChatZilla), and an RSS feed reader. The software suite supports skins. It comes with two skins in the default installation, Modern and Classic.
SeaMonkey Mail is a traditional e-mail client that includes support for multiple accounts, junk mail detection, message filters, HTML message support, and address books, among other features such as a calendar. It shares code with Mozilla Thunderbird; both Thunderbird and SeaMonkey are built from Mozilla's comm-central source tree.
Composer
SeaMonkey Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor descended from Mozilla Composer. Its main user interface features four tabs: Normal (WYSIWYG), HTML tags, HTML code, and browser preview. The generated code is HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Naming To avoid confusing organizations that still want to use the original Mozilla Application Suite, the new product needed a new name. After initial speculation by members of the community, a July 2, 2005 announcement confirmed that SeaMonkey would officially become the name of the Internet suite superseding the Mozilla Application Suite.
"Seamonkey" (with a lowercase "m") refers to brine shrimp and had been used by Netscape and the Mozilla Foundation as a code name for the never-released Netscape Communicator 5 and later the Mozilla Application Suite itself. Originally, the name "Seamonkey" was derived by Netscape management to replace "Buttmonkey", which their developers had chosen following an internal contest for the code name.
The SeaMonkey Council has now trademarked the name with help from the Mozilla Foundation. The project uses a separate numbering scheme, with the first release being called SeaMonkey 1.0. Despite having a different name and version number, SeaMonkey 1.0 is based on the same code as Mozilla Application Suite 1.7.
For trademark and copyright reasons, Debian rebranded SeaMonkey and distributed it as Iceape until 2013.
History On March 10, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced that it would not release any official versions of Mozilla Application Suite beyond 1.7.x, since it had now focused on the standalone applications Firefox and Thunderbird. However, the Foundation emphasized that it would still provide infrastructure for community members who wished to continue development. In effect, this meant that the suite would still continue to be developed, but now by the SeaMonkey Council instead of the Mozilla Foundation.
SeaMonkey was first released on September 15, 2005. SeaMonkey 1 was released on January 30, 2006.
Core Mozilla project source code was licensed under a disjunctive tri-license (before changing to MPL 2.0) that gave the choice of one of the three following sets of licensing terms: Mozilla Public License, version 1.1 or later, GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later, GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 or later.
Release history Parts of this table are based on the SeaMonkey release notes, and status meetings.
+ Release history Gecko branch Version Release date Significant changes1.8.0 January 30, 2006Official version 1.0 release. April 13, 2006Security updates and native support for Intel-based Macintosh computers, via Universal Binary. June 1, 2006 Stability improvement and security fixes. July 27, 2006 Stability improvement and security fixes. August 2, 2006 Small fix for a regression with the Microsoft Media Server protocol in 1.0.3. September 14, 2006 Stability improvement and security fixes. November 8, 2006 Stability improvement and security fixes. December 20, 2006 Stability improvement and security fixes. February 27, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. May 30, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. Marks the end of life for SeaMonkey 1.0.x series.1.8.1 January 18, 2007Official version 1.1 release. Major feature work February 28, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. May 30, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. July 19, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. August 3, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. October 19, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. November 5, 2007 Several small problems in displaying certain web pages corrected November 30, 2007 Stability improvement and security fixes. Problem with running SeaMonkey from read-only application directories corrected.The last to be built for Solaris 8. February 7, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. March 25, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. July 2, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. July 15, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. September 23, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. November 12, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. December 16, 2008 Stability improvement and security fixes. March 18, 2009 Stability improvement and security fixes. April 8, 2009 Stability improvement and security fixes. June 22, 2009 Stability improvement and security fixes. September 3, 2009 Stability improvement and security fixes. March 16, 2010 Stability improvement and security fixes. End-of-life of 1.1.x product line.The last to support Windows 98/Me.The last to be built for Solaris 10.1.9.1 October 27, 2009Official version 2.0 release. December 15, 2009Stability improvement and security fixes. January 11, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. February 17, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. March 30, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. June 22, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. July 20, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. September 7, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. September 15, 2010Stability improvements only. October 20, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. October 28, 2010Security fix. December 9, 2010Stability improvement and security fixes. March 2, 2011Security fix. March 23, 2011Stability improvement and security fixes. April 28, 2011Stability improvement and security fixes.