SeaMonkey 2.1 approaches with first RC

Mozilla and the SeaMonkey developers have published a first release candidate (RC1) of version 2.1 of their "all-in-one internet application suite". SeaMonkey is the successor to the old Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Application suites and includes a web browser with advanced email and newsgroup support, an IRC chat client and HTML editing support.

SeaMonkey 2.1 is based on the same Gecko layout engine as the 4.0 branch of Firefox and features support for SeaMonkey Sync (Firefox Sync). It also supports theming using Personas, which are lightweight "skins" that change SeaMonkey's look by changing the header and footer areas, while leaving the navigation buttons and menus alone. Under browser toolbar customisation, an optional search bar (including suggestions if the search engine supports it) is now available, as is an engine manager for OpenSearch.

SeaMonkey 2.1 RC1 on Mac OS X. Other changes include a scrollable tab bar, a reworked bookmarks system and several built-in extensions (ChatZilla, JavaScript Debugger and DOM Inspector). Platform-specific changes include support for Windows 7 Jump Lists and displaying download progress in the Windows 7 taskbar. On Mac OS X, the 2.1 branch no longer supports version 10.4 "Tiger" systems as it requires some features available only in 10.5 or later.

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find.

More information about the first release candidate can be found in the release notes, in the change log and on the SeaMonkey 2.1 Wiki page. SeaMonkey 2.1 RC1 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from the project's web site.

SeaMonkey binaries are released under the Mozilla SeaMonkey End-User Software Licence Agreement and the source code is released under disjunctive tri-licensing that includes the Mozilla Public Licence, GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1. The latest stable release is SeaMonkey 2.0.14, a maintenance and security update from late April.

See also:

• Mozilla kills embedding support for Gecko layout engine, a report from The H.

(crve)