A SeaMonkey Alpha Review

MozillaZine is all Foundation/Firefox/Thunderbird these days. What a pity. But wait! I could hardly believe my eyes - a link to an article about SeaMonkey? I'm puzzled. Oh, and note the title. ;-)

Startup Options and Context Menus

Fixed:

Bug 290881: Implement Add to Address book / Compose mail to context menus
Bug 58523: -P, -nosplash, -splash, -console, -ProfileManager, -installer switches (arguments) unable to launch anything other than the browser (mail does not open on startup)

Still broken:

Bug 309012: STYLE section data appears in message body with Simple HTML

Images not shown when using AdBlock

Current nightly builds do not show certain images when AdBlock is installed. An example is Slashdot, where the images at the top right (and others) are initially not shown. Instead, their ALT text is displayed. Hovering over such images makes them appear. All AdBlock versions (0.5.2.039, 0.5.9 and 0.5.9.2_enh) seem to be affected. The AdBlock Plus Forum has a thread about the problem, and there even is a mozilla.org bug report. MultiZilla has similar, though unrelated issues (see corresponding bug report).

Objective

What is it?
The SeaMonkey Trunk Tracker aims to guide you through the developments of the "unstable" main branch of The SeaMonkey Project.

Background
My name is Jens Hatlak. I'm studying computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. I've been a Mozilla fan since M14 (that's the build name of a very early ancestor of the Mozilla suite), and since then I always loved the suite for its well-integrated, all-in-one design. Therefore, when the Mozilla Foundation announced the move from the suite to the individual programs known as Firefox and Thunderbird, I was excited about the direction the suite would take. The SeaMonkey Council, the group of enthusiasts who stepped up to continue development of the suite, is now up to the task.

I've always been mostly interested in new features, so I will keep watching the trunk. That's where groundbreaking development takes place. Admitted, sometimes it's a bit unstable, too. But if you're experienced, there is nothing to fear.

I intend to post news about bugs and fixes, features and requests, and maybe background information. I'm not too deeply involved in the development itself, but I've been watching the development for quite a time now (see above). I'm compiling Mozilla myself on a couple of platforms (Linux, Sparc/Solaris and Windows) regularly. I've seen things breaking and getting fixed again. Be it compiler changes, theme changes or side-effects from thought-to-be unrelated checkins, I've seen it all. I'm not a developer in the sense of "C/C++/XUL hacker", yet I know enough to file significant bug reports, and that's what I do.

If you enjoyed the Mozilla suite as much as I did, don't miss SeaMonkey. And if you're interested in the development of "our" cross-platform, community-based project, come back here from time to time. Live long and prosper! :-)