The future of Seamonkey?

Discussion of general topics about Seamonkey
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frg
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by frg »

> I was starting to envision that you'd have a SeaMonkey suite that would take on characteristics of the Photon UI.

Personally I think the current Fx ui is a primitive mess but I agree that a new theme should have been added to make everyone happy. And also an update to the current themes to make them hiDPI compatible and shed the 90ies look without making them flat. Full theme support has been ripped out with 62 so this can no longer happen. SeaMonkey unlike Firefox is about choice and not taking it away so if we do only Quantum style we would probably loose half or more of the current users. Toolbar support and other ui featured have been largely gutted or removed from Gecko too. TB and in some extend we did copy it over fo the time being. But with xbl and xul out this would mean a complete rewrite. Won't happen I guess.
pintassilgo
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by pintassilgo »

I see no future for Waterfox, but maybe if you join Pale Moon on UXP... it would be interesting. Even more if TB guys take the same path. I know it's very difficult and uncertain, but it seems to be the only chance.
LordOfTheBored
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by LordOfTheBored »

JodyThornton wrote:I was starting to envision that you'd have a SeaMonkey suite that would take on characteristics of the Photon UI. So I was imagining a "flat" modern look, but with all of the preferences and buttons exactly where they still are. So it would work differently than Quantum, but have the same "look". I have to concede that I like Quantum. I feel poorly that SeaMonkey can't continue.
Ah. That could be relatively easily done with a theme.
Though with Seamonkey's limited popularity, I doubt anyone has made a photon-style theme.


As far as present options... EarlyBlue is the flattest theme I personally know of that still works, though it takes flat in a different direction than what image search tells me is the latest and greatest Firefox UI reinvention.
Nonetheless, it doesn't look "old" in most respects, which I guess just proves that everything old is new again.
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Lemon Juice
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by Lemon Juice »

frg wrote:Well as it stands the planned 2.57 version will likely be the last one. Even this one is months off because of platform removals but I don't see any chance to continue beyond it with the current dev base.
Am I right this means more or less the end of SeaMonkey? This is sad news but completely understandable if we can't contribute enough to the project. How many active developers are there currently apart from you, frg? BTW, I'm wondering what happened to Philip Chee, who once was an active contributor and developer?

If SM is going to die then I'd be happy with at least a half-assed solution: continue Mail/News component based on TB and just bundle a rebranded Firefox with it, with some minor tweaks like enriched preferences pane, removed about:blank junk content, a modified skin (as far as Fx allows it), some saner defaults, menu bar, status bar, etc. That would mean lowering the standards but maybe that would be better than nothing. Just an idea.
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therube
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by therube »

(Philip, no one knows.)

From the links posted, TB too may be in dire straits (!).
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frg
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by frg »

> Am I right this means more or less the end of SeaMonkey?

Yes it might mean it.

> if we can't contribute enough to the project.
Just to be clear it is not about money but devs and support.
Ratty left some time ago. We don't know why. Maybe he just had enough. The last post I saw from him afterwards was from February this year. We hope he is ok.

> continue Mail/News component based on TB and just bundle a rebranded Firefox

I think Thunderbird will weather the storm. They have some active devs on the list and I am quite sure they will do everything to master this. So far they managed to keep up and TB 60 unlike SeaMonkey 2.57 is just around the corner.

For me this is a hobby but currently hard work. Might be one of the reasons we don't see many new devs. New contributors usually vanish after a few small patches. Personally if we can't keep SeaMonkey up to date I will stop. There is no way I will deal with Firefox browser code or support Mozilla further then. The core code becomes more obscure with every release and don't get me started on Rust (lets call it YAPL or imho the next XUL). Structured code albeit old and in need of an overhaul is replaced with spaghetti code. The ui becomes a joke too (yes I know some like it). You can call it Modern and refreshing any day and I won't care.

wrt palemoon. I am at odds with them here. Tobin and I had our run-ins here but I think he no longer thinks I am the devil :) Forking 52 imho was a mistake. Trying to preserve everything is futile e.g. I agree with Mozilla that binary add-ons and plugins should go. Will celebrate the day when Flash dies and it is over.

As usual only my opinion. I am one SeaMonkey dev but not the council or all of the people active in the project. And it is not the end yet and also open source which can always be revived.

So if someone wants to help feel free. Not everything needs a 2000 lines patch with in depth knowledge. A tweak here and a tweak there make a better program in the end.
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Snake4
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by Snake4 »

...
Last edited by Snake4 on September 28th, 2021, 4:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Snake4
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

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..
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WaltS48
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by WaltS48 »

Mouse4 wrote: a lot in the Opensource world love Rust, why i dunno. isnt Rust just HTML ?
A couple links for you to study.

The Rust Programming Language

What is HTML?

Rust is a programming language. HTML is a markup language.
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Zosimos
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by Zosimos »

Well, I was going to post a question about whether Seamonkey would follow Firefox integrating TOR functionality. But it looks like the whole project will simply shut down soon. Sad. It's still a decent browser most of the time, though it has its problems. Pale Moon seems to be the heir apparent, but I don't think that has even unofficial Mozilla sanction or support. If it has a major compatibility problem, it may just be left out in the cold.

Chromium may be the last resort of people who don't want to use corporate spyware.
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by tonymec »

Zosimos wrote:Chromium may be the last resort of people who don't want to use corporate spyware.
Because you think Google Chrome and its "free" twin can be trusted not to include spyware? If SeaMonkey dies out and ($DEITY forbid) existing versions become unusable, I'd rather use Konqueror (but on Linux only); or maybe Opera.
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by pcfan1234 »

I hope the development of SM will continue.
Otherwise I have no browser instead of lynx and dillo. I hate the Firefox Interface. It's made for tablets but not for Desktops.
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by tonymec »

pcfan1234 wrote:I hope the development of SM will continue.
Otherwise I have no browser instead of lynx and dillo. I hate the Firefox Interface. It's made for tablets but not for Desktops.
I knew about Lynx but not about Dillo (which isn't availabe in my distro's repositories) so I compiled it and it works — after a fashion. Wikipedia says it doesn't support scripting but it even has very limited CSS support, e.g. doesn't know about the :not pseudo-class. I guess it might be CSS 2.1 but definitely not CSS 3 which is what I use in the pages I write. I guess I'll stay with SeaMonkey, or failing that, Konqueror.
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Lemon Juice
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by Lemon Juice »

frg wrote:> if we can't contribute enough to the project.
Just to be clear it is not about money but devs and support.
Yes, I meant dev support, too.
frg wrote:> continue Mail/News component based on TB and just bundle a rebranded Firefox

I think Thunderbird will weather the storm. They have some active devs on the list and I am quite sure they will do everything to master this. So far they managed to keep up and TB 60 unlike SeaMonkey 2.57 is just around the corner.
Yes, I also believe TB has resources to survive. And given the architectural changes TB needs to go through itself I believe even maintaining SM to keep up with TB alone will require quite some amount of work.
frg wrote:For me this is a hobby but currently hard work. Might be one of the reasons we don't see many new devs. New contributors usually vanish after a few small patches.
It might be. I am an example of a contributor who offered exactly one patch to SM some time ago. But it's true it may not be encouraging to contribute if the amount of complexity gets larger and larger just to keep the project alive not to mention new features.
frg wrote:Personally if we can't keep SeaMonkey up to date I will stop. There is no way I will deal with Firefox browser code or support Mozilla further then. The core code becomes more obscure with every release and don't get me started on Rust (lets call it YAPL or imho the next XUL). Structured code albeit old and in need of an overhaul is replaced with spaghetti code. The ui becomes a joke too (yes I know some like it). You can call it Modern and refreshing any day and I won't care.
This is a surprise because I remember reading a Mozilla article some 2 years ago stating that whatever their new browser engine they were planning to make (I can't remember which buzz- or rust-word they used...) that it would be an embeddable engine which would allow other projects to use it. That would indicate a better quality of code - but according to what you say it turned out differently. No wonder almost all other browsers projects embed chromium instead of gecko...
frg wrote:wrt palemoon. I am at odds with them here. Tobin and I had our run-ins here but I think he no longer thinks I am the devil :) Forking 52 imho was a mistake. Trying to preserve everything is futile e.g. I agree with Mozilla that binary add-ons and plugins should go. Will celebrate the day when Flash dies and it is over.
I think the existence of the Palemoon project is great but I've found the devs not really encouraging other dev contributions from other people. Maybe they mean well but somehow it seems to me that collaboration with the project is not easy...
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frg
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Re: The future of Seamonkey?

Post by frg »

Well any hard decisions probably need to be made in a year or two after the esr60 cycle. The sky is not falling tomorrow.

> But it's true it may not be encouraging to contribute if the amount of complexity gets larger and larger just to keep the project alive not to mention new features.

There are many areas which need some love. Not verything is big and complicated, website, help, css and so on.

> This is a surprise because I remember reading a Mozilla article some 2 years ago stating that whatever their new browser engine they were planning to make.

I am only aware of GeckoView:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView

Personally I wouldn't touch any new Mozilla technology any longer. They are good with words but that is it about. Funny that they dropped FxOS and it now makes a comeback as KaiOS :)
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