internet

For a few weeks I've been testing the SeaMonkey suite of programs to see how good it is at surfing, email and, interestingly enough, creating websites.

SeaMonkey is not a single application but a complete suite of programs available for free from this website address.  The browser application is based on the same Mozilla software engine that is used in the successful Firefox browser and the other parts have an equal Mozilla and Netscape heritage - so it comes with a good pedigree! 

The download is around 13mb and for that you get a browser, an email and newsgroup reader (a little like Outlook Express or Thunderbird), an address book, a chat program (not tested) and a WYSIWYG website creation program called 'Composer'.

Those who have used any of the old Netscape Communicator suite of programs in the past will instantly feel at home

Those who have used any of the old Netscape Communicator suite of programs in the past will instantly feel at home.  The suite is based on the same idea and, in fact, has the same feel as Communicator (the browser also has the same 'Ship's Wheel' icon).

For newcomers to open source software, this is not a product produced by a big software house but the work of a dedicated collection of people who give their time and resources for free to create a product that can be used by anyone without payment.

Work on the suite began in 2006 and, because of the way that open source software works, it is in a continual state of development and new releases happen often.  In fact, as new features are developed or old features improved then a new version is produced ready for download. 

For this test I used version 1.1.9 and if you want to tag along, go to the address above and read the notes by choosing 'Release Notes' before you download.  The software is available for most versions of Windows, the Mac and, of course, Linux. For these articles I used it on an old Windows machine but I also use it with Ubuntu Linux where it works just as well.

This short series of articles is not an in depth look at the suite but rather an attempt to see how it works 'out of the box' and how suitable it is for everyday use.  It hopes to answer the question 'if I download it - what will I get?'

For the first article we go surfing, there is a separate article on email and the address book and a third instalment that looks at the web site creation tool 'Composer' followed by a conclusion article making, with this introduction, five instalments in all. 

The next article in this series will be posted next week so make a point of checking to see it is here already or, if not, bookmark us to check later.

Tags: life, seamonkey