Forum: Weblog comments

Hi KaiRo, sorry for the off-topic discussion. I just fail to see how reducing SeaMonkey to an add-on would be desirable or even suitable to make any impact of the efforts necessary, given that much of the backend code is shared already anyway, and that such an extension would only overlay 80%+whatever of the browser/mail UI which would equally need to be maintained. While I certainly hope that you will continue to be part of the project (and I see that a milestone like getting a masters degree is a good reason to reevaluate one's priorities and directions), I'm confident that SeaMonkey will continue to assert its place among the Gecko applications, one way or the other.

Robert, I wish you well in whatever direction you take in going forward with your life. As a long time Seamonkey user, I would like to thank you for your willingness to help drive the Seamonkey porject

There is no need for Firefox fanboys Glazman and Markham to disparage Seamonkey. FYI, Glazman, almost nobody cares about or uses BlueGriffon, so good luck with that waste-of-time project.

Anonymous guest: Daniel and Gerv gave their statement. What's wrong with it?

Robert, it is saddening to hear how you have returned from the Mozilla headquarters. You have been essential to the project, and to the product, which is a product that should make you feel proud. It has been clear from the onset of the Firefox project that Mozilla lost interest in the suite. I have not supported that decision and the Firefox product has never convinced me. The suite had it all, and with your direction, it has evolved to the best of all worlds.

Hi Robert,

I've been thinking a lot about the various Mozilla projects and comments to your post recently. For me it seems that a suite currently has no real future.

On the other hand the downloads of standalone apps like thunderbird or sunbird also aren't that shiny. See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar/2010/11/the_growth_of_our_download_num.html
Quote: "The future of Lightning seems really good so far, while the future of Sunbird looks very dark"

I still use seamonkey and asked myself: why? Because I don't need to wait for a new browser instance when I want to click on a link within my mails. Same goes for Lightning.

So here's my conclusion: As I stated before, you can't keep up the develpment speed of firefox. But how about a suite of plugins for firefox? Mail, Composer etc. And for the ones who prefer the Seamonkey UI, you could build a theme (as Gerv suggested).

And for the wider future, how about porting the code to HTML5. There is not only AMO out there

Pete

Pete, actually, that is one possibility of going to the future that was discussed in the Mozilla and SeaMonkey projects.

I thought that this topic was declared to be off-topic, but since you guys continue with it: Could you please explain what the supposed benefits would be of extensionizing SeaMonkey? The comparison with Sunbird isn't even remotely applicable - Lightning adds a functionality which neither Firefox nor Thunderbird natively have (nor SeaMonkey for that matter), i.e., a calendar. In turn, you can't browse with Sunbird or read your e-mails, so those are *complementary* applications. In contrast, if you have SeaMonkey, you'll need neither Firefox nor Thunderbird (which on top are distinct applications anyway, so that marriage will have to be established first), it's an *alternative* to that combo. As said before, someone yet has to convince me that (even after a naturally busy initial startup phase of transforming the whole application into an extension, which is a non-trivial task to start with) there actually is some benefit to the development process over the current setup with Core/MailNews Core vs. application-specific code, and a reduction in man power needed. So, I certainly hope that this wasn't the only option that Mozilla has put on the table during your meeting with them.

I said "one possibility", which implies there were others. I can't talk about those things without having secured more details internally.

rsx11m,

I guess that both Seamonkey and Thunderbird are off-topic in Mountain View. The Browser more and more is becoming an OS. See the UI minimization in all current browsers and HTML5 as an example.

So, Mozilla's interest is to show what a cool platform Firefox is. And not XulRunner or another Gecko app. Building extensions on top of Firefox therefor is in alignment with Mozilla's strategy.

And what's so wrong of having an extension suite or a set of extensions? Finally you'll get the same user experience and human resources are more focused.

Pete

KaiRo, thanks for confirming - that's what I figured. I'm looking forward to a future blog post from you on that topic once it's time to disclose more details.

Pete, your last assumption is exactly what I doubt would apply in such a scenario = the efforts required on SeaMonkey's side will be the same, just different.