Friday, March 11, 2005

Lotsa Mozilla News Big day over at the Mozilla Foundation. The (surely) good news is that Thunderbird 1.0.1 is nearly ready. This is a security release; no new goodies. Download the release candidate here, or wait for the final (presumably next week). The debatable news (and surely there will be debate) is that the Mozilla Suite is definitely no more. As this TechWeb story notes, some Mozilla developers had been working on a Mozilla 1.8 beta, but this had never been the plan. So now, with the Mozilla Foundation's blessing, a new browser-suite project, probably called SeaMonkey once the trademark search is complete, has begun work. They are looking for beta testers, so please download from here. This link may change over time, but you never know. What do I think? This is a terrific illustration of how and why Open Source works. Some folks (probably a majority) like browser and mail separate and speedy. Others like a coordinated Internet experience, where email and browser are only a click away in the same user interface. Take my wife and I. She likes the suite, and certainly doesn't notice any performance problems (neither do I, frankly), and will probably transition to the new product when it's ready. I love that Firefox has so many more plugins/extensions than the Suite and there's certainly no better Windows email client than Thunderbird. On Linux, I've actually been won over by the latest version of KMail. This is primarily due to the integrated spam filters, which are very good--but I digress. The point being that you don't have to settle for what the gods at the Mozilla Foundation decide they will give you. So what if it won't have that red lizard associated with it anymore? Long Live SeaMonkey! Long Live Firefox! Long Live Open Source! 4:30:39 PM    comment []