The Differences between SeaMonkey versus Firefox and Thunderbird

Yes, I know. This page is way out of date.

The Mozilla open source project began as a way of developing the next generation of the Netscape Communicator suite. (See: The Relationship and History between Mozilla and Netscape) The Mozilla Application Suite, like Netscape Communicator, is an 'all in one' application, which contains a browser, email/newsgroups client, address book, and an HTML editor. Additional components, added to the suite were an IRC chat client, and web development tools (DOM Inspector, JavaScript Debugger).

A group of Mozilla contributors wanted to use the Mozilla code to build a much more streamlined product. They wanted to build just a browser, without the complications and added code, brought on by additional components. That product became Mozilla Firefox; and when the same thing was done to the email/newsgroups client, that product became Mozilla Thunderbird. There's even an equivalent product, for the HTML editor, called Nvu. (The IRC chat client, known as ChatZilla, is available as an extension.)

In the Spring of 2003, the Mozilla development roadmap was changed to focus development on the stand-alone applications Firefox and Thunderbird. Eventually, the Mozilla Foundation ceased development of the Mozilla Application Suite. Mozilla 1.7 was updated with security updates until April of 2006. (Version 1.7.13 was the last.)

A group of people in the Mozilla community, preferring Mozilla Suite's more in-depth interface, began a project called SeaMonkey, which aims to "deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as 'Mozilla Application Suite'." For instance, what would have been Mozilla 1.8 is SeaMonkey 1.0.

Inherent differences:

SeaMonkey is one program, whereas Firefox and Thunderbird are two separate programs, so if one crashes, it doesn't affect the other.

Firefox and Thunderbird also use their own profile registries, whereas SeaMonkey stores both browser and mail settings in the same profile.

The combination of Firefox and Thunderbird running simultaneously, uses more computer resources than SeaMonkey (browser and mail component open at the same time).

List of features/options the two setups do not share:

( ) - Indicates that an extension is available to add this functionality to Firefox.

( ) - Indicates that an extension is available to add this functionality to Thunderbird.

( ) - Indicates that an extension is available to add this functionality to SeaMonkey.