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In a letter posted to the nonprofit's Web site Thursday, the group said it would no longer develop features for its Mozilla Application Suite, otherwise known as Seamonkey, nor release a 1.8 version. But it will continue to provide developer support for its current 1.7 version.
Instead, the company will maintain focus on its Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail application, as it has since 2003, according to the letter.
"If we ship (Seamonkey) 1.8, we'll need to support that as well, and we just can't manage supporting that many versions as well as Firefox and Thunderbird releases," the letter stated.
The shift comes as Mozilla's Firefox has emerged as a viable rival to Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer Web browsing software. The open-source software has put Microsoft on the defensive by garnering nearly 27 million downloads since its November final release. Thunderbird has received more than 4 million downloads.
Last month, Microsoft reversed itself and said it would release IE 7 with the next update of Windows XP. Previously, the company had said upgrades to IE would come only as part of the next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.
Still, Firefox's market share, which has increased rapidly overall, has begun to grow at a slower pace in the past month.
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I like the idea of having all functions in a single package, things like being able to modify web pages by typing [ctrl][e] in the browser and uploading them by merely clicking on "Publish". To me, nothing beats the speed and ease. NVU is getting better, but not nearly as intuitive. Firefox also still lack some important features found in the suite, such as the very complete print preview/adjust.
Also, using a separate copy of the rendering engine and other underlying libraries for Firefox, Thunderbird, NVU and Sunbird isn't going to help with software bloat, both on disk and, more importantly with a huge memory footprint.
A common complaint with Firefox is that it's slow to start, in my experience, slower than starting the complete Mozilla Suite. Starting all the individual components one after the other is not user friendly to say the least.
I'm disappointed with this decision, as I expected Firefox, Thunderbird, NVU and Sunbird to become more tightly integrated around a common core in the future.
I hope it's not to late for them to think again.
I like the idea of having all functions in a single package, things like being able to modify web pages by typing [ctrl][e] in the browser and uploading them by merely clicking on "Publish". To me, nothing beats the speed and ease. NVU is getting better, but not nearly as intuitive. Firefox also still lack some important features found in the suite, such as the very complete print preview/adjust.
Also, using a separate copy of the rendering engine and other underlying libraries for Firefox, Thunderbird, NVU and Sunbird isn't going to help with software bloat, both on disk and, more importantly with a huge memory footprint.
A common complaint with Firefox is that it's slow to start, in my experience, slower than starting the complete Mozilla Suite. Starting all the individual components one after the other is not user friendly to say the least.
I'm disappointed with this decision, as I expected Firefox, Thunderbird, NVU and Sunbird to become more tightly integrated around a common core in the future.
I hope it's not to late for them to think again.