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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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 Posted: Wed May 27, 2025 5:43 am Post subject: Seamonkey 2.0B1pre and Firefox 3.5 (Shiretoko) |
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I have been using the Seamonkey beta test Web browser and Email client on an every day basis, and the upcoming Firefox 3.5 Web browser (due to be at Release Candidate stage this week) on an occasional basis, and both of them have performed well, with better memory utilization than in the past. Of the two, I prefer Seamonkey (and it seems to outperform Shiretoko right now), but that might be due to differences in debugging levels in the builds. I have not had crashes with either of them. Both of them optionally allow you to check for updates and download them upon demand. I am doing that nearly every day with Seamonkey and whenever I run Firefox.
These browsers appear to be getting good testing coverage by the user community, but more testers are always welcome. If you have the opportunity to help test them - and just use them if they work out, and report bugs if you find any, the end products will be that much more useful to you personally, as they are for me with the workloads that I use.
Last edited by masinick on Tue Jun 02, 2025 6:52 am; edited 2 times in total |
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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2025
Posts: 7224
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| Posted: Wed May 27, 2025 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm not really settled in on FF 3.1, how much different is 3.5? I'm still floundering with the bookmark tagging feature, about 1/6th the way done tagging them.
_________________
-Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta2 on Celeron D desktop
-PCLinuxOS 2025 LXDE on EeePC 900A with Atom n270 (modded with 32G SATA drive and 2G ram).
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed May 27, 2025 8:16 pm Post subject: More interested in Seamonkey myself |
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| mmmna wrote: | | I'm not really settled in on FF 3.1, how much different is 3.5? I'm still floundering with the bookmark tagging feature, about 1/6th the way done tagging them. |
I do not use very many of the fancy features. The thing I probably use most of all are news aggregators; these days I can get them either over the Web (Yahoo and Google both have them) or with a news reader, such as RSSOwl or Akregator. At the moment I am using mostly either My Yahoo aggregation or Google Reader.
As far as the Web, I am using mostly Seamonkey 2.0B1pre. Firefox 3.5 does not, at least on the surface, appear to be radically different. If you do not like some new feature, it does look as if you can use it in traditional ways.
I am of the opinion that mainstream applications ought to ease transition from one technology to another. I think drastic new technologies should first be introduced in prototype projects, separate projects, whenever possible.
It does look like a number of efforts are currently looking at making the use of the Internet more powerful and flexible, and emphasis seems to be placed on running Internet applications directly from some successor to the browser.
Jada had a few posts within the past week about some technologies that are exploring these things. Search for stuff that he's written, especially in this folder recently to find them. The few technologies I looked at are nowhere near ready for prime time as far as I am concerned, but always researching and looking for alternatives is a great thing. What we have to remember is that we may fail ten times in a row before we find the next really useful technology, but we should not be afraid to try and fail ten times. What we should be afraid of is being afraid to try! |
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mmmna
. . . .
Joined: 21 Apr 2025
Posts: 7224
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| Posted: Wed May 27, 2025 8:44 pm Post subject: Re: More interested in Seamonkey myself |
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| masinick wrote: | I am of the opinion that mainstream applications ought to ease transition from one technology to another. I think drastic new technologies should first be introduced in prototype projects, separate projects, whenever possible.
It does look like a number of efforts are currently looking at making the use of the Internet more powerful and flexible, and emphasis seems to be placed on running Internet applications directly from some successor to the browser. |
I'm all for easing in the transitions. Options that disable newness are actually one and the same as user options.
As for running applications in my browser, I'm presently not impressed with Google Documents, is that what is meant by cloud computing? GD takes forever to do what I command of it, and there are serious features missing.
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed May 27, 2025 9:14 pm Post subject: Re: More interested in Seamonkey myself |
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| mmmna wrote: | | masinick wrote: | I am of the opinion that mainstream applications ought to ease transition from one technology to another. I think drastic new technologies should first be introduced in prototype projects, separate projects, whenever possible.
It does look like a number of efforts are currently looking at making the use of the Internet more powerful and flexible, and emphasis seems to be placed on running Internet applications directly from some successor to the browser. |
I'm all for easing in the transitions. Options that disable newness are actually one and the same as user options.
As for running applications in my browser, I'm presently not impressed with Google Documents, is that what is meant by cloud computing? GD takes forever to do what I command of it, and there are serious features missing. |
Google Documents is a collaborative implementation of a rich text word processor, somewhat in the spirit of Microsoft Word, but with the ability to share and collaborate. As a Word Processor, Microsoft Word probably has more markup features; Google Documents has superior document collaboration features (Microsoft would counter with their Sharepoint web collaboration tools).
Google Documents could be viewed as one of the many applications that have received the branding of Cloud Computing, but it certainly isn't the only Google product that would comprise their "cloud" implementation - Google Calendar, Google Gears, Google Documents, Google Reader, and iGoogle would all be a part of the picture, and possibly many more components as well. |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2025 7:03 am Post subject: Back to browser testing |
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This past weekend, the Firefox project was supposed to have had a bug fest test and coding event to try to evaluate Firefox 3.5 RC 1. I have not heard the results of that work, but I have updated both Seamonkey and Firefox with their nightly builds and both of them open up with shared memory use between 22-23 MB and resident memory use in the 50-60 MB range, which grows perhaps to around 80 MB with moderate use, but does not climb above 100 MB unless two or three tabs with significant visual content are activated.
On my newest systems, memory does not trim back much once allocated, but if it gets what it wants, it does not grow like a weed either. I can have the browsers open for a few days, use them heavily, let them rest, and memory usage won't grow much over 100 MB, perhaps 110-115 MB if a lot of visually large and memory intensive pages are invoked.
The Linux kernel doesn't care to trim these back on my system because no swap is even needed. I checked on my old Dell and memory trimming WILL take place there as swap is needed, so this is not a browser issue, it is a resource scheduling issue, and I think that the Linux kernel is doing the right thing; only trimming what NEEDS to be trimmed - in my case, nothing.
These browsers are looking good.
I also revisited Midori and Arora, both Webkit based browsers. First time I reviewed them, Midori was very fast but extremely crash prone and not very usable, except on certain pages, but it looked promising. Arora was more stable, but not very fast at all. Arora also does not render the minimal font size the way I want, so it needs some work. Meanwhile, Midori is now much better, and not nearly so prone to crash, and it renders pages nicer, so it looks like it has the potential to be a player in the browser arena if it keeps up its rate of progress.
At this instant, I personally prefer Seamonkey; I do not need a lot of plugins, so the flexibility that Firefox presents is not critical to me; Seamonkey has a nice integrated suite that appeals to me, and it appears to have a total footprint somewhat smaller than Firefox, and definitely smaller than the combined footprint of Firefox and Thunderbird. |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2025
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Jun 03, 2025 5:09 pm Post subject: Firefox test deb packages can be found |
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I found a Ubuntu repository that actually has Deb packages for the 3.5 - and surprisingly - 3.6 versions of Firefox.
IF you feel adventurous, add this repo to your collection and give them a try!
# Ubuntu Intrepid Launchpad - contains Mozilla daily builds
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main |
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mmmna
. . . .
Joined: 21 Apr 2025
Posts: 7224
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| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2025 2:42 am Post subject: |
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| Ah, no. I really want to have as pure an Ubuntu experience as possible. That way, I can be relatively unbiased when I have a problem.
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