THE GRASSROOTS community of users, programmers and advocates who refuse to embrace Firefox and instead prefer the old approach of an integrated "suite" comprised of several modules packed in a single program has released a security update for SeaMonkey, bringing the version number to 1.1.11.

SeaMonkey 1.1.x is a production-quality release of the code for the Mozarella Foundation's Mozilla Application Suite which the Moz Foundation decided to stop supporting. Besides the obvious web browser, SeaMonkey includes a full featured e-mail client - formerly Mozilla Mail - which supports POP3 and IMAP4 accounts, an HTML Editor - formerly known as Mozilla Composer - and an IRC chat client.

This stability and security update includes six bug fixes, three of which are related to security. As usual, builds are provided for Windows, Linux, Mac OS-X, and contributors supply builds for Solaris 10 and even IBM OS/2. The Windows version is a 13MB download and the Linux (GTK2) one is 14MB.

At the INQ's LatAm HQ, we use the SeaMonkey browser and e-mail client daily, and its stability has steadily improved with each release, to the point that it has been running for months with several dozen tabs open without falling over once.

Plus, the ability to run cool add-ons once reserved to Firefox like Greasemonkey -see 'GreaseMonkey for SeaMonkey is a load of Monkeys' and an ever growing list of extensions for Firefox tweaked or ported to work on this Suite make SM a worthy alternative to the browser-only FF release.

Find the new 1.1.11 release over here. µ

INQBlot by Nick Farrell:

Sea Monkey were a 1970s fad sparked by advertisements in American comics which promised buyers instant friends by just adding water. The expensive packets contained the eggs of Brine Shrimps which were normally going to end up as fish food. Given the fact they didn't get particularly big, and were not renowned for their intelligence, the Sea Monkeys proved to be a big disappointment as friends.