Hands-On Report--SeaMonkey 1.1.2, a Security Update for the Netscape-Based Internet Suite

According to the SeaMonkey Project Team, SeaMonkey 1.1.2 closes several security vulnerabilities and fixes several smaller problems found in previous versions. With that, SeaMonkey advances to the same level of security as its siblings, Firefox and Thunderbird, which are issuing updates for the same problems this week as well. The project team strongly urges users to upgrade to SeaMonkey 1.1.2, as the old 1.0 series will not be maintained further. The 1.1 series, on the other hand, is being actively maintained and also features some new functionality such as spell checking in web forms and mail tags.

In addition to users of older SeaMonkey versions, the SeaMonkey team strongly urges users of the old Mozilla Suite and Netscape 4, 6 or 7 to upgrade to SeaMonkey 1.1.2. Those software packages suffer from a large and rising number of security vulnerabilities because they are no longer being maintained. SeaMonkey 1.1.2 is a drop-in replacement, providing the same basic suite functionality plus additional features, without known security problems but with current updates.

The SeaMonkey Project Team took over development of the all-in-one internet application suite after Netscape and later the Mozilla Foundation ceased to work on it. Under the new name, users are provided with current versions of the established software package. SeaMonkey 1.1.2 is available for free download from the open source project's Web site.

One of Macs Only!'s staff, who uses SeaMonkey as their primary Web browser and email client, downloaded and installed v1.1.2 and encountered no probems.[Dana Baggett]