Advantages: In addition to total stability with Flash and Java, SeaMonkey also has some nice additional features Firefox lacks.
- Toolbar Minimization: You can minimize all of the toolbars, including the menu bar, thereby maximizing the space for browsing on my screen. Unlike Firefox, these come back with just one click without having to navigate through a menu, though add-ons like Hide Menubar can bring this feature to Firefox. Monkey Menus extends these capabilities even more.
- Tab Previews: SeaMonkey also provides a thumbnail preview of each tab, though I'm pretty sure there's an extension for that in Firefox.
- Built-In Configurability: Using the "About Config" item under the Help menu, you can configure SeaMonkey in ways that require an additional add-on in Firefox. For example, you can basically set the configuration file to speed up SeaMonkey in the same way that Fasterfox does behind the scenes.
- Memory Footprint: SeaMonkey's memory footprint is smaller than Firefox's, making browsing a more efficient use of system resources and in keeping with the overall philosophy of lightweight operating systems.
- An Application Suite: Although I lean on GMail and Bloglines for most of these services, it's nice to have an email client, a news reader, web page editor, and address book all in one suite.
- Basic Extensibility: Before anything else, users will want to install xSidebar, which enable more Firefox extensions to be installed.
- Tab Options like saving sessions and reopening closed tabs can be gained with MultiZilla. Note that MultiZilla did not work for me until switched to the Modern theme, which was not labeled in my View Menu. MultiZilla also includes some functions of the TabMixPlus add-on for Firefox.
- Extension Management: Though not as slick as Firefox's Add-on Manager, Mnenhy actually provides more specific control over extensions. In addition to extension control under "Chrome Manager," Mnenhy also fulfills its original purpose of adding functionality to mail and news in SeaMonkey.
- Find: Although the "find" dialog in SeaMonkey is fine, Firefox's "Find Bar" is nicer. Instructions here show how to get it, but they do require editing core files of SeaMonkey. If that's intimidating, then you might want to stick with the regular find dialog and add Context Search.
- Specific Extensions: For a more exhaustive list of available extensions, check out mozdev.org. These are just the ones that I use. AdBlock is one of the few extensions from Mozilla's site that actually installed properly. ForecastFox is on Mozilla's site but will not install properly, so you have to get it from mozdev.org. Twitter was easy to update with TwitterBar in Firefox and is almost as easy to update with Twitlet, which you can use in almost any browser. Diigo Toolbar must be replaced with a Diigolet, but it has most of the same functionality. You could also use the delicious Toolbar, but you lose Diigo's superior features, and the delicious Toolbar extension did not install correctly on my computer. Although FEBE was convenient, it's more powerful and better to just back up all of my preferences and files at once.