If you can't convince them, hack it
"The major reason why I did not support the older mozilla is that extensions were required to provide all the installation/uninstallation code. Firefox totally revamped the extension stuff so that firefox itself takes care of everything. If seamonkey (doesn't) support it, I am not even going to head down that path" - Andy, Firefox extension developer, in response to an e-mail from this scribbler requesting he adds Mozilla/SeaMonkey support to his FF code.

While there are plenty of very nice and useful extensions developed for the orphan Mozilla web and email suite and its very alive successor, SeaMonkey 1.x browser, some extension developers are very... how could I describe it: dispassionate, indifferent, lackadaisical, negative, neutral, unconcerned, uncurious... withdrawn to say the least -when not outright hostile- to the idea of tweaking their Firefox only extensions so that these would also install and run in the Mozilla browser suite or its successor, SeaMonkey.

For the record, SeaMonkey is actually Mozilla, it just has a new logo and name, and is developed by a team of volunteers outside the Mozilla Foundation. The SeaMonkey suite is the evolution of the same source code of what was - at some point - Mozilla 1.8 alpha. Suddenly, the Mozzarella Foundation decided that the Firefox ancestor was an obstacle in its Firefox world domination crusade, and decided to stop developing it, until a team of volunteers raised to the task and SeaMonkey was born.

Ironically, Firefox evolved from Mozilla, and it shares the same browser engine -dubbed "Gecko"- and associated underlying technology like XUL. So it is not terribly difficult to support Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey in addition to Firefox in a single extension. So it's not technically impossible, quite the contrary, for a single extension to support all major Mozilla derivatives. The wonderful Forecastfox comes to mind, for instance. But some Firefox developers take the least effort path and it serves them well, as Firefox continues to have the majority of the mindshare, relegating SeaMonkey to a few die-hards who formerly used Mozilla or the realm of "power users".

Enter xSidebar
The beauty of the open source model is that a couple die-hard believers can change things on their own. That's what some people did, and thus the xSidebar extension for the SeaMonkey browser was created.

EditCSS Firefox extension installed in SeaMonkey

Initially, xSidebar would seem quite unexceptional, "an extension that brings the look and feel of Firefox style sidebars to Seamonkey". But the best code remains under the hood, as xSidebar also "implements the infrastructure - the XUL elements and javascript APIs from Firefox - to make porting Firefox sidebar extensions to Seamonkey as painless as possible". In other words, with xSidebar installed into SeaMonkey there's a lot of Firefox-only extensions which can be made to work with the Suite.

Yahoo search sidebar for FF, also in SeaMonkey

It should be noted, however, that installing xSidebar changes the look of the sidebar in Mozilla ^B^B^B^B SeaMonkey, eliminating the vertically stacked "tabs" and thus making the sidebar look exactly like in Firefox. With no tabs wasting vertical space, each sidebar extension has plenty of vertical real state. But how do you switch between tabs?, you'll have to use a new drop-down menu. After installing xSidebar and restarting SeaMonkey, a new sub menu will appear under View->Sidebar. There you will see a list of available sidebars, including all SeaMonkey sidebars previously installed, plus any Firefox style sidebars that you may have added. A picture is worth a thousand words, so find more screenshots over here and install xSidebar here.

There is a list of modified Firefox extensions which have been tweaked to install and work on SeaMonkey, some of which do not even require xSidebar. Quoting from the page "These are general Firefox extensions that have been modified to work in Seamonkey. Unless specified, these do not depend on xSidebar". The list of extensions is pretty impressive and includes at the time of this writing 14 extensions, among which the crown jewel is undoubtedly Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey for my SeaMonkey? - A barrel of Monkeys?
Running the Greasemonkey scripting engine on SeaMonkey probably removes the only reason a Mozilla/SM power user would have for keeping Firefox installed. In case you haven't heard about Greasemonkey, yet let me briefly describe it: it is a Firefox browser extension that after installed, allows the user to download, install and run "local scripts" into the browser. Such scripts are saved on the user's hard disk after installation -under the /gm_scripts folder inside your SeaMonkey user profile-. GreaseMonkey scripts can then be made to run on all or specific sites. For example, GM scripts can modify the behaviour, the look, or add functionality to certain web site. For instance, it would be possible to write a GreaseMonkey script to "automagically" turn the INQ's background colour to blue, or to replace the logo with any other, but you know that it wouldn't make snese.

Installing a GreaseMonkey script in SeaMonkey

My favourite GM extension in action in SeaMonkey: Secure GMail

The idea with GM is that you can have scripts installed in your web browser to change, modify, enhance, restrict, or do whatever you want with the information received by the web browser before or after it is displayed. Filter, translate, eliminate ads, convert prices, change page layout, you name it, there's probably a Greasemonkey script that does it. And if there isn't, you can write one yourself!. There's even a printed book on Greasemonkey, which sells for around £11.

Prices automagically converted to pounds sterling using a GM script

From now own I'll abbreviate Greasemonkey as GM, so please not confuse it with General Motors. One such GM extension, which until not too long ago would have been restricted to Firefox users and which I'm loving already is "Secure GMail" a GM script that, once installed, "ensures Gmail always uses a secure connection". See, Google's GMail uses a secure, encrypted connection (https://) only when sending the username and password, and after that it reverts back to a unsecured connection. What this GM script does is change every http:// url to https://, all the time. I guess you begin to see the power of GM scripts by now.

Other personal favourites are the " Amazon currency" one, which shows Amazon.com prices converted to your local currency -you must manually set the conversion rate into the script file-, and the NY Times "single page" script which makes links to stories on the popular news site actually load the "printer friendly" page with the full text on a single page and without the big ads.

Find a list of GM scripts on this wonderful wiki. The list is sorted by target site, in alphabetical order. You will find everything, from scripts intended for Amazon.com to Yahoo to Zap2it.com. Another web site listing GreaseMonkey scripts is the humongous userscripts.org, although I prefer the former site specific listing.

Managing the installed GM scripts

Enter Philip Chee and the Burger of Death

Proving the open source advantage, SeaMonkey fan and Mozilla source hacker extraordinaire Philip Chee, along with a mysterious buddy of him who I only know by his nick name - "Deathburger"- have helped me during the last couple of weeks to turn my SeaMonkey browser into a powerful web browsing machine. I have tested both xSidebar and the hacked version of GM with the latest SeaMonkey suite version, -1.0.2-. And as if Philip and deathburger's work wasn't enough of a technical feat, I've successfully tested both -FF extensions and the Greasemonkey engine with all sorts of GM scripts- both on WinXP and Linux.

Both coders have showed an incredible amount of patience with this scribbler while they debugged their modified "Greasemonkey for SeaMonkey" code and I submitted screenshots and error reports after error report while struggling to make GM work on my linux system. This helped the wonder duo improve the installation process to a point where I'm now confident to say that by now, GreaseMonkey should be pretty straightforward to install -even on linux-. If for some reason it doesn't work for you, bug them nicely or post a message to the GM mailing list.

In short: the availability of xSidebar, GreaseMonkey and the 'modified extensions' bring even more life into the newborn SeaMonkey browser suite. Now, SeaMonkey die-hards like this scribbler have even less reasons to use that other anorexic offspring browser without e-mail client and html editor. No really, I'm just teasing Firefox fanatics. µ

Related links
Get the SeaMonkey browser suite, hosted on Mozilla.org
List of SeaMonkey compatible Mozilla / FF extensions
Install xSidebar
Firefox extensions modified to work in SeaMonkey
Install GreaseMonkey for SeaMonkey
List of Greasemonkey scripts, sorted by target web site

Related reading
Mozilla 1.8 spirit reincarnates as SeaMonkey 1.0
SeaMonkey beta improves on Mozilla legacy
Mozilla browser extensions you can't live without
Mozilla Suite: a Role Model against Browser Anorexia
Firefox fans don't like it up'em

See Also
A Barrel of Monkeys