The development team behind SeaMonkey, the Mozilla-backed free, open source and cross platform internet suite that incorporates a web browser, an email client, a news client, an IRC client and an HTML editor, has announced the fact that it reached an important milestone in the software’s development: SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1.

Project Coordinator with SeaMonkey, Robert Kaiser, comments: “It took a bit longer than previously expected, but that fact makes the SeaMonkey team even more thrilled to announce SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1, previewing the next generation of the successful Internet suite. Building on the great heritage of the Netscape Communicator an Mozilla Application suites, SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 combines a state-of-the-art web browser based on the same core as Firefox 3.5.1 with a solid email and newsgroups client and a simple HTML editor, rounding the experience with web development tools and IRC chat.”

SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 highlights:
- The software uses the same browser core and web feature support as Firefox 3.5.1 does.
- The download manager has been improved to include cross-session resumable downloads.
- SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux-powered machines and comes in 15 local flavors. This is to say it is available in 15 languages.
- In-browser feed-preview and enhanced feed subscription.
- You can customize the mail and news toolbars.
- SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 comes with support for mail archiving.
- Numerous other (minor) improvements and changes that you can check out in the release notes.

“SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1 is available for free download,” added Robert Kaiser. “Once you have downloaded and installed this release, we'd like to encourage you to get involved in discussing and reporting problems as well as further improving the product. Thanks for testing and helping us to make SeaMonkey even better!”

If you would like to get SeaMonkey 2.0 Beta 1, a download location is available here.