This page contains allows you to download British English language packs for SeaMonkey and for its predecessor, the Mozilla Suite.
Don't attempt to install these packs into Firefox or Thunderbird - they won't work there.
Download and Installation Instructions
Ensure you know which version of SeaMonkey or the Mozilla Suite you are using - use the Help | About SeaMonkey menu command, or type about: into the address bar.
Note that the 1.7.x pack should work with any 1.7.x release of the Mozilla Suite. If you're running an earlier version of the Suite, upgrade now.
XPIs for the current SeaMonkey and the final Mozilla Suite Releases:
Left-click links to install, right-click to download. These packs aren't for nightlies, or betas, or anything else: just for releases. Further instructions are below the table.
| For: | Language/Region Pack Install / Download from |
Full Installer | What’s New? | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SeaMonkey 1.1 Language + Region (539 kB) |
language + region (this site) |
GB Region pack incorporated | |||
| Suite 1.7.x Language (505 kB) |
mozilla.org | language (this site) |
eu.mozilla.org | Localises Chatzilla, Venkman and DOM Inspector. UK Region pack available |
|
| Suite 1.7.x Region (26 kB) |
region (this site) |
||||
Follow the on-screen prompts to install. If you don’t see any changes (or you see some still-American spellings—the Composer preferences usually show up this for me), follow these steps:
- Open the preferences dialogue box (using Edit | Preferences);
- Expand the Appearance 'tree' and select Languages/Content box;
- Ensure that "English (GB)" is selected. If it is:
- Select your old language and restart Mozilla;
- Reselect "English (GB)" and restart Mozilla again.
Troubleshooting
To use the "Install XPI" links, Javascript and Software Installation must be
enabled—they are by default.
(If not, from the Edit menu,
select Preferences; then
expand the Advanced section - Scripts & Plugins
and Software
Installation
are the relevant pages).
Advanced users may wish to download the XPI. Packs for older releases can be found below.
Note: For Mozilla 1.7RC3 and above, the Suite has XPI white-listing – only domains on the white-list are able to trigger an XP-Install. As a workaround:
- download the language pack to your computer, then
- drag-and-drop the file onto a Mozilla browser window
Netscape 7.x
If you're looking for a British English Language Pack for Netscape 7.2, Holger Metzger has tweaked the 1.7 pack—a version is available for download. Netscape 8 is vaguely based on Firefox; as far as I know, no-one is mungeing language packs for v8.
XPIs for previous Mozilla releases:
NB: left-click links to install, right-click to download.
| Suite/SeaMonkey Version | Language Pack Install / Download |
|
|---|---|---|
| SeaMonkey 1.0 Language (506 kB) |
language (this site) |
|
| 1.7 & 1.7.1 — 1.7.3 (505 kB) |
mozilla.org | this site |
| 1.7rc3 (469 kB) |
mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.7rc2 (469 kB) |
mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.7rc1 (469 kB) |
mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.6 (459 kB) | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.5 (465 kB) | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.4.2, 1.4.1 and 1.4 (458 kB) |
mirror 2 | |
| 1.4.1 and 1.4 (458 kB) |
mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.3.1 and 1.3 | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.2.1 and 1.2 | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.1 | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.0.2 | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.0.1 | mirror 1 | mirror 2 |
| 1.0 (windows versions only) |
mozilla.org | |
We intend to maintain and develop the en-GB language pack for the latest stable (1.0.x, shifting to 1.4, then 1.7) and latest development ‘release’ version. Thanks to Constantine’s build system, we should also be able to release versions for alpha and beta releases.
About this language pack
Mozilla (an open source, free software internet client suite, including browser, mail/news client, HTML editor, IRC client, etc) was written with internationalisation and localisation (I18N/L10N) in mind - menus, dialogues and all the other textual parts of the suite that are exposed to the user can be rewritten in another language. Having had a look at what to do I decided to have a hack at a British English version of Mozilla. The MLP staff put me in touch with David Barlett, a driving force behind the en-GB dictionary for the spellchecker used by Open Office and Mozilla; we had fruitful discussions about various aspects of the Anglicisation of Mozilla; he also gained the dubious honour of being a guinea pig beta tester of the language packs.
Changes
SeaMonkey 1.1 (2007 January 22nd)
Hopefully the last release that I'll be doing this way - the 1.5 release should have l10n-in-CVS.
SeaMonkey 1.0 (2006 February 4th)
Minor changes throughout; apart from the Help files. The region pack will be using the searchplugins that are bundled with Firefox; and I hope to get the installer version up soon.
1.7.5 (2004 December 21st)
A few minor changes in the language pack. Also, I'm releasing the UK Region Pack separately from the full installer. This changes the "Get Map" button on the Address Book to point to streetmap's postcode-to-map service. Massive change, I know.
1.7 (2004 October 18th)
After an e-mail at the weekend (thanks, Dave), I realised that this page has lain untouched for a while. The XPI for 1.7 will work with any 1.7.x version of Mozilla; I've updated the table to show that. The full installer (once more using 7-Zip compression) will go online this week.
1.7.2 (2004 August 9th)
Moving the installer to use 7z compression was amazingly straightforward. The 1.7.1 and 1.7.2 full installers available from mozilla.org servers both use it; I’ve saved around 2.2 MB from the download size, at the expense of using slightly more TEMP space when installing.
For the interested, I prepared a standard installer in the normal way. Then I:
- Used mozip to extract the entire installer to a new directory.
- Extracted each XPI and re-archived it using no compression.
- Used 7z to compress the contents of the new directory
- Added the 7zSD.sfx and app.tag referred to in the Firefox localisation instructions, both suitably modified to refer to the Suite, not FF.
I’ll write down something more permanent at some point.
1.7 (2004 July 17th)
And... relax. Finally, I’ve got the ******** pack to successfully build into an installer. $DEITY knows what wasn't happening, but after rebuilding en-GB-win.jar and install.js from langenus.xpi it all worked. I also took the opportunity of adding the localisations of Chatzilla, Venkman (the Javascript Debugger) and the DOM Inspector to the language pack, bloating langengb.xpi up to 505 kB.
The L10n people among you may have noticed that mozip doesn’t shorten the archive on which it’s working. However, following the discussion at the last European L10n IRC meeting, I realised that the stub installer can be used as a base for the full installer. Simply add the necessary XPI, ZIP and INI files to the stub installer.
In a rare piece of joined-up thinking, I then realised that it may be possible to get an even smaller download size for the full installer by re-compressing all its XPIs. In general, if you're archiving archives, you can usually win a bit of space by simply storing files (without compression) for all the archives except the last one – save the compression until the final step. This methodology saved about 100 kB in the download size between the language packs for Moz 1.3 and 1.4. This time, the step saved over 60 kB, which isn't fantastic, but better than a pointy stick.
When sufficient circular tuits* present themselves, I'm going to look at moving the Installer to 7z compression, like those Firefox folk have.
I've just noticed that last Thursday was the second anniversary of the creation of this page. Blimey.
(* English-language play on words. Sorry.)
1.7rc3 (2004 June 11th)
Very few changes over rc2. Nice. However, the XPI white-listing may catch a few people out.
1.4.2 (2004 June 8th)
Five lines have changed between 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 releases, four of which are in the help files (and one of those a mistake in the text which I'd already caught). The other is the change of date in the copyright notice on the Help | About Mozilla page.
So, either language pack here will work with any of the three 1.4[.x] releases. If you downloaded the old pack for 1.4.1, you can safely re-install the pack in 1.4.2.
If you didn't download the old pack, but simply want to install a pack for any 1.4[.x] release, you can safely install the new pack.
1.7rc2 (2004 May 18th)
Even fewer changes. Version strings changed from beta to release, and the latest batch of UI elements receive keyboard shortcuts (my diff system draws attention to such changes).
1.7rc1 (2004 April 24th)
Erm, not many changes. mozilla.org’s newish policy of freezing the UI strings at the release of the beta version, together with the ‘Late-L10N’ keyword (which lets us know when a string has absolutely had to change), has meant I've had about a month to fit in the work to update from 1.6 to 1.7. Cheers, mozilla.org folks!
[ Older changes can be found in the changelog... ]What I’ve used:
- SC Unipad 0.98 [ website ] (for the 1.0.0 version only)
- Mozilla Composer + Spellchecker [ mozdev.org’s spellchecker ] [ David Bartlett’s en-GB dictionary ]
- fc.exe
- Notepad
- Microsoft Visual Studio (its "find in files" feature was very useful)
- My 1990 Chambers English Dictionary
- [ GIF2PNG ], [ PNGRewrite ], [ PNGCrush ] and [ PNGout ] were used to convert and optimise the images
- [ Tidy UI ], an HTML source editor (ie not WYSINQWYG) which can also validate what you write using Dave Raggett’s [ HTML Tidy ] code
- Joachim Eibl’s [ kdiff3 ], a GUI-based Text Diff and Merge tool
- [ Arachnophilia ], a programmable Programmer’s text-editor written in Java (and so runs on anything which has a [ Java Runtime Environment ])
- ActiveState’s [ ActivePerl ], a Win32 incarnation of a rather nifty programming/scripting language
- [ TightVNC ], “a free remote control package”, used to test these packs remotely on a separate, clean installation of Mozilla before I inflict them on the wider world.
- [ Winzip ], to (de-)archive all the files. Somewhat ironically, its command-line add-on is the most useful part for me.
- [ 7zip ], to compress the installer.
- [ UPX ], to compress the 7zip self-extracter stub.
To Do:
Testing for bugs, speeling mistooks and remaining Americanisms on all platforms; keeping pace with the new releases of Mozilla; building localised installers for Linux and Mac platforms.
How you can help:
Email me if you spot any errors: moz_en-gb<AT>tyndall<DOT>org<DOT>uk - that’s not a clickable link, but an obfuscated e-mail link using Javascript is available in the page footer - just click on my name, and as long as you have a Javascript-enabled browser, you should be able to contact me. The obfuscation code is freely available from [ Jim Tucek’s website ].
Notes
I ran into a couple of problems when packaging these XPIs: - the Bugzilla titles describe them pretty well:
- Bug 102509 - en-win, en-mac, en-unix are really bad names
- The naming convention I’ve gone for is "en-GB-{platform}.jar"
- Bug 144551 - inconsistent en-mac/en-unix in different platform langenus.xpi files
- This was fixed for Mozilla 1.2b and later versions.