I really like the concept of SeaMonkey, but the project needs some major UI updates and way more love to be relevant today.
Changing for change's sake would mean that Chrome will need a new interface soon in order to not look ancient...
But I mean, you do you man. There's nothing wrong with liking retro interfaces. I once tried to do everything to make my computer look like Windows XP just for nostalgia. Regardless, the product has nice features that would be cool to use, except most people don't want one application on their computer to look like it was there when 9/11 happened while everything else looks new. There would be nothing wrong with having an application with the same features that's not off-putting to most users.
But sure, they can block themselves into a niche of people that don't care if UI looks nice if they really want. That's allowed. Not illegal lol.
You basically repeated my point. Change for change's sake. And it looks similar to 2009 Chrome, so yeah it's quite literally 15 years out of date.
>look like it was there when 9/11 happened while everything else looks new
So change for change's sake it seems.
You can prefer a style, you can customize it to your liking if themes are available (in this case, they are), but if you just replace the whole UI design field with "design is supposed to look nice", what you get might be an aberration. It might be pleasing to some people (but then still some, I really doubt you can find something that is universally pleasant?), but what good is that without being usable? Or if it makes usage much more difficult?
Edit: I mean that it's cool in how it looks but yeah I would never buy Tesla because the products seem unreliable and dangerous as hell
I don't think that's a purely contingent association, either: with software, how the UI looks and how the functionality works are deeply intertwined, and I think there may be a more direct correlation between "modern" software being unreliable, unconfigurable, and insecure, and it having haphazard UI designs that lack underlying organizing principles or adherence to well-established conventions.
So your original complaint seems to imply almost the opposite of what you are saying here -- that superficial aesthetics are more important to you, even to the point where you'd accept poor functionality and user-hostile anti-patterns as a viable tradeoff.
I like the Modern SeaMonkey theme. I also like the look of the classic theme (not default, but the old default, sometimes called "XPFE Classic"). Not sure if just out of nostalgia or because it looks neat to me. What I value more is that SeaMonkey's looks are customizable. I don't know if it's customizable enough to make a theme that behaves in the way you prefer, but at least there is room for customization. (I'm mentioning this because I do think this is an interesting feature to have.)
So, please consider relativizing your position, it seems you're insisting on a bias against the design just because it is not recent enough, but also wording that as an absolute.
To me that sounds like people who say some train models "look old" and "have to be replaced" just because they feature Budd-style corrugated stainless steel.
Why is that not OK? Wouldn't that mean that its UI has avoided the last ~15 years of general decline in structure and usability that we see commonly afflicting "modern" UI designs?