Every browser has its pros and cons, so choosing one is just a matter of personal taste and preferences. Nothing left but to try them for a while and then take the one you like best!
But if you're looking to make a list of pros and cons first, I must say the pros of KM alas aren't quite obvious from the start. Must admit I do not really know much of other browsers any more, having used mostly this one for a couple years, so please keep in mind when I'm listing something here as "pro" it does not necessarily mean that other browsers wouldn't have it too
Well, at first customizing is certainly not quite as easy with it, but it's not that complicated either. Depends on what one wants to do, but once understood this philosophy of configuration by editing text files, one can do really easy things at first, like hiding/showing single buttons, and then usually starts liking that much more is possible this way. For example changing menus exactly as one likes it, or putting all sorts of
menus as right-click on any button, or all sorts of commands on a new button.
One starts discovering that by opening about:config and typing a search word most related settings are right at hand, without much searching, and for more difficult things one can always ask in the forum.
If one has fun with technical stuff, they sooner or later start writing macros (little extensions) themselves, first just little modifications or copies of existing ones, then step by step more complicated ones. It's cool to see it working, although you still have no clue of real programming :cool:
Some of many things that I like too, just personally:
It's just FAST, good for me as an impatient person.
KM starts up faster than firefox, and on my old win98 machine with 256 RAM it can hold over 30 tabs open, while FFx already freezes with 15-20. Obviously one of those different-needs-aspects
As most:
The
skin background can be a pretty photo, just name it back.bmp and put it in the skin folder. I've just LOVED that skin for years and never got tired of the sunrise background, while the number of buttons grew more and more:
Don't mind the mass of buttons, that's just me, there are other people who prefer a simplistic 1-line-skin - everything is possible
Now when I tried adding that background to FFox recently, this was next to impossible, so clueless me tried messing deeper in it, but only ended up messing instead the whole profile - oops... ;-)
The
stored sessions are very handy, and when
accidentally closed a tab, it can be reopened again with one click.
When searching something on a page, one can just start typing out-of-the-blue, no need to click the search-icon first.
Favorites!! They can be shared with Internet Explorer, meaning no exporting or copying over, just using the same fav folder with both programs. Or alternatively, one could also use different favorites for each program. The only prob is KM's native function for *adding NEW favorites*, which wouldn't let you even rename or choose a folder, but this can be helped with one of the user-written favorites macros.
Additionally I use the
"bookmark" system and the
"hotlist" system, for special stuff. And my most used URLs have a tiny toolbar with just numbers or icons on them, or can be opened by Ctrl+Number 0-9. Obviously, the text menus for Favorites-Bookmarks-Hotlist grew rather long, but no prob to hide that in KM, and put the functions on the icons (DOES require a little more knowledge, but just ask in forum and then copy the few needed lines into the cfg file).
The privacy bar! Okay, that's optional for FFox too (prefbar), but in KM it's there by default, it just needs to be switched on (View/Toolbars). Lots of handy buttons that I use daily and also want to have always in view, being "slightly" paranoid :cool:
Must admit KM has also a couple con's, but you'll figure that out for yourself (if it's stuff you consider important) ;-)
Well okay, my biggest prob was always that flashblock only worked with javascript switched on, but meanwhile have created an own privacy button to toggle embedded objects and plugin stuff, and am quite happy with that workaround now
And rarely there's something on a page that doesn't work, which may well be because of all my paranoia settings, no idea, but then I cheat and use an alternative browser (FF or Opera), just for a moment
But as you see, my needs are probably not very main-stream, that's what I mean with different tastes
One can sure say that KM is extremely flexible though!
Edit: Oh forgot, the
group bookmarks are something I love too: give a bookmarks or hotlist folder a nickname, then just type that nickname (a few characters) in the URL bar and hit enter to open all bookmarks in it at once! Single bookmarks can have nick too though, e.g. "gi"+ a search-word for google-image-search.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2010 10:11AM by siria.