Hello,

Years ago I used K-Meleon (version 1.5.4) on my old Windows XP machine. In fact K-Meleon was my favourite browser for many reasons- light, fast (lighter and faster than Firefox) and highly customizable. But as its development ceased and it became outdated I discarded it. I always missed K-Meleon and now I miss it even more after Opera died (for me the new Opera- I mean 15+ versions- is not Opera at all but the worst Chrome clone ever). I moved to Firefox but I do not like its course of development- removal of features and customization options, abominable Australis interface, etc. So I am searching for alternatives. I found out that K-Meleon's development has been renewed which is a great piece of news. I read that the new K-Meleon uses Firefox 25 code base and since I don't have time to read all the forum topics I would like to ask few questions.

- Is there a chance a stable version of K-Meleon to be released soon (by 'soon' I mean this year)?
- I hate 'Tabs on Top' and the lack of status bar in Firefox. Will K-Meleon preserve the status bar (like in Pale Moon, at least the last time I checked Pale Moon there was a status bar) and the 'Tabs on Bottom' feature?
- Will K-Meleon be compatible with Firefox add-ons?
- Will K-Meleon's stable release have a decent and sensible version number? This '74' is insane for me, it beats the Chrome madness by far. For me K-Meleon 1.8 or K-Meleon 2.0 will be fine.
- Does anyone know what happened to the original developer of K-Meleon?

If anyone answers to my questions I will be very grateful!

Congratulations and thanks to the developer who is trying to revive K-Meleon! Now I miss K-Meleon badly, more than ever!

Regards

Quote
smaragdus
- Is there a chance a stable version of K-Meleon to be released soon (by 'soon' I mean this year)?

- I hate 'Tabs on Top' and the lack of status bar in Firefox. Will K-Meleon preserve the status bar (like in Pale Moon, at least the last time I checked Pale Moon there was a status bar) and the 'Tabs on Bottom' feature?

- Will K-Meleon be compatible with Firefox add-ons?

- Will K-Meleon's stable release have a decent and sensible version number? This '74' is insane for me, it beats the Chrome madness by far. For me K-Meleon 1.8 or K-Meleon 2.0 will be fine.

- Does anyone know what happened to the original developer of K-Meleon?

1.) Yes. 74 based on FFesr 24 code is already a stable beta3.

A few crashes still happen on some PCs and pages. But I only had one crash so far. A type of unwanted popup on one page crashed beta1 on my machine.

2.) Not the Chromium FFox layout for sure!

Klassic skin will be included as You know it. And 3 skins based on the PhoenityAura icons by Lim Chee Aun. 2 of have the old layout like 1.5.4 and another has a more compact form. All the old skins from the Skins Wiki will be usable as soon as they receive minor code updates.

3.) No. K-Meleon is no Firefox Clone. The installer mechanism of the extensions prevents that extensions designed for Firefox are installed. It is laid out in the install rdf of the extensions. naruman who does that development has the extension control and install mechanism of XulRunner activated. It can control Mozilla Plugins but there are no compatible K-Meleon extensions on the Firefox central repository for extensions.

4.) It is up to the core developer to chose the name and version number.
I'd personally go for 1.9 or 2.0. But You could argue that the number must be above 3.5 since K-Meleon do Brasil occupied that number with older code.

5.) Christophe who started the project is long gone. 10 years or so. Sebastian, Jeff, Mark, Rob, Brian ... are also long gone. Ulf went after 0.9. Long ago.

Source a German K-Meleon history: http://www.hoefingen.net/klinik/wei1.html

The core developer since version 1.0, Dorian, is working on 74. He did not leave but had no time for this hobby for some years. kko chrome, macros and German locale has no time or is gone. desga2 Spanish locale & macro coding is gone and can not be contacted. New contributors: naruman who works on macros and chrome extensions and adodupan who works on the core code named K-Meleon 1.8. Also a stable version IMHO.

For many years K-Meleon making has been: Dorian does the core - if You come and can contribute something additional Your contribution is welcome.

Some past contributors seem not to be around regularly anymore.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2014 02:25PM by guenter.

@guenter

Many thanks for your detailed response! It was very useful to me and I appreciate that you took your time to answer my questions.

Unfortunately I am not a programmer so I can hardly contribute anything besides perhaps some testing.

I like the old 1.5.4 skin very much- I am tired of 'modern' bare-bones chrome-like GUIs.

I am glad that K-Meleon has been resurrected and that there is still a very active cpmmunity. I used Opera, Firefox, SeaMonkey, Pale Moon, but I always missed K-Meleon and the idea that it was dead depressed me. I hope that with the new stable release K-Meleon will become popular again and that other developers will join the project. By the way are there people who try to create add-ons for K-Meleon?

As far as I can remember I have read in the past here in this forum that there were ideas for migration to WebKit core- personally I do not like WebKit and I hope that K-Meleon will stick to Gecko.

Once again, thank you for your explanations, guenter!

Regards

Quote
smaragdus
By the way are there people who try to create add-ons for K-Meleon?

As far as I can remember I have read in the past here in this forum that there were ideas for migration to WebKit core- personally I do not like WebKit and I hope that K-Meleon will stick to Gecko.

1.) naruman already ported some sophisticated FF content control extensions.

Maybe have a look at this dev version

https://app.box.com/s/frr03dq4xtkczc73z4w1

and via forum search on his posts.

Hard to say who else can do something new since some of the most experienced K-Meleon add-on creators like e.g. disrupted seem to have left for good.

2.) I would have preferred a port to the WebKit engine. It has a stable embedding API. All other originally Mozilla based projects have for this reason moved there.

Greetings to .bg from .de



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 08:23PM by guenter.

K-Meleon Addons are called macros and can be found here:

kmext.sf.net (Tons, but hardly any description, look for them here:

http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/list.php?9

And then there's also the wiki page, although many are outdated:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/MacroLibrary

And with a special system that need an installer also here:
http://extensions.geckozone.org/K-MeleonEn

[alain]Siria, the website geckozone is down now
When I will have time, I perhaps try to see what can retrieved, and what can be used now.

Did you mean that?

- - - - - - -
Lots of basic information that is often overlooked is in the FAQ:
kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/FAQ



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2014 10:38AM by JujuLand.

@guenter, @siria

Many thanks for all the useful informtion you provided. It was interesting to read about the history K-Meleon (using a web translation service).

What surprises me is the fact that many people have been disappointed by the course of development of Opera and Firefox (among them former developers of Presto engine) and no one expressed a desire to join the K-Meleon project. Some time ago Opera and Firefox were customizable enough to replace the outdated K-Meleon but now for me both Opera and Firefox are disastrous. I am still using an older version of Firefox (21.0) mainly because of some add-ons which are indispensable for me (and some of these add-ons are not conpatible with SeaMonkey). I will use this version of Firefox until it's possible and then I will dump it, for me Australis is unbearable and with every new version there are features removed and add-ons broken. So I hope that K-Meleon will be revived but I am afraid that a browser developed by a single person is doomed in the long run. I still hope that in the near future some developers will join K-Meleon and there will be a team that runs the project. Is possible or I am too optimistic? By the way do you think that Presto might become open-source?

Regards from Sofia, Bulgaria

Quote
smaragdus
but I am afraid that a browser developed by a single person is doomed in the long run. I still hope that in the near future some developers will join K-Meleon and there will be a team that runs the project. Is possible or I am too optimistic? By the way do you think that Presto might become open-source?

1.) It is a browser shell / GUI not a browser engine. So it night be possible
to continue as long as the main dev has enough time.

2.) No idea whether Presto will become free code. They are still interested in Opera for small devices, aren't they?

Greetings from Hannover

Quote
smaragdus
Hello,
Congratulations and thanks to the developer who is trying to revive K-Meleon! Now I miss K-Meleon badly, more than ever!

+1000

74 Beta 3 on XP
proxy settings doesnt work.
is it just me ?
please confirm

In the KM74 thread, I don't know in which one exactly, it's said that doesn't work.

But for me, worked at the first time without any troubles .

Maybe all here with problems should show the preferences related (about:config) to put all them together and find where is the problem. My setting were carried from 1.6b2.4 to 74bx and working.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2014 03:00AM by JohnHell.

Quote
JohnHell
In the KM74 thread, I don't know in which one exactly, it's said that doesn't work.

But for me, worked at the first time without any troubles .

Maybe all here with problems should show the preferences related (about:config) to put all them together and find where is the problem. My setting were carried from 1.6b2.4 to 74bx and working.

The original chrome of beta 3 AFAIK throws error in K-Meleon Prefs.

Thu May 15 2014 13:23:49
Fehler: TypeError: this.name.value is null
Quelldatei: chrome://kmprefs/content/pref-proxy.xul
Zeile: 359

Solution use another version's ./browser/omni.ja (or better patch the file in from a version that works).

I posted this result IMHO before.

p.s. Works around. Use shared profile in user %APPDATA% and set this pref with another K-Meleon where it works e.g. with 1.6b2 or 1.5.4. Or reuse a prefs.js from a K-Meleon profile where it has been set properly. Or a whole profile from an older K-Meleon version where it is set. You'd need a skin that is common for both installs or correct skin settings manualy.

So will HTML5 ever work in KM74? That seems to be a biggie to me (hard to ignore as pages will break on older browsers in time).

Quote
Jody Thornton
So will HTML5 ever work in KM74? That seems to be a biggie to me (hard to ignore as pages will break on older browsers in time).

Works with HTML5. If I read correctly will switch to GRE 30 when Firefox reaches it.

But remember that even HTML5 is still in draft. Browsers are behind ever, thanks of webmasters who adopt what it isn't standard yet.