HI FOLKS!

Just gave K-Meleon a GREAT product review (FIVE GOLD STARS!) at the following website:
http://allmyapps.com/app/windows-xp/k-meleon-web-browser

Am copying the review below for your reading pleasure! :-)
Suggest others who LOVE K-Meleon might want to go over and add their own Review and describe what you most like about this great little browser.

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K-MELEON BROWSER REVIEW Rated: FIVE STARS
6th of July 2010

We've been using K-Meleon for several years and just LOVE it! It is the fastest, easiest to use browser out there, and the K-Meleon Support Forums are great--very helpful and friendly folks. K-Meleon is faster even than Opera, which was always a pretty speedy browser. K-Meleon has so many ways to customize the browser so that you have all your favorite features right at your fingertips, like customizable Toolbars, Hotlist, Bookmarks, and my personal favorite, the Privacy Toolbar! On the Privacy Toolbar, you have toggle-buttons for Cookies, Images, Javascript, Popups, Cache, and so on, so that you always know at a moment's glance which functions you have on; and you can easily switch them off with your mouse, without needing to meander through a lot of drop-down menus to locate the functions for turning them on or off.

K-Meleon is lightning fast! Installing is easy and you can choose between many different colorful, attractive "skins."

We use K-Meleon 99% of the time; for the odd occasion when some website just will not work properly when using K-Meleon (very RARE), we use Firefox or Opera, but K-Meleon runs rings around them both. We've been delighted with K-Meleon and to top off all the great features described herein, K-Meleon is FREE! Can't beat that!

Try K-Meleon; you'll be glad you did! :-)

P.S. Maybe some Forum folks would like to upload some Screenshots to enhance the Review(s) at the above site (allmyaps.com).

Cheers!

I won't be doing any reviews (for several very pressing reasons), but I for one think your contribution should be commended. Great job!

--- sig ---

I am using k-meleon for a week or two now, and I still have 'WOW'-moments where I am amazed by the power of this browser.
My laptop is over 9 years old and got almost the same clock frequency as a new phone. Firefox 3 almost doesn't run at all. IE5 is outdated, and I'm not sure if IE6 will do much better or if it is supported by Win2000 (hate browsing without tabs anyway - even more as i dislike IE entirely). I'm not a fan of Opera, and it's probably far to graphical for this system anyway. And lastly my second-favorite browser Chrome (after firefox) just notified my the platform wasn't supported and stopped there. Copying files just errored.
I started browing the web in my IE5 and some websites just didn't load at all (56bit encrytion where 128 is required for example), so I looked for a new browser. I've had dozens till I found k-meleon. The addiction was instant It is light, it is customizable and it has about every feature I got in firefox via addons. Even the things noone has like auto-reload pages, this browser posesses by default. An adblocker, user agent switcher, every option you might ever require, and it all goes smooth.
There are also things missing, but mainly it's two things:
- the way you gotta install addons (copypasting files? :/ I didn't find another way)
- the support. I don't mean the forums or anything (no experience with that), but just the ammount of addons and other things, tweaks and stuff available for it is really low after being used to IE, FF and Chrome.

Though nothing can change this fact: it is the only browser I've tried which runs fast enough and has a modern render engine. Even if it were only that (and k-meleon is actually far more then that) I'd still use it as my primary browser.

I have no idea how active this project still is, but if it is active: KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!
Many great thanks to everyone contributing here. If I could, I would donate or contribute. Just don't have some account or way to pay online (and not of legal age yet), nor the knowledge to help you guys program it.

Most likely I won't stick around here, so the best to all

Luc.

Quote
Luc
...
There are also things missing, but mainly it's two things:
- the way you gotta install addons (copypasting files? :/ I didn't find another way)
Luc.

Click the link below for installable extensions. Also check out the extensions manager which makes installing automatic.

http://kmext.sourceforge.net/

Some are also available in the extensions forum.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2010 02:24AM by jsnj.

Most extensions are made installable, when they are finished. There is a manager as jsnj already mentioned that helps installing, and several others maintained by alain have standalone installers.

Greetings to the beautiful NL from DE

p.s.

Quote
Luc
I would donate or contribute.

nor the knowledge to help you guys program it.

The K-Meleon project does not actively collect money. You could donate some of Your time.

The knowledge required is English, Your native language, how to edit text and hack resources with the program ResHack or so. There was no Dutch version since Fasts Jan's 0.8.2



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2010 02:04AM by guenter.

Quote
jsnj
Click the link below for installable extensions. Also check out the extensions manager which makes installing automatic.

http://kmext.sourceforge.net/

Oh cool thanks! That makes it a lot easier

Quote
guenter
The K-Meleon project does not actively collect money. You could donate some of Your time.

The knowledge required is English, Your native language, how to edit text and hack resources with the program ResHack or so. There was no Dutch version since Fasts Jan's 0.8.2

Okay I am familiar with reshacker so shouldn't be a problem. Just tell me which files to translate
Though just wondering: don't you have a language file with phrases translated to various supported languages (so I could use any text editor like notepad++)?

I've created an account now and am following this topic so should reply sooner this time

Btw, how did you know I was Dutch? Just re-read my post, and I didn't mention it. Also couldn't find 'nl', 'netherlands', 'nederlands' or 'dutch' on the page at all (only 'nl' inside other words). Are you a moderator and can see the IP location or did you research on my email/nickname? (or am i just blind and have I mentioned it? Knowing myself, that's also fairly possible lol).

Yep, he's a mod
Uhm, just hope you don't expect to get update emails from the forum now, 'cause this doesn't work... Only if you click "control center" on top of the forum, you can access the list of your followed topics...

Oh okay.. Usually 'follow topic' means you get mail on a new reply. I was just looking around a little on howto translate so lucky I saw your reply already.

So for translating, I've found this page, but don't really get it. Those files all need to be translated or something?

Yes - a moderator, who can see the URL ending in .nl & went to NL several times for holiday.

Translation sources are via: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/Localization

The 1.5 sources

A translation for the SeaMonkey based chrome parts can be scavenged from here:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/releases/1.1.16/contrib-localized/seamonkey-1.1.16.nl-NL.langpack.xpi



But IMHO do not start to do with the chrome part since much of that will change when the project moves to GRE 1.9 with K-Meleon 1.6 (soon). Do the kml first, a simple but long definition list (structure: Engl. word=translated word). That is used by K-Meleon 1.5 and 1.6.

alain and desga2 will know more than me about what to do first.
Wait till they found this thread and give You some more info.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/2010 08:36PM by guenter.

One word about K-Meleon: INCREDIBLE

The perfect replacement for FireFox, I have benchmark every browser available, about 15 of them, and K-Meleon is Faster, Lighter and Customizable, what more can you ask for, the Lighting Speed is the best of all, seems that other Browsers have forgotten that we are not looking to watch a slideshow buy yet instead move from one page to the other in milliseconds, otherwise trying to make a living on line would be next to impossible.

Thanks for a great product and Keep up the GOOD work !

Cool
I always find it kinda funny that lots of people say they're amazed about the speed, that KM is definitely faster than other browsers they've used themselves. Yet pc magazine tests or such funnily keep telling that KM speed were somewhere in the middle field, if not even kinda slow!
I know it depends mostly on the various needs of people, which kind of sites they mostly visit (e.g. flashy-blinky overloaded) and which settings they prefer. But can't help suspecting that those tests may not be quite realistic for average users...

Current K-Meleon JavaScript engine is quite slow compared to IE9, Firefox 4 or a new Chrome or Opera browser. For the rest it is about as fast as other browsers.

K-Meleon starts fast & will be fast under normal working conditions e.g. with older hardware and when a number of other programs are open & using resources at the same time.

PC magazines test with the newest hardware and no other application in use.
Current testing centers on JavaScript speed. So a resource hog (good at JavaScript) that You would never consider for testing Your newest html page version will win the price.

That "fastest" browser will open with the HDD churning & as fast as a sloth not like the cheetah the testers advertised - when 5 other programs for creating the mentioned html page are open or Your hardware is slightly aged.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2011 12:33AM by guenter.

Having used KM 1.6b2 as my main browser since it arrived and been VERY happy with it I hadn't opened IE8 for a long time.

Nonetheless, with the release of IE9 I decided to upgrade and see what the fuss was about. Overall they are very close for general browsing on my 32bit Win7 notebook. On most sites there is no discernable difference, but on those with lots of graphics, video thumbnails etc, the new IE edges ahead with faster loading.

The BIG difference though is start time. KM takes about a second to open on this machine. Not bad but noticeable. IE9 on the other hand almost jumps on to the screen! This used to be a failing of IE but they've clearly put some work into it and it shows.

KM remains my browser of choice as I like the way it handles tabs and, well I'm just used to it. That said, based on my experience speed is no longer it's advantage.

User reports of browser speed are always kind of suspicious. Whenever they load a new one, they haven't had chance to screw it up or had a zillion add-ons put into it. Compared to the old browser ( which they are tired of), yeah , it's faster.

Mozilla has definitely been playing catch up on the javascript side of things. but i find it very hard to believe that kmeleon shows any significant difference from its equivalent FF version.
>> It sure starts up quicker though! But nothing can beat IE at that, since it's already loaded at boot time.

Mozilla rendering has always been slower than IE in my experience. I don't believe mozilla browsers have ever been faster, don't know how people can make that claim. That's been on many machines, OS's and over the whole history of the internet. I never tried opera or chrome, but as the dramatic improvements in gecko this year prove, it is not hard to make it faster, if you care...

Quote
CJ
The BIG difference though is start time. KM takes about a second to open on this machine. Not bad but noticeable. IE9 on the other hand almost jumps on to the screen! This used to be a failing of IE but they've clearly put some work into it and it shows.

IE engine is preloaded.

Use the K-Meleon loader to get similar start speed.

Quote
snuz2
i find it very hard to believe that kmeleon shows any significant difference from its equivalent FF version.

Yes, but FFs are at GRE 1.9.2 & 2 now which are much faster than 1.9.1.X or 1.8.1.X that stable K-Meleons currently use.

K-Meleon is IMHO a few % faster that a FF with the same GRE because FF's rendering engine must also build and alter its XUL based GUI & IMHO must consume some strength for that effort. K-Meleon uses the systems native widgets and does not loose anything on altering much XUL.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2011 01:01PM by guenter.

When it comes to PC mag sometimes it's a good idea to take their reviews with a grain of salt as sometimes the editors/reviewers don't do all of their home work and jump to incorrect conclusions.

I like guenter's analogy "That "fastest" browser will open with the HDD churning & as fast as a sloth not like the cheetah the testers advertised - when 5 other programs for creating the mentioned html page are open or Your hardware is slightly aged. grinning smiley" Which is also the case regarding my XP machine on a cheap three year on emachines T3624 and my ten year old Gateway Performance 800 which with a little bit of extra software (mostly trial ware) took about twenty-five hundred dollars out of my pocket. Apparently Moor's law is working out quite well.

Earlier versions of IE, as far back as v. 4 or 5 can be made to open fast by adding " nohome" w/o the quotes to IE's Properties > Target so that it looks like this
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -athome. Note that their must be a blank space before -athome. I have known this to open IE even faster than using about:blank as the home page. As I understand, about:blank still takes time to load some html into the blank page whereas -nohome does not. Though IE 8 takes a little more time to throw up "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage...bla,bla,bla." I don't if know this works at all with IE 9.

Opera 10x, like KM must first load new images into cache. However, it has always been my experience that KM loads new images much faster. I can't say one way or the other about FF as I never use FF. FF for some reason always steels default status even when it is not set as the default browser. And after uninstalling FF my default browser nor any browser works and I have to manually correct the Internet shortcut extension settings. I have always experienced these problems with my XP and ME machines. I don't know if these problems are caused by FF or personal settings on the computers but what I do know is w/o FF I am much better off.

snuz2 mention that some IE9 files are loaded in Startup programs. I wonder if this causes much difference in system startup time. I know KM's Loader.exe adds no noticeable time difference to system startup.

Besides speed, one of my favorite things about KM is I can add as many macros, plugins and other customizations without KM slowing down.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

It takes the same amount of time to load at bootup as at app start. If KM takes one second to open without preload, it is adding one second to boot time.

Windows does not normally start without IE loaded, you could change the shell variable ( at least on 9x machines) to some trivial program and find out how much time it adds to the boot, but most of the shell is not the UI specified in the shell= variable, I doubt it adds much time, but who knows. It really doesn't matter since it must load anyway for the windows environment to work.

But it still takes the same amount of time no matter what: that is, the time to find and load and link all the dll's that make up the program. The preloaders help because they force it all to be loaded just once rather than at each app start, but....the disk cache generally has the whole program once it is loaded the 1st time anyways, so the 2nd or 3rd startup will be almost instant even without the preload. Mostly it is a psychological advantage " wow , look how fast my browser started up".

This is my first crack at a forum, so, please cut me some slack fellow binary lovers...I was led to believe that K-Meleon was a " cut down version " of Firefox, using the Ghecko engine. As opposed to Opera, using Webkit( read I-Fone also + others ), Geckho + another engine whose name eledudes me at this time., I've found K-Meleon, along withTrident. ( including the proverbial Firefox, so darn slow to load on older hardware, like 6-7 year stuff, Slimbrowser,Opera, and not to forget Lunarscape 6 ), have all banded together to make my computer life a much more enjoyable time. this was all about K-Meleon, and its my No. 2 after Slimbrowser.

Quote
Rickfromsomeplaceelse
I was led to believe that K-Meleon was a " cut down version " of Firefox, using the Ghecko engine. As opposed to Opera, using Webkit( read I-Fone also + others ), Geckho + another engine whose name eledudes me at this time., I've found K-Meleon, along withTrident. ( including the proverbial Firefox, so darn slow to load on older hardware, like 6-7 year stuff, Slimbrowser,Opera, and not to forget Lunarscape 6 ), have all banded together to make my computer life a much more enjoyable time. this was all about K-Meleon, and its my No. 2 after Slimbrowser.

In a nutshell.


K-Meleon uses the same Gecko HTML rendering engine as Firefox.

Trident html engine = IE html engine.

Slim Browser is an alternative shell for Trident.
K-Meleon is an alternative shell for Gecko.


K-Meleon is using Gecko/Mozilla engine (aka GRE = Gecko Rendering Engine) and combines it with Windows native widgets. K-Meleon uses Microsoft Foundation Class code to embed the GRE and create a GUI for the user. Firefox uses XUL to create the GUI.

K-Meleon devs thought that using native Windows widget saves system resources.


Webkit = Chrome, Safari, Iron, Qtweb (slimest webkit based broswer runs on older PCs).

Enumeration of layout engines.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2011 06:07PM by guenter.