haven't installed opera, but those who have used both, please tell me the pros and cons of both, briefly.

Briefly:
Opera's pros:
loads faster and has better bookmark management. I personally like Opera's one-window tab system, too (I particularly like that they are not literally tabs but windows in a window). Opera has a prettier interface by default and a quite good 3rd party plugin support (basically, Netscape emulation). I have been using Opera for almost a year now and it has crashed only a couple of times ever. Opera also has a good GUI for configuration, you can change everything from the menu.

Opera's minuses:
Javascript support is rather poor (many functions do not function): sometimes you may encounter rendering mistakes (messed pages, colors, fonts, etc.). I got my hotlist (i.e. bookmarks) messed up once or twice because Opera creates them in UTF-8 (that is probably a danger mainly for users whose native language is not English) and there is a bug of some sort somewhere.

And of course, Opera is shareware unless you want to look at the ads all the time.

K-Meleon's pros
K-Meleon is free and based on an excellent idea! I like the way it develops, and I like to follow the development and, maybe, participate somehow if I can. Non-tabbed windows (you may raise your eyebrows as "tabbed windows" was Opera's pro above but my wife prefers K-Meleon to any other browser because she does not like monopolies or tabbed windows).

Very good rendering (I have never seen messed-up pages etc), quite good JavaScript support. Third party plugin usage is presently unclear but seems to be very well developable. Quite extensive configurability. Possibility to use external apps from inside K-Meleon (I am using GUL for bookmark management and Plugin Chooser for plugin management). K-Meleon has also crashed only a very few times.So both of the browsers are stable. I also did some html rendering tests. K-Meleon was better but Opera was also very good.

I don't care much about security so I cannot say anything about certificates and privacy. I also think that integrated mail and newsreading is not important (removed those from Opera).

I tried to be as objective as I could. Please do not judge me. My sympathy still belongs to freeware, i.e. K-Meleon.

Actually, talking about interfaces: Opera's is not prettier but it is handier (you also have a search box and a zoom box right near the URL box). Sry, it seems I did not make all this very brief. ;(

Opera is strange piece of software. It has always had some GREAT ideas (Opera was the first browser to have mouse guestures) but it ALWAYS falls short on something. Somehow it always manages to stay behind in some crucial (open to debate, but IMHO crucial) area.

I didn't use earlier Operas because the didn't support UTF-8. I deal with UTF-8 in my everyday work so Opera was no-go for me. Now they got v.6 out which supports it but after so long time of development they haven't got any DOM support at all. Okay, it supports like 5 attributes, 3 methods in DOM and 3 methods in HTMLE.

I know some ot their developers standpoints which is to make good functional browser first (this is what they definitely have) and then add support for other things. However, when they finally those "other things" done there are already new things roaming wild on the web alread which they will start supporting "as of next version".

Hmmh.

Now here I go a bit polar. Andres likes the Opera bookmarks, I find them somewhat of a pain to maintain. The K-Meleon Favorites plug-in gives me more direct , convenient control. Javascript? Either one seems to have some problems. Or not. Different problems.
Opera also goes berserk when confronted with some perl pop-ups. I won't take it out for a surf without Webwasher. K-M doesn't need a helper.Lovelovelove. Definitely agree on rendering. Don't give a crank about tabs. Opera takes up too much window - 0f course I am stuck with the ads, too, but always use "virtual duct tape" (any clipboard or text utility on-topped and shaped to fit over the offensive area).
I can crash any browser because my system is slightly lycanthropic or something... My bad, I'm always in-and-un-in-stalling strange proggies
Hardly use Op at all now, just keep it in reserve for Bad Computer Days, when herself isn't in a K-M mood. Rare.
Today is our first luniversary - I dl'd K-M one month ago. Hardly use Op at all now, just keep it in reserve for Bad Computer Days, when herself isn't in a K-M mood. Rare.
Today is our first luniversary - I dl'd K-M one month ago.
Having a little trouble with this form, I think K-M is getting impatient with my slow writing.

There's a lot of things I like about Opera's interface, their rendering engine is horrible though. I understand tastes differ, so I'm not saying these things are better -- just that I like them. If anybody knows ways to duplicate any in K-Meleon, I'd be very interested:
- When exiting Opera, it saves all open windows, so that next time you start it it re-opens them. This is an option, not default behaviour, but I really like it -- if I'm researching something, and have fifteen windows open but need to leave, I don't have to bookmark them all.
- I like the favorites as a windowpane. I'd like a tree-view bookmark explorer pane even more. Are there third-party apps which can do this with K-Meleon?
- I like the single-window tabbed interface.

Again, these are just my personal preferences.

I looked for the GUL bookmark management you refere too, but didn't find it.
Do you hav e a url for it?
Does it work under Windows XP?


Bernard

For some reference about GUL, you can take a look at

http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?f=1&i=1986&t=1933

There is a URL and some macro instructions.

Thank you, I found the url. Nice features.

As there is a feature to import and compare/merge bookmark files, I did this for the NS 4.78, Mozilla and KM ones and stored the result back in the KM directory (while KM wasn't active).

But the result now is, that the bookmarks file isn't opened anymore in KM.

I tried via disable/anable plug in, redefining the directory entry, but ot no avail.

Any idea, how to get the bookmarks active again?

Bernard

haven't faced that problem so i am not an expert but try getting the merged bookmarks as IE favorites in Windows\Favorites and then try to import IE favorites. don't know if this works only upon installation of K-M or any time (maybe enable / disable favorites plugin if you cannot get it working otherwise?). this seems worth trying unless you have done so. i've never used netscape but for me, IE favorites were imported nicely by K-M.

I inspected the by Gul generated bookmaks file finally and saw, that it isn't as expected. It seems corrupt.
As I did a backup first, I restored this one and now I have the bookmarks working again.

So I wonder what happend when I edited the bookmarks file with Gul.

Next time I use Gul, I'll report back how this about it.

Bernard

can also go to yahoo and use bookmark facility there

None of the appends mentioned whether K-M supports Netscape plug-ins. The first response said Opera does, but made no comment about K-M, so it doesn't?
Thanks,
Phil

Actually if you read documentation you will see that Kmeleon supports all NS plug-ins.

I have yet to find a NS plug-in that did not work with Kmeleon so that answers the question of whether or not NS plug-ins are supported is yes.

In fact I have the QT, Java 2, Acrobat, EVA, SVG (you have to copy NPSCG3.DLL and NPSCG.zip to the plugin folder of K-melron),and Flash all installed.