WHOA, what a work - Comparing **40** browsers! :O
And delighted of course that KM is your favorite
(on old machines that is)
Yes, it certainly is true that not all capabilities of KM are evident at first look, and some not at the second or third either. Some things are unfortunately not as intuitive as in some other browsers, but on the other hand stuff like e.g. customizing the skin and buttons by editing a text file, (at first look a bit scaring) cfg-file, allows so much freedom for customization.
Best example, while the background image behind the toolbar buttons can even be switched on by simply putting a checkmark in the preferences sheets, the default image is (in my girls eyes :cool
just awful, sorry, and lots of new users even overlook that checkbox in their hurry and blindly assume they could only have a dull plain skin background. While in reality they could use
every back image they like, if they just simply save it named as "back.bmp" into their current skin folder. Be it a personal photo or some graphic. And this I discovered many years ago just by taking a curious look inside the skin folder! Then again, the back image in KM will only show in the top toolbars, there's no way to skin the scrollbars at the sides too or the statusbar at the bottom. Light and shadow... And the background is not switched on by default, since there was some bug on certain machines once. Pity. Never on mine though
Also, by editing a cfg-file, that allows to
customize all button commands, the command on left-click as well as an optional menu on right-click, its tooltip text, and each individual icon can be changed by playing a bit with MS paint or using a complete new bmp-image. And all other menus can be freely changed as well. Personally I like that freedom very much, and don't mind spending a bit time on understanding the (rather easy) cfg-file. The hardest part is to find the lists of usable commands, menus, shortcuts etc. ;-)
But of course that's very much a matter of different tastes. A computer phobic will probably never get happy with KM if he wants to customize it
Just for example, that's the look of my personal skin now. A modified version of skin 'classiria', incl. some additional macro buttons, and the photo I've been using for years and still never tired of it:
http://two.xthost.info/siria/km/km_skins/skin-siria-private-2.png
Once I thought I want to customize the background image in *Firefox*. Tons of ready made pretty skins out there, cool. Am envious. So I got me a skin with a photo background and tried to exchange the pic with my own. Can't be so hard, is it?? Oh man, what a desaster. The FF skin folders were extremely complicated with TONS of files and subfolders (IIRC), and there was not 1 complete background photo in it, but several pieces of it. While experimenting to get my photo in there somehow, all I managed was to mess my FF profile completely, in the end nothing worked anymore! Grrr... In FF you seem to need a programmer just to modify a skin a bit, couldn't believe it.
But back to your list. What's left... Ah yeah:
4) Skins again
Well yes, the choice could be a bit bigger, or rather, easier to find :-/
But am glad that the new KM1.6 default skin is gotten real nice now
(except background again, sorry, just IMHO)
Have been wishing for years there would be a direct link to "skins" and to "extensions" in the side panel here, but that would probably be too easy to find, must not be
So let me list here the main places for
skins to download:
* wiki, KM1.5+1.6 skins:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/K-MeleonThemes15
* wiki, KM1.1 mixed with 1.5/1.6:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/KMeleonThemesWiki
* skin forum:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/list.php?10
* Oops, almost forgot: check guenters link below! (alas no screenshots)
INSTALLATION:
KM skins simply consist of an own folder, which must be placed inside K-Meleon/skins/folder (kinda hard huh ;-)
Then one can choose the new skin in Edit>Preferences>GUI
ATTENTION: The "toolbars.cfg" inside those skin folders also defines which buttons are visible and which commands they execute! So don't wonder if in many skins you can't find all buttons you want. Especially in ancient skins, even if updated. Then again, once you've understood that cfg-file a bit, it's rather easy to copy missing buttons and commands over from another skin yourself, just the copied icon may not match the 'look' of the target skin.
5) extensions
As already mentioned, there's an extension manager on kmext.sf.net which makes installation more automatic. Am really very happy that such a thing exists now! But personally again, and am certainly in a tiny minority there, still prefer to do it manually. Being slightly paranoid with setups, would like to first check which files are contained in an extension and in which folders they go, and can take a peek inside the macro code too. Actually most macros (wild guess 90%?) need nothing but one single file, the kmm-file, which is openly readable text and goes into the 'macros' folder. And 'uninstalling' simply means removing that file again from the macros folder. I like that.
If one feels experimental, they can even customize little bits in that code, just by comparing and using logical thinking. I mean easy stuff like modifying hard-coded paths or variables, or changing the menu text a bit, or hide a menu line or move it into another menu if desired. If one wants to go yet further, they could start learning the parts of the macrolanguage they need, but of course that requires some real learning ;-)
The main
extension archives are:
** forum, with descriptions and screenhots, and you can discuss there:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?9
**
http://kmext.sf.net (already mentioned, by far the biggest)
** geckozone, GREAT descriptions and images, but need its own installer tool:
english:
http://extensions.geckozone.org/K-MeleonEn
francais:
http://extensions.geckozone.org/K-Meleon
** wiki:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/MacroLibrary (mixed stuff, young and old, some with own page for description, others with a link to description in this forum. Just be careful not to install long since outdated stuff like layer macros, some give bugs in modern KM versions, and not all are recognizable as dinosaurs!
6) Dictionaries
Am not sure what you mean exactly? Spellchecker? -> You can install any dictionary you like.
Or translated menus? Okay, those languages are rather restricted
Or translating websites? Switch the translator link from default babelfish to googletranslate, they have much more languages.
PS:
Lots of useful tips can be found in "Help > FAQ".
Also some interesting stuff here :cool:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?1,97481
Aktuelle Anleitung und Tips in deutsch:
http://www.mstipps.de/programme/k-meleon.php
PS2: Large parts of the wiki etc. are unfortunately badly outdated, and not marked as such. Especially the manual is dating from KM0.7 or 0.9, many years ago, and many things are different today and especially easier.
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2011 05:59AM by siria.