Hi all. Sorta new around here.

I am curious.

I managed to install K-Meleon on removable media (16MB USB removable), because my public library still uses IE, and I needed something as small as possible on the stick for browsing.

However, it leaves me with very little space for what I originally use the stick for. That is, I have about 500KB free (Or, if I remove Miranda, I have 2MB free: not much more than those little black squares I still see people using)...

Are there any folders filled with things I don't need, or any DLLs that I can remove without severely impacting my browsing experience?

I'd appreciate any tips on slimming down this browser.

Thanks!

-- O

Good job on that!

But surely the simplest solution to use all of KM's power is to get a 32MB stick - they are dirt cheap now!

Nick

I am not sure - you speak of k-m including? which plugins?...profiles...

some of the big plugins are redundant.
the kplugins - have a look which You need. -
plus not all plugins of the same type have the same size. e. g.
standard gestures are less powerful by Romanito but smaller too.

You can condence many files (exe and dll) with an exe packer!

You have space on hdd?. strangely enough: Your profile can be dispensed with
and recreated from default folder on every start. much like a new install!
if You can use hdd space as well!

have a look how much mb Your k-m including which components has on stick?
there are differnt old an new k-m versions around.

- i will also look out for the smallest! earlier tonight i packed/zipped a k-m that has about 12 mb. You have probably done something already - what did You do and how far did You get? regards

guenter:

Thanks for the reply.
I installed just base k-m, no plugins at all. Doesn't seem that I have any skinning features either, so I'm guessing that deletion of 'skins/' would be safe as well, and would give me another... ~200KB of space. I don't really need too many features while browsing. Honestly, I really could use tabs, and am considering running the installer again to see if I can get those.

The hard drive usage is a no-go:
I'm not guaranteed to get the same computer each time (12 possible terminals), and they run "DeepFreeze" on them, so whenever the computer is reset... my data is gone. Also, it's against their rules (despite the fact that they use DeepFreeze) to 'install software to the public library computers', and is punishable by removing my usage privs (which is not good at the moment, as my computer is still in shipping limbo).

I should consider UPX, but the question is, what is safe to compress, and what isn't?

-----
Nick:

That's also a thought, but I'm trying to not spend much right now. I just got done moving, twice, in 2 weeks, and that kinda rules out 'frivolous expenses'.

guenter:
Ok. I had nothing better to do at the library today, so I randomly UPXed things here.

I've made it happily up to 4.05 MB of free space, which is good. Though, I am going to reinstall now and try to add in a couple of the plugins. (:

If all goes well, maybe I've done something good, no? (:

-- O

Maybe not.

Once I UPXed everything, I remembered to check my gmail account, and ouch, I broke something there. Right now, I'm UPXing the DLLs in pairs and testing, so I can see which ones break https:// after compression.


I know there was some sort of penalty associated with using UPX, but I can't recall what it was. Something related to performance?
(Though I can, at the moment sacrifice some performance, though I don't want to scrap stability at the same time.)

upx compresses quite stable in general, I would recommend to reduce the compression rate a bit if you got probs.
Should be more less work than testing DLL pairs.

I compress all my own-written win32-api-apps with it and never noticed that their performance decreases in any way.
But ok, dunno about other progs.

you know this one?

http://www.offbyone.com/

it might save ya some space for mp3 and stuff, or maybe a winOS, the smallest I heard about was ~8MB, you might boot it from the usb-stick then ;-))

Not sure about the gain, but you can try recompressing the .jar files with higher compression level.

Well I am not sure - about jar ... perhaps it is worth a try.

Omshiirion has used the biggest savings already.
he can dispense with all plgugins but have a very rudimentary browser
(at that point offbyone makes more sence)
or use new experimental version of upx on all exe and dll -
(param force and some others /result is normally stable) .

he can delete the profiles in folder default (not active profile/default).
Or do it the other way round. he can clear history cache all the time -
or set them that they are on hdd - temp? which seems forbidden.

there are some redundant gifs like goopher gifs in res but they do not amount to much. thats is all i can think off - unless You wanted to hack on chrome jars e. g. embed to clear parts that are not used often - but which i can hardly recommend.
ever since i had to open jars hacking i do not get them condenced well.
there are whole branches of embed that are not used frequently - but....
regards

(Remind me to never come to Kinko's again. Can't even use my USB stick here, stuck with IE. :x)

Well, I got it to leave me with 3.6mb on the stick, with the layers plugin and a couple others, and without compressing certain DLLs (the SSL one and a couple others, I think).

Given that my public library seems to only have USB1.1 on their computers, speed no longer matters in that sense.

Eggthrower:
OffByOne... Wasn't that the one which chokes up on XHTML and things like that? I really have to have working XHTML and CSS support, because my weblog is as such. Opera (heheh) even chokes on the user interface for the backend.

guenter:
I know nothing of jar hacking, however, so I don't think I want to try to tackle that just yet. But I still consider this a victory! To be able to get a gecko browser to fit on a USB stick and be useful is definitely a good thing.

addendum to previous (heh, had to run and stick more cash on their silly card):

rmn:
What would I use to recompress the jar files, should I find myself with the time to do this?


Hopefully, I'll get my spare PC up and running tomorrow, so I can get around to a little more in-depth work on making k-meleon fit nicely on my USB stick.

But thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions. It's what keeps me going on, to see just how much performance I can squeeze out of this browser in as little space as possible.

about chrome hacking:
it is super strickt html - so You know something about it
because You have a web page in xhtml...

knowing a very little: so do i -> but...
i do not want to hack in that chrome. ->
like i would not want to repair or hack a strange web site THAT size either.

maybe if i have time later today i will try to improve Your 3.6 mb.

did You look into 0.7.1 and some of the other older ones?
They have a deficiancy with pluggins but are possibly smaller.

offbyone is from 2002 or so.
that could work?

XHTML and CSS support & weblog! this is where? - i could try and pretest.
I still have some older browser installed for testing my own home page.
regards

> What would I use to recompress the jar files, should I find myself with the time to do this?

Simple, really. You only need a good zipper (I recommend 7-Zip), rename the .jar files to .zip, extract, rezip with the maximum compression level (you have to use the zip format, not 7z), and rename to .jar again.

thx rmn -
maybe i chose the wrong settings - can the fine settings have influence?
else i must have put in an extra level.

Do You know by chance a windows program to exchange
the long licence blocks to short ones recursively and for a whole jar at a time?

in unix they can do it even with their powerfull shells... but...
best weekend wishes from Hannover

guenter:
I'm currently using WordPress, which is XHTML 1.0 Transitional (With a little cleanup, I think it can make Strict. (: ), with several styles selectable (though not in the traditional Firesomething way: I'm sacrificing a little to keep the template as close to the CVS version as I can, and be compatible with those freaks who use IE and *enjoy* it. (: ) through the styles menu on one side or another.

Off to try the JAR thing. Wish me luck, eh? (:

Well, I've been digging around inside chrome/embed.jar and chrome/pippki.jar and noticed something:

A lot of bloat is license stuff that the normal end user will never see, and plenty of it is *redundant*!
Why isn't all of this licensing stuff just grouped off into a file that a normal user can see and/or delete at need/will, with filenames for each one covered by each bit?

Such as, there were several files in pippki.jar that had NPL/LGPL/some other letters I can't remember at the moment text at the beginning, and the text was all seemingly identical. Removing it reduced the file's size by 2000 bytes or so.
The result of snipping out what seems to be redundant licensing resulted in me reducing pippki.jar to 83KB from 102KB (and this is at the time of this writing. I never did all of the files, as I have to do them manually for now. I suppose if I had sed, and knew how to use it, I could look for specific beginning and end text and automate this job...). Embed is chugging along happily at 326KB after I backhanded everything in the 'communicator' folders, but left the structure intact (just in case).

I'm going to keep working a little longer today, while I'm here at the library, and testing this and that, to see how functional I can keep my personal copy while paring it down.

K-Meleon, with layers.dll, macros.dll, and toolbar.dll installed is occupying a rather small 10.7MB of space on my stick. This makes me very happy. (:

Thank you everyone for the encouragement and suggestions. I just might have something here yet.

I have no plans, however, to release this particular hackup, because I'm pretty sure I'm violating licensing somewhere (with me removing licenses from no less than 25 files in 2 JARs...), but I think this whole thread would be informative for someone going for a very minimalistic system setup.

-- O

Fascinating thread! I have clung on to each word of this thread and read with great joy of the programming abilities of the people involved! Keep up the fantastic work! And yes Omshiirion---you are entirely correct!---someone who will want to learn of how to run KM on a UBS stick will read this thread with great fascination! You must remain around and visit this forum often because this is a question which comes up more than you believe and the average person encounters many problems in so doing, especially on a 16MEG USB card! rmn may recall that we've had people in here, and maybe guenter as well, who have had trouble getting KM to run on a 32meg card. So it is like you've done the impossible.

You sound like you would make a good programmer in many of the projects that are floating around here Omshiirion, a person with many interesting new ideas with novel ways of achieving those goals.

I have some USB stick ports on my computer that I've never used. Just reading this thread has tempted me to ask the wife for money to buy a memory stick...

À la prochaine fois mes amis!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

I think I've done it.

7.99 MB (8,381,797 bytes)
That's what the stick says the size of the K-Meleon folder is now.

I... I'm actually really happy now. I had to stifle my yelps of joy when I got to work today. I found a DLL that was taking ~2.3MB of space: components/gklayout.dll
UPXing it at -9 (UPX 1.25w) got it down to 916KB. A few other DLLs were size offenders as well, and after I spent a little time, I got down to 7.99MB from the 10.6 I was about to report 20 or 30 minutes ago. (:

Eyes-Only:
I find it amusing and interesting that you say this.
I'm a non-programmer, to be very honest. I look at C, C++, Perl, PHP, and say "...buh?" to it all, because I'm not tech-minded in that sense. Rather, I'm more partial to normal web design, with [X]HTML and CSS.
I just think that I see it all differently because I came in from outside of the box, and don't hold all of the same... standards, if you will, that the average programmer has. Also, I've been known to be really stubborn about things (as you may have noticed in my comment about buying a 32MB stick), and I have to make them work my way.

Interestingly enough, I wasn't very keen on K-Meleon in the beginning:
I didn't like how the layers worked quite as much as the tabs (they just seemed a little awkward quite a while back), and I'm going to have to figure out how to make the address bar respond to ctrl+L (Most of the Mozilla family), instead of alt+D (IExplore), but right now, I have K-Meleon doing almost exactly what I wanted it to do. I think I might have to get this rebar plugin, so that I can really maximize my space here, and have a truly powerful browser.

Now, to figure out how to turn off this skin I seem to have! (:
I might be able to get a few hundred KB more out of it yet!

turn skin of?
AFAIK put toolbars.cfg into Your used profiles folder and delete skins.
it reverts to text then.

can You name me a program and way that can automize the cutting of licence part?

guenter:
Well, skin seems to be a misnomer for what I intended. I noticed a bitmap in the background of the toolbar that I didn't want. I've managed to kill it (and will delete it shortly).
I don't mind the images for back, etc: They're smaller than "back", "reload", "forward" (the only buttons I have showing on the bar).

I think I might take to chopping things out of prefs.js that I don't have installed or need (extra useragents, mouse gestures), just to squeeze a little more out. I'm feeling really good about this project.

As for automating the cutting, I know that 'sed' can do it, but I can't remember how to use sed at all. I've never really managed to learn it (the syntax has something to do with regular expressions, but I'm not too good at using it at all), so I actually cut all the licenses *by hand*.

embed.jar is at 313KB, and pippki.jar is at 68KB now. (:
I think it's the smallest I will be able to get them, though I'll try just a little more before I consider them 'done'.

Well, I've just run into an interesting problem.
I forgot to account for the fact that I'm not always going to be on a computer that assigns my stick to "E:".

This other library has assigned my stick to "F:", and this is causing an interesting set of problems, because it's looking at "E:" to try to find its data, and doesn't see a single thing.

Is there a way I can configure this to use relative paths, instead of absolute?

-- O

How about a progress report from a computer that will use my stick at the moment? (:

THIS is what I've done with K-Meleon, so far. I went for the WhistlerXP skin, simply because I want it to blend in, and not raise suspicions around me, for my *next* project. (:

I think I might actually install K-Meleon to the HD here, hack up WhistlerXP to look almost exactly like this library's IE install, and put this in its place. It'd be fun to do, at least, even if it 'risks' my chances of using their computers again.

I'll probably wait until I get my PC and some 'net at home, and then tackle this idea, however.
But I'll need to figure out how to change the "(K-Meleon)" text to that other browser's name, and just sit around, watching every computer I do this to for the day. I'd love to see their reactions. (:
Anything like this is sure to be fun for me to do.

Anyhow, off to lay down more complaints to their tech support, to get these computers secured around here, for once.

Do a search in km NGs for km on CD first.
For a "(K-Meleon)" header, somebody tried this here before, do a search.
For reducing km size, year ago I cut 8.2 build to 10.1MB uncompressed, embed is 371K. It has 155 files and 16 folders.
And the last, from security point, browser is the last thing to worry about. I'm sure library system is full of keyloggers, trojans and so on. DeepFreeze is a pos, between restarts you're vulnerable as a next guy.

marc v:
Lemme address your thoughts from bottom to top:

Security: Given that IE and Explorer.exe are just about the same thing now (heh, Windows...), anything that affects the browser usually affects the entire OS. Ouchu. And actually, most of these people who come to this library are too stupid to even know what a keylogger or trojan is.
(speaking of keyloggers, the only thing even remotely resembling a keylogger on this computer is my USB stick's copy of WhatPulse. I'm tired of falling behind: was in the 690-ish range. Now I'm almost 100 places back. Bleh.)
Yes. I had to walk two of them through "How to check AOL email Without Installing AOL" today. Fun stuff. The librarians here don't even know how to do that. For the sake of pie, these people <strong>still use floppy disks</strong>!!!
The library resets their computers once or twice daily. I've noticed that, because my changes aren't preserved (1024x768x32bpp@75Hz is my preference; 800x600x16bpp@60Hz is their setting).
DeepFreeze *is* a <a href="http://pixelechoes.net/asm/EaFBoH.mp3">flaming bag of hell</a>, but it's irritating enough to deter wanna-be "hackers" in this area (note: very loose usage of the word 'hacker' in this case. Read as 'willing AOL user').
If I had my PC back, trust me, I wouldn't be at this bloody library, tapping away on a WinXP system at all. :|
I still regard Internet Explorer as the Security Hole to begin all Security Holes. You don't hear nearly as many reports about holes in Firefox, K-Meleon, or whatever non-IE browser there is. Hell, even the IE wrappers do a better job at being IE than IE does being itself. That's saying something, given how much I hate that FBoH for its lacking CSS and XHTML support.

Size: <a href="http://www.pixelechoes.net/albums/desktop/my_k_meleon_is_smaller_than_yours.png">This</a>; is what I've done, in regards to snipping out extra junk and compressing DLLs. If I hadn't compressed that 2MB DLL and a few others, I'd likely still be in the 10.x MB range. K-Meleon is a small browser, and I appreciate that.

Search-This, Search-That:
I'm quite aware of <a href="http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/search.php?f=1">what this link here does</a>, thanks. I've been keeping a rolling log of sorts in this thread. Reminds me of what I want/need to do, and gives me a chance to centralize things for anyone else who might be interested in doing something similar.

I'll likely look into the other USB threads, as well as the CD threads for some tips, though. It might help me improve my little project here. I might even <a href="http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/2004/08/10/kmeleon-on-16mb-usb-1/">blog</a>; about it a little more.

--
Regards,
Omshiirion

Youre new here and probly dont know that most of us dont have IE and IE integration into the shell. Hell, most dont even run windoze shell at all. So what you said doesnt apply here.
240 files and 28 folders, theres your problem.
WTF,you listen to this crap;
TITLE = Eat a Flaming Bag of Hell (26 bytes)
ARTIST = Hill, Skodadod, and Nbz (24 bytes)
ALBUM = #turkishguy nutsos (19 bytes)
Aol, gmail? Are you out of your mind?
Theres couple 1gigers acc around the world already.
Oh,well,you probly using google anyway...

Um, yeah...

Anyhow back to what you were asking about there, you can remove the "K-Meleon" title from the titlebar by using a program such as Resource Hacker. It can be found here:

http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/

Also as mentioned, a while back there was a thread dealing with somebody installing K-Meleon to be run off of a CD. That thread contains some interesting reading, and can be found here:

http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?f=1&i=15139&t=15134

they also have some info about k-m on a pre install environment cd here:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
or via:
http://pcfreaks.big-clan.net/bartpe/pebuilder.shtml#download
the site where the resource is is sometimes not found i
assume a server with changing ip.

apart from that - You get more indipendent from path if You copy
your personal bookmarks and so on to:
k-meleon/default/profile/
k-m draws its files from that folder after new install or for new profiles.
putting info there changes that install info permanently.
i use that lokation for fixing German on new install by excahnging
English with German menus there.


The site mentioned above recomends making a self exctracting exe from k-m.
which is then run using the following script (km.cmd) by g. broeske:

echo k-meleon.CMD: Starting...
setlocal
if "%temp%" == "b:" goto _ru0
if "%temp%" == "B:" goto _ru0
subst b: C:\
set temp=b:
:_ru0
if "%USERPROFILE%" == "" set USERPROFILE=%ALLUSERSPROFILE%
if exist "%temp%\k-meleon\k-meleon.exe" goto _run
echo k-meleon.CMD: Copying "%1\Programs\k-meleon\*.*" to "%temp%\k-meleon\"
"%1\Programs\k-meleon\k-meleon.exe"
goto _end
:_run
start %temp%\k-meleon\k-meleon.exe
goto _end
:_err
echo.
echo k-meleon.CMD: No temp variable set...
echo k-meleon.CMD: Try adding a ramdrive...
echo.
pause.
:_end
endlocal


You probably do not have a Ramdisk or acces to a Ramdisk ->
but the temp part looks interesting enough.
regards

----- 'marc v' said -----
You're new here and probly don't know that most of us don't have IE and IE integration into the shell. Hell, most don't even run [Windows] shell at all. So what you said doesn't apply here.
240 files and 28 folders, theres your problem.
----- /'marc v' said -----
<a href="http://pxnet.pixelechoes.net/wpup/kmeleon.dir.txt"; title="K-Meleon dir text" />K-Meleon dir text</a>
Right now, I have one extra theme in there, that I'll be moving to default/ shortly. Other than that, I don't see much in there that I can dispense of. I kept a few kplugins/ , because I wanted layers, mostly. I might find a use for Macros, soon, and I'm not sure about the toolbars one. If it's the one that's let me move things around the way I want them, then I need it, as well. I don't like how some people have 5 bars at the top of their browser that do almost nothing. (:
As for the Windows shell, until blackbox for Windows gets a bit more stable, I'm sorta stuck with explorer.exe on my own computer

----- 'marc v' said -----
"Aol, gmail? Are you out of your mind?
There's [a] couple [of] 1 [GB Accounts] around the world already.
Oh, well, you['re] probly using google anyway..."
----- /'marc v' said -----
Yes/No:
I have a gmail account. I don't use it that much. I already have email set up from my two domains, including procmail and spamassassin on hand for the larger of the two, for a combined inbox space of, oh... 1.5GB. But that's not the topic at hand, mm? (:


Al.:
I'll have to look into this Resource Hacker sometime soon. Though I'd have to un-UPX my executable first, I assume? (:

guenter:
I had tried copying things to default/profile yesterday, and found myself restoring from a backup on CD (I've gotten paranoid, and hate having to redo *everything*, so I have CDs I burn backups of this stick to. (: I was glad yesterday...). When I copied all my things there, and disabled profiles (Instructions I saw in one of the threads here), It busted my plugins, somehow. The result was, rather than having my compact view, I suddenly had extra toolbars, but no File, Edit, View...?
I assume it was something I didn't do, or something I missed...

As for the Ramdisk, I don't have one, and I have no access to one, unfortunately. I'd love one, however. Maybe when I get my computer back, and get some more RAM, I could try that out, just to see if it works. (: (And, if all else fails, I could try putting my (virtual memory?) /swap on a Ramdisk. But by then, I wouldn't need it. )

--
Pleasantly confused,

Omshiirion

(Heh. HTML on the brain, it is. I keep breaking my links this way.
/k-meleon/*)

Nearly forgot to mention that I added the Flash plugin, just for S&G here.
So now, I have 3 in kplugins/*, and 2 in plugins/*.

After a search on the forums, I still can't figure out *why* npnul32.dll is so important, but I guess I'll keep it. (:

pity about ramdisk. i tested/checked on the idea from the recovery cd project. that is not so good without access to temp or ramdisk. it is also relying on a sfxed k-m so
forget the idea.

I have looked through what can be killed in folder default - thoght possible it does not amount to enough for the hussle. the only thing that remains is doing with less
less or nothing in skin folder (been said before 2).

You can experiment with making chrome smaller.
some parts of installed chrome are not really needed for everday browsing.
// they are however needed for special things like using about:config or
password & so on. (i have been toying around with it because every bit of xul
thrown out makes the browser faster on my small machine).

Hope that Your PC is working again soon
- else You will qualify for a dev in a couple of weeks. ; o )
regards