Hiya kiddos,

My name is Kyle, and I’m one of the odd “my browser is my religion” breed. With 0.9 finally meeting all of my needs, I’ve made the transition from Firefox to it being my default browser. Since I’m the local computer guru of sorts for a number of people, I’ve spent the past few days working on a way of streamlining the install process of K-Meleon for multiple installations. The easiest method that I was able to achieve was using a patching system which alters the prefs.js, userContent.css, etc. Essentially, all that I have to do after a K-Meleon install is to run the patch and select these files.

IÂ’ve tweaked my K-Meleon setup to the nth degree, which uses a modified version of the Firebird (Qute) theme found on the toolbar page. Personally, Qute is the only theme that IÂ’d ever use, and the Firebird version was the only one that matched the default Windows color scheme. Perhaps if png was used instead of bitmap, there wouldnÂ’t be all of the issues with transparency. A screenshot of the theme in action is available for viewing here: http://consolevision.com/members/burnero/misc/kmeleon.gif

The patching application is simple to use, so I thought it worth sharing with all. HereÂ’s a breakdown of what changes are made:
The default theme is replaced by Qute.
The userContent.css is updated to include the ad blocking from: http://www.gozer.org/mozilla/ad_blocking/
The toolbars are automatically positioned and locked.
The homepage is changed to Google.
Keyword Autosearch (searching from the address bar) has been enabled and uses Google as the default engine.
The individual layer icon was dropped (ugly imho) in favor of having more space per tab.
Menu icons were also dropped for cosmetic reasons.
Layers were resized from 35 to 25 to allow for more to be shown.
Layers now open next to current and close to previous.
The browser no longer nags when closing multiple layers.
Browsing is switched to layers only for a single window interface.
Sites are blocked from altering the browser settings.

I know that K-Meleon is all about customization, so donÂ’t flame me in that regard. IÂ’m not asserting that my choices are best, but this is the way that IÂ’ve had my Mozilla installation for quite some time.

Usage/download: http://consolevision.com/members/burnero/misc/Kmpatch.zip
Do a clean install of K-Meleon 0.9.
Leave the run after install option ticked, and then close the browser as soon as it loads.
Run the patch, and browse to Profiles\default\(x).slt\prefs.js.
Do the same for Profiles\default\(x).slt\chrome\userContent.css.
And finally skins\Phoenity\toolbars.cfg.
Now press and hold enter to patch the remaining skin files until it closes.
Reload K-Meleon and enjoy. Take it easy all.

Nice work, Burner0. One notices your straightforwardness with browser config...

By now, I very much agree with you about the customization aspect of KM, because that's the path to follow if you want to change somewhat your browser experience...

Pity this is not for me, cause I retrograded to version 082... Would it be much to ask for you to consider a more general purpose tool?

Something i noticed from your screenshot: your customization uses 3 rows for menus and bars. I never use (and that is in any browser) more thant two, usually with the menus and addressbar in the first row and everything else in the second. Just my EUR 0,02...

@ burnerO - more variaty = more k-m & thank You! regards

In regard to two rows, IÂ’ve never seen it pulled off effectively. I donÂ’t say this condescendingly, but rather that IÂ’m also a stickler for intuitive design. For example, the screenshot found in the gallery which attempts it, http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?binary=internal%3A%2F%2F6bb99ce441560a64d88dfe665649587a.png, is in violation of a number of human interface guidelines. The File/Edit/View menu bar should always be found in the upper left corner, or else the user is needlessly searching for it. DonÂ’t get me wrong, IÂ’m not saying that it might not feel right for you personally, itÂ’s just not the way that it should be for the general population.

All of the people that I move to a Mozilla based browser are being weaned off of Internet Explorer, and if the interface isnÂ’t friendly theyÂ’ll scoff at it before even hearing me out. This is where Qute enters the picture. Aside from using an Internet Explorer skin (gah!), people are very accepting of Qute because of its ability to feel native. I do combine the navigation buttons and the address bar, but I keep the number of buttons to a minimum to ensure an overall lack of clutter. Regarding the screen real-estate, a quick glance at Internet Explorer would illustrate that my setup is very close in size.

Out of curiosity, what reason have you for not upgrading to the latest version?

My layout has nothing to do with the one you mentioned. As I said, I have menus (the default ones) at the left on the first row, the adressbar at the center-right; below them in order is the toolbar (the default one for 0.8.2+) and the layer/tab bar. That's it...

About KM 0.9, I did upgrade and found a lot of things to my liking although I think it is somewhat bloated compared to prior versions. But I noticed that it wasn't running as fast as I perceived 0.8.2 to run on my 2 XP systems and, as I said elsewhere, what I like about KM is a) speed and b) ease of use.

I agree with Midas. K-meleon 0.9 has a lot of drop-down menus for altering settings. I didn't really mind the 0.8.2 way of setting tabbed preferences, but I think I would liked to have settings preferences in the preferences menu as opposed of doing it drop-down way. I can see why the new version confused me. Settings or preferences you thought would be together in one area is spread out into drop-down menus significantly. Drop-down menus also seem to be more intrusive and easier to make mistakes.

I agree with Guenter. The more different versions, the better. (BTW, Guenter, you also like 0.8.2+, don't you?)

I began with 0.8.2+ Wechselbalg (Sebastian's), and I still have it. I love 0.9 too, and I use it as my default. I also have a Moox and IE6, but I rarely use them.

I do have a one-line toolbar system, plus my bookmarks on the toolbar as a second line. That makes my opinion different from yours, Burner0, but I also say "Good work!" for coming up with a version many people will prefer.

Everyone is different. Well, not everyone, but I'll bet there are 6 or 10 very different ways of setting up K-M that people here are using. I think that's one of the best attributes of K-Meleon. It's good when people act as individuals, and it's very good in K-M because all these individuals get along together very well, and like to help others out.

Thanks to people like Burner0, who enjoy sharing their best ideas.