K-Meleon


Where to find information to configure and modify K-Meleon

KMeleonWiki > Welcome > Resources

The available resources are grouped into different categories depending on what you want to do.

Learn more about K-Meleon

The best source for K-Meleon information is in the Documentation section. There is also the User's Guide and Reference Manual, both for K-Meleon 0.7 and last updated in 2003. Among the external K-Meleon resources you can find some links to other general K-Meleon pages.

Change the graphical icons in K-Meleon

The skinning tutorial shows you how to install a new skin that you have downloaded from the Themes page. You can also download older skins for 1.1.x & previous versions Old Skins. Extra Throbbers can be downloaded and used together with any skin or theme. The external K-Meleon resources page has links to skins and themes pages located throughout the web. To customize your Windows desktop or personal web page there is also a list of Icons, Buttons, and Banners for K-Meleon.

Translate K-Meleon

You can download translated versions of the K-Meleon menus from our Localization resource section. That is also the place where you should find links and pointers to help you localize the Mozilla part of K-Meleon.

Customize the menus, accelerator keys and available toolbar buttons

This information is kept in the ConfigFiles. You can edit these files through the PreferencesDialog. Beginners should use caution when editing these files and it is helpful to create a test profile for extensive customization.

Customize the behaviour of K-Meleon

Much of K-Meleon's behaviour can be altered through the PreferencesDialog. Even more can be altered by editing the PrefsJS?, UserJS, UserChromeCSS? or UserContentCSS files directly. These files are read by the Mozilla/Gecko rendering engine. Further information is available in the following documents.


Extend K-Meleon with Macros

Macro Library
K-Meleon has a small MacroLanguage that allows you to extend K-Meleon's functionality. A set of ready made macro snippets are to be found in the Macro Library.


Extend K-Meleon with third-party plug-ins

K-Meleon uses the same plug-in architecture as Netscape/Mozilla to interact with ThirdPartyPlugins. Extended information is available at mozdev.org - plugindoc.

Use third-party applications to improve over K-Meleon

You can, for instance, install and use an external bookmarks manager or an external cookies manager together with K-Meleon. Or you can use an external mouse gestures program. You can also use a download manager or miscellaneous tools like a tool to make K-Meleon your default browser or a password manager.

A Short History of Firefox Add-ons with K-Meleon

The history of this type of extension is very long and dates back to private K-Meleon 0.7 and 0.8 versions. MonkeeSage? (Jordan Callicoat) inspired others by his example e.g. of his Mytpes for Firefox (and K-Meleon). K-Meleon 0.82+ (a private build by Dorian) showcased several add-ons of this type to a broader base. Version 0.9 sa the first official use of e.g. Aggreg8 RSS Feed aggregator for K-Meleon 0.9/1.0. After that many users tried this also: alain, disrupted, kko, Sebastian Deutscher, guenter... (to mention some of the earliest and most successful) made more add-ons usable and created some tools that made things a little easier. For K-Meleon 1.0 the prototype of a integrated SeaMonkey extensions installer by kko and guenter was ready for depayment but was not used officially because it was considered a security risk. However K-Meleon 1.0 included a few Firefox add-ons. They were adopted as official and gave K-Meleon improved functions: Console² extension developed by Simon Bünzli and Contributors, Flashblock extension developed by Ted Mielczarek and Contributors. And a proprietary Mtypes editor 0.3, a XUL add-on not for Firefox but for K-Meleon.

The Advent of Firefox Add-ons for K-Meleon 74

K-Meleon 74.0 supports rudimentary mechanisms to make Add-on install a lot easier. That brings tools into reach of almost all users that are willing to undertake the adventure of trying to hack a Firefox add-on that they find would be nice to have with K-Meleon.

At the time of this post November 2014 we must still do many steps manually. So let us set up a tool-chain. We need a Firefox, 7z to unpack/pack, an editor that can do UTF8, a few add-ons and a recent K-Meleon with an Error Console2 that works. And we use a macro to make K-Meleon XPI ready: Edit?. Else we go to the URL about:config create the preference "kmeleon.install_firefox_extension" manually and set it to true.

We also look ino URL about:config for the keyword "compatibility" and set all add-on checking that is still true to false. Else we need to add K-Meleon as target application into every install.rdf

<em:targetApplication> <Description> <!K-Meleon> <em:id>kmeleon@</em:id> <em:minVersion>74.0</em:minVersion> <em:maxVersion>74.0</em:maxVersion> </Description> </em:targetApplication>

FirefoxESR24 should be installed anyway to test whether a bug is K-Meleon or GRE specific. Now not all add-ons are made for this version so we suppress most compatibility checking: FireFox addon checkcompatibility.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/checkcompatibility/

We install and inspect the add-ons we want first with Firefox. And those that look promissing we export to K-Meleon. To export from Firefox to K-Meleon we use an Addon Exporter.

We export them into ./K-Meleon//browser/extensions Maybe into a spare install?

In the ./used-profile/extensions/ they would be deleted when the name or anything is wrong. But even at ./browser/extensions they need the right name to work.

After the export we may need to rename the add-on. Because this add-on-exporter sometimes changes the name of the export. The correct name is in install.rdf under ID. Use 7z to look inside the install.rdf if it is an archive/xpi.

Example <em:id>{4BBDD651-70CF-4821-84F8-2B918CF89CA3}</em:id> the XPI would be named {4BBDD651-70CF-4821-84F8-2B918CF89CA3}.xpi The unpacked archive would be named {4BBDD651-70CF-4821-84F8-2B918CF89CA3}.

Now we are ready to start our new add-on in K-Meleon74. We look into URL about:addons (bookmark this URL, we may need it again, I used hotlinks plugin for this).

If we are lucky the add-on works and needs no configuring.

If we are more lucky the add-on not only works but also has a preferences panel that gives us acces to all its internal functions.

Example: chrome://rvjmimeedit/content/pref/pref.xul

Maybe also bookmark the URL for easier access. We can make an kmm later or leave it.

If prefs do not give acces all we need we look for another URL in the chrome folder

Example chrome://cookiekeeper/content/ for an alternative.

After some tries we find:

chrome://cookiekeeper/content/cookiekeeper.xul

Download contains old cookieculler+button.7z and cookiekeeper»cookiekeeper.

internal://b127cff42584249fed40ef028e0aff44.zip

is the URL that we want and bookmark it for further use.

(where is content? usually add-on folder chrome/content/ or inside an archive jar/.../content... & look it up in the chrome.manifest of the add-on if You have a problem to find it)

Add-On Not Working More often than working. Why?

All are Firefox add-ons after all. Firefox' GUI is XUL based K-Meleon's is not. All add-ons that manipulate the GUI will not work. This includes functions in an add-on that otherwise will work. No button in a bar/GUI, nor the connection from add-on to browser if it is relying on an element that belongs to the GUI.

NO go. You will probably not even get a message from the console2.

Most add-ons have functionality implemented in JavaScript. One single errors stops the code. So when an add-on does not work You need to look into the Error Console.

But You cannot do much unless You know JavaScript which makes that You are a dev. If it was an essential add-on that a dev wants he would have done already - so no help. A Foxi add-on dev will not help You either - You are using a FF clone that he does not support.

No help from outside You are on Your own. But it is not always a lost case.

You need a little HTML, other coding or daring to do anything. With that You can try to comment out and change little things. Trial and error, For password exporter I merely had to comment out ( // before the lines) functions that threw an error and were not really needed. You save Js as UTF8 - same with install.rdf.

Source?


Create a new skin for K-Meleon

The skinning tutorial shows you which files to edit to make K-Meleon look the way you want. Visit the ThemeTools page to see a some of the recommended applications that can be used to help create K-Meleon themes.

If their licence allows, you can also try to adopt a Mozilla theme, Firefox theme or Opera skin.

Help develop K-Meleon

To help develop K-Meleon you need to get your BuildTools and read some of the DeveloperDocs.

Web-development with/for K-Meleon

K-Meleon uses Gecko, the rendering engine from Mozilla.org, and should be detected as such. You should use K-Meleon to see how Gecko handles your pages, not how K-Meleon handles your pages. Gecko aims to be fully standards compliant. If K-Meleon fails to follow the standards due to limitations in Gecko (and thus is also visible in Mozilla and/or mfcEmbed) you should report your findings to bugzilla. If K-Meleon is the only browser that fails to follow the standards on a certain page, it should be reported to our bug database. Never ever try to get K-Meleon to "work around" bugs we have. Write standards complaint pages and let us know if we fail to handle them correctly. That's all.

Unofficial K-Meleon versions

On the Unofficial K-Meleons page you can find unofficial versions that could be interesting for you.

Unofficial K-Meleon plug-ins

Non-official plugins are available here.


K-Meleon Extensions & Add-ons Resources

(broken link) K-Meleon Extension Setup (KMES): On the K-Meleon Extension Setup pages you can find a description of this extension setup system and more interesting for the users, a lot of extensions (some Mozilla extensions, for example) adapted for K-Meleon.

K-Meleon Extensions Central: http://kmext.sourceforge.net is the place where you will find many of the popular mozilla xpi extensions modified to work with K-Meleon as well as many other non-xul extensions written especially for K-Meleon.

K-Meleon

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