Where's the Browser Love for K-Meleon?

Filed under: Internet, Open Source, Browsers

Where's the Browser Love for K-Meleon?

by Lee Mathews Sep 25th 2008

There's been more than enough hullabaloo about Google Chrome lately. Hell, Michael Arrington even thinks it's a "Microsoft Killer" and is "nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows." Oh wow.

If Chrome is so great, then how is it that K-Meleon beats the pants off it in all my testing? Even as I compose this post in Blogsmith I notice the difference. For one, all my WSYWIG buttons appear. Chrome can't manage that.

For starters, you'll only be downloading the K-Meleon install file or a 7-zip archive (yes, it's portable!). There's no updater/downloader/manager application that does the isntalling for you. K-Meleon launches fast, renders pages quickly and accurately, and uses less memory with a half dozen tabs viewing the exact same pages as Chrome.

It's also got a built-in RSS reader, excellent (and extremely configurable) privacy options, built-in support for mouse gestures, integration (not importing) of favorites from IE, Opera, and Netscape, and built-in flash and CSS ad blocking.

It also natively supports themes and plugins - again, Chrome falls short. K-Meleon even has the ability to remember up multiple (you choose how many) previous browsing sessions. How cool is that?

My only real complaint about K-Meleon is that it's default look isn't that great. Somehow I'm not that concerned. This browser does so many things well that I can very easily overlook something like its aesthetics.

Chrome isn't going to kill my OS: it can't even make me switch from browsing with Firefox, for crying out loud. K-Meleon, on the other hand, I can utilize without missing a beat.

Want to give it try? Download K-Meleon, and share your thoughts. How do you think it stacks up to Chrome?

Tags: browsers, web browser, WebBrowser

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Rain said 1:54PM on 9-25-2008

K-Meleon is fast. But this latest version is buggy. It will freeze up after long hours of use and the only remedy is to shut it down and defragment your drive.

As a power user, that's not a good thing. So I had to ditch it, hesistantly I might add. But I found a wonderful and, I believe, even better replacement...ORCA!

Lee Mathews said 1:54PM on 9-25-2008

I haven't had that problem on my desktop or my Wind, but I'll keep my eyes peeled...Thanks for the tip on Orca as well, I'll check it out!

obo said 3:40PM on 9-25-2008

Orca's also pretty nice, with some Firefox plugin support and skinning. It and K-Meleon are both very good, tremendously overlooked Windows browsers.

I'll stick to K-Meleon for being open-source, but try 'em both.

Matt S. said 11:20PM on 9-26-2008

The big difference between K-Meleon and Orca Browser is that K-Meleon uses the old Gecko 1.8 engine that is used in Firefox 2. Every new release of Orca comes with the most recent nightly of Gecko 1.9, but not the trunk. Like Beta 3 that came out today, has the useragent string of Sept 22nd.

So dont fault it for being close source to much.

Munky said 2:15PM on 9-25-2008

I use K-Meleon all day long at work (11 hours). No lock ups at all.

I dislike Chrome because it doesn't seem to be very friendly with PDFs and Java. Some pages won't load for unknown reasons. I understand it is in beta, but if it can't handle simple everyday tasks, I can't use it.

Ryura said 4:05PM on 9-25-2008

God forbid that a post-release browser has more features than a beta browser!

Lee Mathews said 4:08PM on 9-25-2008

But they're both built on other things that have been around for a while (Webkit and Gecko)?

Also, Chrome is Beta just because Google says so? If K-Meleon called their new release 1.5 beta then they're on equal footing? The beta tag is kind of a non-issue to me.

Ryura said 4:21PM on 9-25-2008

By declaring their browser a beta, it means they realize it's not in a completely usable form yet. It also means there are many core improvements yet to be made. K-Meleon is past the beta stage; it should inevitably be better, and have less bugs and such. Therefore, comments like...
"If Chrome is so great, then how is it that K-Meleon beats the pants off it in all my testing? Even as I compose this post in Blogsmith I notice the difference. For one, all my WSYWIG buttons appear. Chrome can't manage that."

are completely unwarranted.

As for your comment,
"If K-Meleon called their new release 1.5 beta then they're on equal footing",
No. But if Google called their browser 1.5, then they'd be on equal footing.

Good said 8:50PM on 9-25-2008

but, K-Meleon is little ugly. If it has more beauty, I'd keep using it instead of Chrome. Other than this, it's great; fast, light...

ET said 10:03PM on 9-25-2008

If everybody else leaves most of their stuff in Beta, indefinitely, then they'd be like Google.

jccalhoun said 10:36PM on 9-25-2008

If Orca is supposed to be based on the Gecko engine why does it require Internet Explorer and where's the source code?

Matt S. said 11:31PM on 9-26-2008

Have you ever installed Orca Browser on a Windows PC that did not have IE installed and was made in this decade? No because there isn't a computer made in this decade that doesn't have IE installed.

Plus with the MSL(mozilla's license) it does not require you to open source your software to use Gecko.

Dwight Stegall said 2:37AM on 9-26-2008

Surely you jest? I can't think of one good thing to say about K-Meleon except that I had almost forgotten it existed until you mentioned it. Gee thanks. :)

Pastilan said 3:02AM on 9-26-2008

Yeah, I forgot that it existed, I encountered it two years ago. I knew that it was a browser but I did not care to try it because Firefox is good enough for me.

As for Chrome, I think its quiet good but I still have Firefox as my main browser.

Ajay said 1:20PM on 9-26-2008

I've been using K-Meleon for a long time now. It has been improving with time.

I do hope that the development speeds up!

Oleg said 3:33PM on 9-26-2008

Speaking of betas and Google. Anyone else notice that Gmail is still in beta? I would say Google beta things should be expected to be usable by this logic, or call it something else, or remove beta tags on products that are clearly no longer beta (Gmail)

Matt S. said 11:19PM on 9-26-2008

mabisa.k said 11:10AM on 9-29-2008

I was using K-meleon as my primary browser a couple of years ago--can't quite remember why I switched back to Firefox, but as I struggle with Chrome (which I am posting from at the moment, AdBlock and other beloved extensions be damned) I cannot think of a reason not to skip right over FF and back to KM. Thanks for the reminder!

Wiilm said 10:01PM on 11-02-2008

For the contributor concerned about the latest Gecko engine Hao's latest CCFME K-meleon uses Gecko 1.91b2pre.
http://kmeleon.blogspot.com/
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?1,83269

CCFME K-meleons are beta versions - not beta in safety - ony in that some minor bugs need ironing out.

CCFME has several very useful features not found in the official Kmeleon and is designed for compactness, lightness on system resources and speed

The default skin of CCFME does not have the Menu toolbar activated [File, edit.view etc] but this is easily remedied by changing
user_pref("kmeleon.toolband.Menu.visibility", false);
to
user_pref("kmeleon.toolband.Menu.visibility", true);

This can be done after first running K-M to automatically generate the profile folder
Open the profile folder which is located in the main CCFME folder which is located where you extracted it to, and then open "*********.default" folder, in there is the pref.js file which you edit as above. save your changes with K-M closed. Then restart - many changes to K-M require a restart to activate them

By default this Menu is accessed by right clicking on the Preference button. Many other options can also be discoverd by rightclicking on various buttons]

K-meleon is a splendid browser but does require a little research and configuration to get the best out of it. K-M can do a lot more than immediately meets the eye,
The help forum is very good. http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/forum/list.php?1
Just ask for a feature you want and if it is possible in K-M you will be shown how to get it working.

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