K-Meleon

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Infobox Software2 K-Meleon is a web browser based on Gecko, the layout engine written by the Mozilla Foundation and also used in Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite, and SeaMonkey. The aim of K-Meleon is to provide a light-weight browser running under Microsoft Windows using the operating system's native interface for the application's toolbars and menus - similar to Galeon or Epiphany on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, and Camino on Mac OS X.

Because of the lower resource requirement, K-Meleon is more responsive than most other Gecko based web browsers. It is beneficial for systems where the hardware is aged and system resources are limited. In fact, it starts up much faster than one of its competitors, Firefox.

Contents

[edit]

Development and Specifications

K-Meleon is released under the GNU General Public License and runs on the Win32 platform. The latest release is 0.9.12, released on January 10, 2006. The layout engine is based on the Mozilla 1.7.12 build. Due to K-Meleon's tiny community of developers, updates do not happen on a regular basis. This is especially critical when it comes to security-related issues (which are mostly related to the Mozilla core engine). This is the principal reason of the latest release, which also improved a number of K-Meleon related plugins. There are also unofficial versions and derivatives of K-Meleon which offer updates to the program, such as compatibility with the SeaMonkey (Mozilla 1.8.x) engine.

K-Meleon was originally written and developed by Christophe Thibault in 2000.

[edit]

Customizations

K-Meleon also has a highly flexible interface design. All the menus and toolbar buttons can be completely customized using its configuration files. This feature can be very useful in an environment where the general public has access to the browser such as a library or Internet cafe. Despite its usefulness, it may be intimidating to an end-user, as there is no GUI to customize the individual toolbars. A user must edit the toolbar configuration file to make any changes in the button layouts, although one can move around the toolbars by simply dragging their handles.

As the Windows native interface is used instead of XUL, no Mozilla based themes and only a few Mozilla extensions can be installed into K-Meleon. This severely limits compatibility with other Mozilla applications. However, it has its own plugin structure called "kplugins" and browser skins, which can extend the functionality and customize the appearance of the browser. A macro system is also used for kplugins to interact with the main program, as well as access common browser functions. One other difference between other Mozilla based browsers is the Mozilla profile directory is located in the program's directory instead of the user's application data directory. This may cause errors for users with limited file system access.

[edit]

Derivatives

[edit]

K-Ninja

K-Ninja is a modified version of K-Meleon with no menu-bar and a reduced number of toolbar-buttons (one of those buttons opening a menu that has all of the normal menu-bar entries) to reduce the screen area used by the browser for functions other than rendering the website. An attempt was also made to expand and reorganise the Context menus (right-click menus) for speed and effectiveness.

K-Ninja was originally developed by Mark Reaves at Mot Studios. When Mark left Mot Studios and founded LDIOS (the Linux Desktop Initiation Operating System), the Official K-Ninja Forum also moved to LDIOS. The LDIOS site has not functioned since Nov. 29, 2005 and Mark Reaves has not been available to maintain the project.

On June 29th, 2005, "TransitMan" updated the K-Ninja rendering engine to gecko 1.7.9beta, and since March 12th, 2006, Al has updated it further (to gecko 1.7.13) and is maintaining it on a new homepage as K-Ninja "Samurai".

[edit]

Portable Versions

In the vein of Portable Firefox, some users have created modifications to enhance the portability of K-Meleon so they can run the browser on other Windows computers without having to install the software. Douglas McFadzean's projects are designed to "enhance the K-Meleon web browser, particularly its portability". These projects include Pocket K-Meleon, KMprof, KMVX, KMV (K-Meleon On The Move) and KM@. These projects focus on the ability to run K-meleon from a USB flash drive or portable hard drive, leaving no trace of browsing on the host computer.

There have also been some (very rough) early attempts at making a version that can run from a read-only device, such as a CD (see the K-Meleon-ME1.7.12-mod-fromCD).

[edit]

Latest Developments

Experimental, unstable builds based on recent Seamonkey rendering engines (gecko versions 1.8 and 1.9) have been made by Hao Jiang and others, using new versions of k-meleon.exe compiled by Dorian (including some attempts at functioning without XUL).

[edit]

See also

[edit]

External links

de:K-Meleon es:K-Meleon fr:K-Meleon gl:K-Meleon it:K-Meleon csb:K-Meleon nl:K-Meleon ja:K-Meleon pl:K-Meleon sk:K-Meleon fi:K-Meleon

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/K-Meleon"