MozillaZine

K-Meleon 1.0 Released

Sunday August 13th, 2006

K-Meleon 1.0 has been released. K-Meleon is a standalone Gecko-based browser for Windows, designed to be light, fast and highly customisable. This first non-beta release is based on the Mozilla 1.8.0.5 code base (the same as Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5) and introduces many new features, including a find bar, autocomplete in the URL bar, site icon support, new preference panels and many other improvements and bug fixes. The K-Meleon 1.0 Release Notes have more details and a full K-Meleon 1.0 changelog is also available.

#1 Flash Blocker

by Lancer

Monday August 14th, 2006 4:58 AM

I want it for firefox too.

#2 Re: Flashblock

by schapel

Monday August 14th, 2006 5:53 AM

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/433/

#5 Re: Re: Flashblock

by Lancer

Monday August 14th, 2006 6:45 AM

cannot install extension...

http://www.lancer2.tie.cl/shot.PNG

#8 Re: Re: Re: Flashblock

by Lancer

Monday August 14th, 2006 8:32 AM

I realized that i cannot install any extension... Every extension I try to install, firefox give me that message

#6 Re: Re: Flashblock

by Racer

Monday August 14th, 2006 7:25 AM

I assume KMeleon uses a different application ID than Firefox. If this is true, then extensions made for Firefox will not work in KMeleon "out of the box". You *might* be able to make it compatible by opening it up and adding a KMelon entry -- but that would only work if the extension uses features that are available in KMelon.

Over the long term, it would probably be a better idea to install a compatible version of Nightly Tester Tools (which I could not find). That would let you easily force compatability without having to edit any files.

#7 Re: Flashblock

by tsahi

Monday August 14th, 2006 7:59 AM

k-meleon is a win32 app. that means it uses the win32 API to build the interface, and not XUL. so any and all extensions for mozilla products will not work on it. most likely, any extension model for k-meleon will be using .dll files for the extensions, and not .xpi.

#11 That isn't actually true

by thumperward

Monday August 14th, 2006 12:22 PM

K-Meleon is still built on top of Gecko and XPCOM: it's basically everything Firefox is without the XUL frontend. Extensions which aren't UI gimmicks can usually be coerced into installing on the "native" browsers (Epiphany, K-Meleon, Camino) with a little effort. When XULRunner starts being used as the backend for these apps they even get extension manager functionality for free.

- Chris

#14 Re: Re: Re: Flashblock

by BenoitRen

Tuesday August 15th, 2006 10:23 AM

Maybe I'm talking out of my behind here, but I don't recall the application ID to have anything to do with extension compatibility. For example, Firefox extensions can work fine in SeaMonkey as long as they use install.js to install it (SeaMonkey doesn't recognise install.rdf), and the extension hooks itself into components that they both have.

#3 K-Meleon vs Firefox?

by joltman

Monday August 14th, 2006 6:27 AM

So, the question is, what is different about it vs Firefox? I'm sure there's certain things that would distinguish it, but I couldn't see anything on their page.

#4 Re: K-Meleon vs Firefox?

by scuac

Monday August 14th, 2006 6:35 AM

"Based on the same Gecko rendering engine as Mozilla Firefox, K-Meleon uses the native Windows API to create the user interface instead of using the cross-platform XUL layer. This allows the browser to integrate more closely with the operating system, and makes K-Meleon less resource-intensive and more responsive to user input, which is important for users of low-end hardware. This approach is similar to that of Galeon and Epiphany (for GNOME), and Camino (for Mac OS X)."

From the Wikipedia entry for K-meleon.

#9 Re: K-Meleon vs Firefox?

by MarkHB

Monday August 14th, 2006 9:45 AM

The above has it... K-Meleon brings Gecko to people who either don't like XUL, and want a native-code interface, or else are on a machine (like my old 486 DX4-100 running Win95) that can't handle the added workload.

#10 Re: K-Meleon vs Firefox?

by pcabellor

Monday August 14th, 2006 10:08 AM

You can check here for a quick look: http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2006/08/k-meleon-10-released/

#12 Re:

by pplwong

Tuesday August 15th, 2006 9:00 AM

It used to be faster than firefox. But when I tried yesterday, I was quite disappionted that its speed is not really faster than firefox anymore, if not slower.

#15 Re: Re:

by BenoitRen

Tuesday August 15th, 2006 10:26 AM

Clearly your computer is so fast that you can't tell the difference. I sure can on my Pentium II 233 Mhz PC, where K-Meleon loads almost in the blink of an eye, while it takes 5 seconds for Firefox and SeaMonkey to load. Page rendering, though, is the same on all Mozilla browsers. I haven't been able to do much more, though, because it gives problems on Win95, since it's compiled with Visual C++ .NET...

#16 Re:

by pplwong

Tuesday August 15th, 2006 2:25 PM

Weird. I tried loading K-melon on a few different P4 2.0+, and K-melon still takes a few seconds to load (about the same as firefox).

#17 Re: Re:

by ChaosFish

Saturday August 19th, 2006 6:20 AM

I think it depends much on how many extensions you have installed, etc.

#13 Swift

by jilles

Tuesday August 15th, 2006 9:15 AM

Not entirely related but it seems there's a webkit based browser for windows under development: http://www.getswift.org/. The 0.1 sort of works but is definately pre-alpha quality. It will be interesting to see what happens if that matures.

#18 Re: Swift

by MozMonkey

Thursday August 24th, 2006 8:03 AM

Thanks for the link. I'm happy with Firefox, but this sounds like it would be great for people who want to test their websites for compatibility with Safari but don't have access to a Mac computer.

#19 Re: Swift

by MozMonkey

Thursday August 24th, 2006 10:03 AM

Thanks for the link. I'm happy with Firefox, but this sounds like it would be great for people who want to test their websites for compatibility with Safari but don't have access to a Mac computer.

#20 question about k-melon

by hjason

Thursday August 31st, 2006 10:26 AM

hello i am new to this new browser stuff is k melon supposed to take over for mozilla because mozilla is no longer on the website.

#22 Re: question about k-melon

by BenoitRen

Monday September 4th, 2006 11:56 AM

No.

Mozilla got 'replaced' by SeaMonkey.

#21 Definitely faster than FF

by emskorman

Saturday September 2nd, 2006 6:55 PM

K-Meleon loads at about the same speed as Firefox and may possibly render web pages a little faster though the difference is so slight that it is hard to measure. But when it comes to backwards and forwards (something I do often as I browse) it is much faster than Firefox, more on a par with Opera. The differnece is pronounced, at least on my computer. I miss my FF extensions and the FF ease of customization but overall K-Meleon provides a much lighter, snappier browsing experience. I will probably use it as my default until FF 2.0 and then do another comparison.

#23 Re: Definitely faster than FF

by BenoitRen

Monday September 4th, 2006 11:58 AM

http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=15707#15