K-Meleon 0.6 ReleasedWednesday October 31st, 2001Andrew Mutch writes in: "K-Meleon 0.6 has been released. This release includes a number of new features including completely customizable toolbars and multi-language support for the browser menus. A number of features have been improved including more privacy options and better preferences support. Check out the Release Notes for full details." If there were no fish head icon, I might try it :o) . Can you say "better graphic please.." Well I mean lizard head ;o) . Just not something I wish to view all day.... #3 I don't see the pointby pauljs <pauljamessmith@netscape.net> Wednesday October 31st, 2001 4:37 PM Apart from us Mozilla loving geeks who is gonna use K-Meleon, it offers nothing IE doesn't have (except better standards support, but the average user doesn't think about that). I can see the benefits of the likes of Galeon as the gnome project didn't have a decent native GTK browser but K-Meleon just seems a waste of time. Sorry this sounds like a troll, but I can't see the average user downloading what looks so much like IE, really I do hope this project succeeds as I think it's a great example of how a native app can embed Mozilla and as long as the contributors are doing it because they want to rather than seeing themselves with a major market share then good luck too them. Positive things - I managed to get my Halifax <http://www.halifax-online.co.uk/> banking working fine as well as the back and forward navigation problems I was having in Netscape 6.2 on this site <http://www.monkeyontoast.com/menu/index.htm> working fine in KMeleon. I don't know if this is fixed in the underlying Mozilla code or KMeleon handles these things differently. The point is obvious, but the users are broken. We now have the basic fundaments to start an argument with broken users that there is an alternative browser that is equivalent or surpasses Internet Explorer in terms of usability and performance, but outdoes it with grandeur in terms of standars compliance. It's just a matter of slowly trying to fix the users. It\'s kind of hard to get rich off these free, open-source products. Some of the features that our \"non-geek users\" like include: * Menus and toolbars which can be totally customized for your language. * Pop-up ad blocker feature which can be set in the browser interface - anyone else out there offer that feature yet? * Small download and relatively light memory footprint. We have Win95 users who couldn\'t run Mozilla or IE 6 on their machines who swear by K-Meleon. * Fast rendering of pages. We do appreciate the compliments! #8 Re: Not quitting our day jobsby Tanyel <tanyel@straightblack.com> Wednesday October 31st, 2001 8:28 PM If you are able to implement good features that other browsers don't have then you should. That will give people a reason to download your browser. I think the ad suppression alone would be a very good start. If kmeleon can keep things going well, its advantages will be a lighter memory usage, much faster operation and stability ... not to mention that if it were to crash it wouldn't bring down your whole OS like some browsers... all are pretty major improvments over IE. But foremost, I think, is that K-Meleon is developed because the developers feel like developing it, and power to them for giving us Mozilla loving geeks yet another slick standards compliant browser to use... one size fits all is a farce, viva choice! :) True enough, the 'average' user probably might not dig it... ...but: on a laptop running a cut down version of Windows (thanks to 98lite <http://www.98lite.net/98lite.html> ) it's a super light-weight browser and beats the pants off of IE in many many ways. #38 Re: I don't see the pointby tldcolli <tldcolli@Yahoo.co.uk> Wednesday November 14th, 2001 1:37 AM I'm no Mozilla geek... in fact I don't like Mozilla nor Netscape. On Linux, I used Netscape until Opera got stable enough to use, then I switched to Opera. On Windows I used to use IE... but I find K-Meleon is quite good. Nice and fast, smaller memory footprint, and about as reliable.... AND I don't have to worry about "secret" Microsoft security holes (features?)... so now I use K-Meleon almost always now. Another thing I like is its clutter free environment. I like KMeleon - its simplicity & speed. I also like its IE like toolbar structure. Now the only thing they need is something to differentiate it from IE. I think a GUI for setting up menus/toolbars would be absolutely great. But don't limit the choice to couple of items - give the user an ability to place any function on the toolbar. Yeah, I know there is the config file, but your run of the mill users won't know where to start. I like KMeleon - its simplicity & speed. I also like its IE like toolbar structure. Now the only thing they need is something to differentiate it from IE. I think a GUI for setting up menus/toolbars would be absolutely great. But don't limit the choice to couple of items - give the user an ability to place any function on the toolbar. Yeah, I know there is the config file, but your run of the mill users won't know where to start. at <http://www.utro.ru/articl…2001110103351644104.shtml> in Russian, on a straight news site for some reason. For those who don't speak it, the reviewer was pleased and shocked that it worked out of the box and it did everything as claimed to do. He was also impressed that, even though, there was no way to manually change the language code page, KMeleon auto-recognized russian and switched to it. Care to make a russian translation of the menus? I don\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t believe we have one yet. See <http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/resources/> for other translations. Contact <emanuele@muug.it> if your interested. -Chris >>Care to make a russian translation of the menus?<< I'll see what I can do. I don't have a russian keyboard, so it maybe a challenge. k-meleon is what mozilla should have been: - standards compliant - lean - high performance - stable BROWSER!!! the question is, why use mozilla or netscape??? k-meleon has none of the bloated crap that makes mozilla and netscape unusable as BROWSERS! none of the useless compose, mail, news, skin crap! and it would have hit v1.0 two years ago!! and might have had a chance at getting good usage. unfortunately, since it doesn't have aol or microsoft shoving it down our throats, it's unlikely to get much up-take. too bad. >one of the useless compose, mail, news, skin crap! so you suggest I should not use mail anymore and use an ugly browser? If you want k-melon to evolve faster, just help them. Noone holds you back. The rest of us use our beloved Mozilla, ok? Do you let us? thanks... C'mon! Use one of the zillions of clients designed SPECIFICALLY FOR READING MAIL!!!!! Instead of an add-on to a browser. The rest of everyone uses IE, dude. Your welcome. Who do you think you are to even dare to think about to tell me what program I should use where and when? Go and marry your IE if you like it so much, but let the rest of us who want a real browser at peace. Noone wants to hear your comments. lost! I'm telling you which program to use because the reason Netscape and Mozilla are so incredibly irrelevant is because they've been wasting their time implementing components that have nothing at all to do with *browsing* and sentiments like yours are directly responsible. I'm extremely pissed that Mozilla dropped the ball and now we don't have a viable browser to compete with IE. All because you can't download Outlook. That's right, noone wants to hear these comments because they're so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they can't see that IE has 98% market share and growing. And all I ask for is a stable, high performance, standards-compliant, lite *browser*. > And all I ask for is a stable, high performance, standards-compliant, lite correct. All _YOU_ ask for is this. And as you pointet out initially K-Melon (which uses a Mozilla component) seems to satisfy your needs so why do you bitch around here that Mozilla doesn't?? > All because you can't download Outlook. So and now you explain to me why I should be able to download Mozilla while not being able to download Outlook? Or is it that I simply don't _want_ to download Outlook? I'm on the Internet day and night (and it's 3:07 AM here now) surfing around and using email and that without getting a single virus/worm while literally hundreds stroke all people I know using IE and Outlook. Does the word security tell you something? I hope so you may understand why I don't want to use the largest security hole out there. Comment like yours where there all times I can remember but they were never the opinion of the majority. You are extremely pissed? Okay and I'm extremely glad that the Mozilla community gave me these great tools. Maybe the browser could be in a better shape if the other components were dropped but I prefer to have them all and I'm able to wait a year longer for them to be really cool. Time goes by fast. And what makes you think, that Mozilla is the only responsible for competing with IE? You know the Opera browser? It is a small, fast and stable browser and even available for free and now but still you say "IE has 98% marketshare and growing" (never trust a statistic you didn't fake yourself). Did you notice that around me more and more people changed their default browser to Mozilla and some to Opera? Even my girlfriend did. How can this be if there is no good alternative? And no I didn't do everything to convince them, I didn't have to. Why in the world would I want to download Outlook? I like having tight integration between my web browser and my email client, but even if I were to decide to switch to a separate email client, Outlook would be LAST on my list. It is not because I have anything against Microsoft. It is because Outlook is a security nightmare. It is because Outlook is clunky. It is because Outlook will never have all the features that I want. If you want to use Outlook then go ahead; you have the right to make your own mistakes, but please do not berate us for not wanting to follow a pack of lemmings. #28 IE Statistic (if you can call it that)by SubtleRebel <mark@ky.net> Sunday November 4th, 2001 8:34 AM First of all, do you actually believe "IE has 98% market share and growing" is true? Secondly, are you counting the non-Windows platforms? Since IE is only available for Windows and Mac, anyone using another OS ( ie BeOS, BSD, Irix, Linux, OS/2, OpenVMS, or any of the many flavors of unix ) does not even have an option of using IE if they wanted to. Thirdly, are you counting AOL and Compuserv users as part of the market share using IE? Or have you left them out of the statistic too? If you follow these forums much then you should know that the latest beta of the Compuserv software is using Mozilla code. If things go well then AOL will be next. Hmmm, what would that do to the market share numbers? Do your calculations include WebTV and other such devices? How about portable devices like a PDA? I have not seen IE much in embedded systems. You accuse others of being "wrapped up in their own little worlds" but apparently you have not looked outside your windows to see that the real world consists of lot more than what is dreamt of in your philosophy (or your dreamland statistics). > First of all, do you actually believe "IE has 98% market share and growing" is true? < I hope not. That's an inflated number. It's more like 80% as far as I can tell -- which is actually falling. Color me surprised. Publicly available statistics are hard to come by, but it looks like there may be significant conversion of NS4.7 users to the new platform, and some (smaller) conversion of IE users. > Secondly, are you counting the non-Windows platforms? Since IE is only available for Windows and Mac, anyone using another OS ( ie BeOS, BSD, Irix, Linux, OS/2, OpenVMS, or any of the many flavors of unix ) does not even have an option of using IE if they wanted to. < All those users added together don't account for 1% of the browser market. Be, Irix, VMS and OS/2 barely exist, while UNIX in its various flavors remains an esoteric platform used mostly in technical education, engineering, and back-room applications. > Thirdly, are you counting AOL and Compuserv users as part of the market share using IE? Or have you left them out of the statistic too? If you follow these forums much then you should know that the latest beta of the Compuserv software is using Mozilla code. If things go well then AOL will be next. Hmmm, what would that do to the market share numbers? < If CI$ and/or AOL adopts a Mozilla-based browser as the default it has the potential to shift market share numbers significantly, not only because of direct adoption by those users, but because of the network effects. More sites will need to test on the Mozilla platform as a result of direct adoption, which makes the platform more adoptable by other users due to increased support on the Web. > Do your calculations include WebTV and other such devices? How about portable devices like a PDA? I have not seen IE much in embedded systems. < WinCE devices use Pocket Explorer last time I looked, while WebTV switched over to an IE variant after the acquisition. (My information may be out of date on that point as I have not needed to look into this issue in the last two years, thank God.) However, neither product has significant browser market share at present. In fact, no embedded browser has yet gotten significant market share, and the Mozilla-based Gateway/AOL appliance was just pulled off the market like most of its cousins. Mozilla is as much a flop in the embedded space as IE or Sun's HotJava browser -- that has more to do with no one wanting a dumbed-down PC than with the browsers themselves. #30 Re: Re: IE Statistic (if you can call it that)by AlexBishop <alex@mozillazine.org> Sunday November 4th, 2001 2:12 PM "I hope not. That's an inflated number. It's more like 80% as far as I can tell -- which is actually falling. Color me surprised. Publicly available statistics are hard to come by, but it looks like there may be significant conversion of NS4.7 users to the new platform, and some (smaller) conversion of IE users." I'm assuming that new platform is Mozilla right? In which case, are you actually telling me that Netscape's market share is growing for the first time since 1995? Alex > In which case, are you actually telling me that Netscape's market share is growing for the first time since 1995? < I'm not sure. That seems one possible conclusion from <http://www.TheCounter.com…/2001/October/browser.php> compared with past months. I don't subscribe to a professional statistics service and I don't know any reliable public ones -- in particular, thecounter.com obviously hasn't updated their browser detection code this year. They don't have an IE6 category or a Netscape 6 category, so whether IE6 or NS6 is accounting for the growing numbers in "Netscape comp." is unclear. I am guessing it's NS6 but it could well be just conversion from IE4 and IE5 users to IE6. Anyone got better stats? Here are a couple of other public browser statistics links. They don't seem to tell quite as happy a story, although do note that Windows Mozilla 5.0 comes in over 1%. Overall, they put IE at 86.1% and NN at 7.35%. IE6 for Windows is at nearly 5%, which suggests that's what's making for the "Netscape comp." growth at thecounter.com. Also note they admit their sample is skewed. <http://browserwatch.internet.com/stats/stats.html> And after a little more poking, it's not clear to me that these statistics have even been updated for months. Sigh. Guess we just don't know. #34 Re: Re: Re: Re: IE Statistic (if you can call it tby SubtleRebel <mark@ky.net> Sunday November 4th, 2001 8:31 PM BrowserWatch's Agent Details stats are rather interesting, but I do not think they are an accurate representation of Internet wide web browser usage. For example : 2.38% -- MSIE/5.0 (Windows) 2.99% -- MSIE/5.01 (Windows) 4.94% -- MSIE 6.0 (Windows) 6.72% -- MSIE/5.5 (Windows) ========= 17.03% 1.13% -- MSIE/5.1b1 (Macintosh) 4.16% -- MSIE/5.0b1 (Macintosh) 5.68% -- MSIE/5.12 (Macintosh) 10.6% -- MSIE/4.x (Macintosh) 44.0% -- MSIE/5.0 (Macintosh) ======== 65.57% I only snagged the percentages over 1% because I did not want to spend time adding up everything. Anyway, this sampling is enough to indicate that Mac users dominate at BrowserWatch. The stats presented at thecounter.com seem a bit more realistic, but they are still far from scientific. If Mozilla specific sites (ie Mozillazine, mozilla.org, Bugzilla, MozillaQuest, etc) started using counters from there, then Mozilla's "global" performance would be given a boost. I have no idea how many hits those sites get a month, but it looks like it would only take about 6 million hits to gain a percentage point. Since there are probably some "IE only" sites out there using these counters, I would think that would skew the numbers a bit in IE's favor too. Talkback did not like how I formatted my table of BrowserWatch stats and instead just jumbled it all together. Mac: 66% Windows: 17% "I do not think they are an accurate representation of Internet wide web browser usage." Ya think??? TheCounter does seem more realistic: <http://www.thecounter.com…/2001/October/browser.php> IE: 79% NS: 5% NS Compat (whatever that means; IE6? NS6?): 11% I think is the best browser after mozillla and opera why ? -is small (3-4 Megs) -looks like ie (negative point for developers ,positive for end users ) -fast starup -a little slower (agains last night builds..) I think netscape should put a link on their website so users could downlod also Kmeleon (Little Zilla) if they don't want full Browser ... This is the definitive Explorer Killer (remember how much bloated things you have to download with IE...?) Thanks for the positive comments. I would point out that you can ditch the IE-graphics if you don't link them. The tool and menu bar background can be customized as well as the toolbar buttons. I think we have 3 or 4 alternate buttons schemes including Netscape and Mozilla on our resources section of the K-Meleon web site. You're dead wrong! In fact, IE does *not* include bloat such as mail, news, skins, chat or compose! Get your facts straight! That's a major reason why it's used in far larger numbers than Moz/Netscape (monopoly doesn't hurt). Actually, IE's bloat factor depends on what options you choose when you download. A standard download includes Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, etc. Plus, it's still a huge download. That having been said, I don't think most users know the difference and the main reason that IE is used by most people has everything to do with MS's monopoly. I\'ve replaced IE wth k-Meleon on the Win2k machine I\'m forced to use at the office. K-Meleon is a nice piece of work, I just wish it (or something comparable) was available for Mac OS X... :/ |
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