Source: IOL Technology (Software)

Washington - When it comes to web browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Google's Chrome get all the attention. But they're not the only web browsers on the market, nor are they necessarily the best.

While you've probably never heard of Flock, K-Meleon, and Maxthon, these three alternative browsers offer features so innovate that once you try them out, you just might feel compelled to add them to your permanent stable of web browsing tools. Read on to find out why.

K-Meleon

If what you want in a web browser is speed, speed, and more speed - along with a healthy dose of customizability - then K- Meleon (http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net) will be worth your time.

This little-known browser was launched specifically to be easy on system resources - and therefore speedy where others browsers are not.

Even during installation, you'll see where the emphasis lies: K- Meleon gives you the option of installing a pre-loader that promises to increase browser load times by keeping a portion of the browser's code in memory at all times.

In use, K-Meleon lives up to its speed-first billing. Even without benchmarks, complex pages load noticeably faster than with either IE or Firefox, as both graphics and text appear almost simultaneously.

Keyboard shortcuts and menus resemble those in Firefox, so anyone familiar with that browser won't be burdened by the transition.

The fully tabbed interface works the same way it does on the other major browsers, too, and a handy Sessions menu allows you to save multiple browser tabs to one shortcut, meaning that if you regularly have, say, 10 web sites open in the course of your work, you can reopen them all with one click.

K-Meleon's other primary strength is its array of customisation options. The browser allows you to set up multiple user profiles so that each person who uses a computer can have a unique browser set up.

There are the usual browser-specific options for appearance, toolbars, privacy, and performance, but these are accompanied by a host of advanced configuration settings, mouse accelerators, bookmark options, and view settings.

Source: IOL Technology (Software)

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2010 06:56PM by encoderX.

Idiots. Just because of social networking they recommend Flock. As I say, idiots.

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encoderX

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IOL Technology
While you've probably never heard of Flock, K-Meleon, and Maxthon, these three alternative browsers...

Gets Maxthon shipped with a layout engine or it is just another enhanced GUI for some other engine?
If the latter is the case than calling Maxthon a browser is misleading to say the least.
I see on their page that IE6 or above is a mandatory requirement.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2010 10:18PM by Yogi.

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Yogi
Gets Maxthon shipped with a layout engine or it is just another enhanced GUI for some other engine?

Maxton is one of the best Trident shells (as You have noticed - requieres IE 6 or latter).
Highly customisable.

p.s. Many K-Meleon skins are ported MyIE2/Maxton skins.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2010 12:07AM by guenter.

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guenter

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Yogi
Gets Maxthon shipped with a layout engine or it is just another enhanced GUI for some other engine?

Maxton is one of the best Trident shells

You know what they say: If your car have a BMW shell, that doesn't make it a BMW, does it?

Bottom line, Maxthon is not a browser!!! It is just a shell.
Those who are advertising Maxthon by calling it a browser either disinform the clueless average user on purpose or are ignorant.

Very positive and even informed article for a change, that's great

Well, regarding shells, IMO one could just as well call KM a shell too, for Gecko engine :cool: The gecko is only included because usually it's not preinstalled, but if it were, we wouldn't include it either, or would we? Just my personal view :cool:

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siria
Very positive and even informed article for a change, that's great

Well, regarding shells, IMO one could just as well call KM a shell too, for Gecko engine :cool: The gecko is only included because usually it's not preinstalled, but if it were, we wouldn't include it either, or would we? Just my personal view :cool:

I agree. Maxthon is probably using APIs from IE.

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siria

Well, regarding shells, IMO one could just as well call KM a shell too, for Gecko engine :cool: The gecko is only included because usually it's not preinstalled, but if it were, we wouldn't include it either, or would we? Just my personal view :cool:

Sorry, I have to disagree.
"Web browser" and "shell" are different notions and have different meanings.
A shell is just part of a browser. You can't browse the WWW with a shell.
Any browser shell that doesn't integrate a functional engine can't be considered a browser.
You can't sell a roof pretending it's a house.

For better understanding:
Shell + (Gecko, Trident, Presto, WebKit, KHTML) engine = web browser
Shell + nothing = shell

Sure I understand that. This is just a matter of different perspectives.

Strictly speaking, yes, KM has a copy of its engine included and Maxthon not. Maxthon's engine is already on the users machine, so it's not like anything were missing for functioning.

My view is just that KM's engine is just as borrowed from other people as is Maxthon's engine, so neither they nor the KMeleon folks have any merit for that core of browsing technique. That makes me just feel that we don't really have any right to look down upon them for this, not for borrowing other people's work ;-)
And if they had included a copy of Trident, would that change in any way your view of the value of their work? I doubt it...
On the other hand, do browser folks like Opera, who develop not only shells but also their own engines, have a right to look down upon other browsers, who just borrow them, included or net? Well, for me they sure a have a lot more reasons for this than we ;-)

But well, yes, strictly technically speaking KM is more complete than Maxthon, on that we can agree

you are quite wrong..it's not that simple
it's not because the engine was included or not. there are gecko shells and there are gecko browsers.. what makes the difference is that gecko browsers incorporate the engine and change many codes in the trunk for better integration with the final product where as shells just use the trunk as is without any major changes.

a very good example is the orca browser which i believe started as a gecko browser and ended as a shell for whatever obstacles they could not get around. others like sleipnir or lunascape give you a gecko rendering option as shells and not as true browsers. in that same concept, lunascape uses the webkit engine by being just a shell where as browsers like chromium or qtweb truly integrate the engine as full browsers by making many changes to the trunk.

many gecko shells like bagel or midget don't even come with gecko just like trident shells and require you to install the engine separately and they utilise it through the mozilla active x control in a very similar way that tridents use ie through OLE
kmonos sdiadem is a gecko shell written in delphi that uses mozilla OLE:
http://www.kmonos.net/lib/arc/sdiadem.zip
and naturally requires the mozilla activex engine to be downloaded separately

the same goes for webkit..even for macs (where webkit is the os embedded engine)
some mac webkit browsers use the embedded engine and hence they are shells like sunrise browser:
http://www.sunrisebrowser.com/
where a browser like shiira comes with its own webkit trunk regardless of which webkit version is installed on the mac machine
http://shiira.jp/download/en.php
or something like classilla http://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/ where the devs have literally rewritten the gecko trunk from scratch for better integration with carbon.. the engine had to be renamed to clecko since it contains complete new coding for classic mac os

shell browsers have no control over updating the engine, and the engine has to be patched and updated separately-even if the shell gives you an option to update- where real browsers naturally include all patches and updates within

the problem with ie-based browsers is they can never be more than shells because they can't use the trident engine properly or develop on it since it's proprietary software

true, kmeleon is in essence based on the seamonkey trunk but many internal code is changed specifically for kmeleon not to mention its own chrome... if it were that easy or if kmeleon was merely a shell, 1.6 would have been released a year ago.

A good and concise K-Meleon review indeed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2010 10:55AM by Doon.

Interesting discussion. Shell or not shell, those IE based browsers need a trident engine installed, that is a fact; and with API calls you get your own browser using the IE system.
But I think that it's more complex to define a Shell.
If I make my own browser using trident it will be considered as a Shell. Doesn't it?

It depends.
If you bundle your shell with the Trident (or any other engine for that matter) making it functional than you get a web browser (that doesn't require a pre-, installed engine on the system on which you will use it).
However I doubt that M$ will give you the sources and licence for the Trident engine.