Just fired this e-mail off to a friend whom I wish would use K-M. I thought it made good points so I wanted to post it here. Always a chance of inaccuracies so please feel free to point any out. otherwise feel free to take/excerpt for the "cause"
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Hi B,

In response to your letter and link:
http://download.cnet.com/K-Meleon/3000-2356_4-10047772.html?tag=mncol;1

Regarding the negative reviews, frankly IMO they are either posted by people who did not seek to address the work around or are concerned with the program's graphics design which to me is a sign of novice users.

Regarding "Cnet stats for last week: Fire Fox 136,000 downloads, K - Meleon 176", the ratio is probably fair but I believe most people who download K-M go directly to the Sourceforge site to get it (and the offering of add ons) since K-Meleon is a word of mouth product owing to it's own "pipeline".

As far as the page renditions there is some truth. In my web design experience (I use 4 browsers for comparison) K-M (and Opera) will show minor differences to IE (Industry standard). Some differences can be corrected if you know where to "tweak" others are a result of a curious issue where Microsoft not K-M is non compliant with certain standards: "...the Gecko render engine, which follows the W3C Web Standards much better then Windows Internet Explorer."

Regarding You Tube, I've seen no issue. Many times users "tweak" their flash settings to undesirable results IMO.

Regarding program size, in my experience the larger the program the slower the response time therin (with a few exceptions). I've tested K-M on Vista and XP as with all O/S's it just runs faster in every way. Keeping in mind that K-M is the one of the safest if not the safest browser available I believe the small size is reflective of that security non-issue. Yes it is perfect for older computers but that is not it's small footprint design reasoning IMO.

Here's a quick comparative regarding security (you can look at all browsers as well):

http://secunia.com/advisories/product/28670/?task=statistics_2011/

http://secunia.com/advisories/search/?search=firefox

Site disclamer: (Just covering their butts IMO): "...statistics provided should NOT be used to compare the overall security of products against one another."

To me, the major turn-off to K-M is that due to it's security and high configurability design it can both "scare" and frustrate the average user I mean if there is a slight paranoia on a site certificate the K-M pop-up is there by default (where it is not on Opera and IE). (BTW I consider myself an average K-M user, not advanced).

I found I could not copy and paste in my emails(!). K-M site directed me to the work around and explained the security reasoning behind it... now it all works fine. Every issue I've come across I was able to resolve within 7 days or less. If the add on is not available then the people in the forum are pretty rock steady with a mix of advanced coding background people and "regular" people to interpret the information. A very user friendly resource.

But one review sized it up nice:
"Cons: Not all the options are immediately obvious, and some things can only be done by editing the config files - not difficult, but not for everyone. People addicted to Firefox extensions won't find them here, but then K-Meleon can do most things without them."

The fact that K-M does not update very often is because it doesn't have to, not because as some believe it is a dormant project.

For me not having the nightmare of constantly updating my security which was a real bummer with IE (and Opera to a lesser extent) is worth the short investment of time to learn to be in control of my browser like no other!

Nice, thanx Mtestlab
Oh yes, lots of people just take a short look at KM and then claim that this and that function wouldn't work or not exist, while in reality they just overlooked it, being used to the special ways of their own browser! And they keep wanting to use Firefox addons, while never realizing in their 5 min test that KM has its own macros and extensions, so they say there weren't any, tss.
Must admit though, some settings are really a bit hidden, like opening links in the background with a middle-click. There's a switch in Tools > Mouse Accelerators > Firefox, and voila, links open as they are used.
Or in Edit > Preferences (F2) > Tabbed Browsing --> Tab Bar, there are some important settings that most people never find, like closing tabs with a middle-click on it, since there's no "close tab X" needed at all.

Your secunia links are cool (but perhaps they just didn't bother to test such an unknown browser, who knows?? )

One thing is true, unfortunately the current official version 1.5.4 is really getting more and more problems with modern code on some websites, like facebook :-( The 1.6beta is much better there, but still has a few other bugs, mostly harmless GUI stuff, so will take some time yet to be declared stable. KM could really badly need some soon updates, but just too little manpower currently, pity.

Regarding download stats, I imagine too that most people download it directly from the homepage, here's a link to its statistic:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmeleon/files/stats/timeline
There are download numbers that I find absolutely stunning, considering how calm things are in the forum and how unknown the browser is, and that KM shows up in general browser statistics with around some 0,0x% users!

But wherever there's a site with ratings, they appear rather good really, e.g. on Softpedia:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/KMeleon.shtm

What I personally love most about this browser is the privacy toolbar (by default unfortunately hidden). Very handy buttons to un/block stuff like javascript, cookies, popups, most ads etc. with 1 click, and always have their states in sight with one look. That toolbar allows me to keep by default "all shields up" for security, yet it's a matter of 1 click to drop one or two if needed on a certain page temporarily.
Oh and I love that I can extremely simple put any image as toolbar background, by saving it as "back.bmp" and throwing into the current skin folder!
And I love that there are so many options for all sorts of things by simply right-clicking on it, e.g. on most toolbar buttons, on tabs etc. People are used to seeing a tiny little "down" arrow next to a toolbar button with a context menu, but KM doesn't have those arrows next to half the buttons (saving space), so every new user overlooks those menus Have seen a review lately where someone said KM were a bit "cryptic", which is certainly true in a few other regards, but the examples he listed only showed he didn't grasp yet that "just right-click" trick, which isn't cryptic at all.
I love that I can simply add any menu I like on any button right-click, although yes, this does require a bit more knowledge, but not that much.
And I love the bookmarks or hotlist "Nick" function, to open either single bookmarks or whole folders by typing the nick into the URL bar.
And I love that the URL bar works at the same time as search bar, if you click on the search globe instead of the Go-Button, saving precious toolbar space.
And I love that I can right-click on the search-globe to choose another search engine, or e.g. highlight some word on a page then right-click the globe to send that word directly to an online dictionary like LEO.
And I love the macrolanguage, which admittedly requires a lot of learning if writing a macro oneself from scratch, but on the other hand allows even for completely clueless users to do simple little customizations in other people's macros, like changing a hard-coded path or change a menu text to make it a bit clearer or such.
And... and...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2011 10:18PM by siria.

can i have a Linux version without using wine

While looking at those download stats I just came upon this:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmeleon/files/k-meleon-dev/

looks like som 1.7 development (?)

For the not faint of heart:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmeleon/files/k-meleon-dev/1.7.0a2/

Quote
nanton
can i have a Linux version without using wine

No K-Meleon.exe is an MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class) based application.
To compile & later run K-Meleon.exe You need Microsoft C libraries or their wine port.