Hoy,

OK, I know it sounds like a troll-prone message, but I didn't find enough useful information on either the Web or this forum.

As far as I understood, K-meleon is faster the Firefox. I'm usin a Mac exclusively so
- I cannot test K-meleon
- We Macusers were lucky enough to get the worst Firefox ports ever. FF is tremendously slow (even the interface is; it feels like Java).

K-meleon seems to be to Windows what Camino is for Mac: a truly ported version, hence better, stronger, faster (oops, sorry, too much Steve Austin there). And without extension (the best part of FF, IMHO)

Did I missed something? What is the future of K-Meleon? Is it like Camino (still running but slower and slower development pace)?

David, you are pretty much on target. No, you don't sound like you're trolling. Many of the people here also use Firefox, and like it very much.

K-Meleon does not compete with Firefox. They play different roles.

Best I can say is, imagine you have 2 vehicles in your driveway. One is a fully-equipped SUV. Can go anywhere, do anything. It's equipped EXACTLY the way you want it. All the gadgets. That's Firefox.

The other is a Porsche. That's K-Meleon. It's faster, lighter, breezier, but it doesn't have each and every accessory exactly as you'd like.

OTOH, as you get to know K-M better and better, it IS very customizable. But not with extensions. You have to learn how to change the settings in files. You made some allusion to extensions not necessarily being all good, and that is true as well--they are the best feature of Firefox: they are also the worst.

I don't use a Mac, and I've never used Camino. However, I have heard that comparison made before; yes.

When you say K-M is "stronger" than Firefox, I'm not so sure. For heavying it out through thick and thin, Firefox might be the stronger browser. I've put it through some very heavy-duty abuse.

A couple of things: Firefox officials shouldn't be compared to K-M, IMHO. I'd test a Moox build if I were you. Also, Firefox can be extremely annoying until you get it right, and then it can be an excellent browser. Having said that, I'll quickly add that when the first official version makes its first "Here you are, Public; I'm IT, and no longer experimental" this Tuesday--I don't think Firefox will be at all ready for the public that is used to IE6. Absolutely no way. But Firefox officials are lost in their own arrogance, and never listen to what has been said--for a year--on their forums.

K-Meleon is made by a very few people, so its future is held together by good wishes. It is not currently usable on Linux, and it would be better if it were, because the kind of people who use it might easily leave it for Linux.

David wrote:

"As far as I understood, K-meleon is faster the Firefox."

I worked a little with the Release Candidate Version of Firefox 1.0. I compared page rendering time with K-Meleon 0.9 Beta2. For my system the differences are very little between the two browsers. KM is a little bit faster (average maybe about 5%) . But I think in practice this difference is not obvious. In addition to that there are pages that Firefox renders more quickly and vice versa.

So it seems that the speed advantage of KM reduces accordingly to more features of KM and newer versions of Firefox. On the other hand it seems that Firefox seems to work quickly as long as you work with the pure browser that means for exemple without any extensions. I know these are very superficial observations. It's just an impression. Perhaps there are more profund explications who can admit or refuse this.

So, I'll stay with KM as standard-browser. Hope that the development of KM continues in spite of little ressources.

Norbert

Norbert, I agree, but Firefox without extensions is just not Firefox. All of its advertising leans heavily on those extensions. Lots of people do use it without, but a number of us have run it with between 30 and 60 extensions as a matter of course. This was partly to test extensions' compatibility, and partly to test whether Firefox really could carry a load.

As long as Firefox is emphasizing the importance and adaptability of extensions, though, it should be tested with them. Opera, for example, comes very heavily loaded. Extensions are less emphasized, because Opera already has a lot of options built-in.

Of course it depends on the computer, as you said. My Celeron 1.7 has a very, very bad cache, so it doesn't get along well with Firefox. Mainly, Firefox will not start up quickly. K-M will. I think to test their speed fairly, you'd have to run Firefox with whatever was required for it to do the very same work as K-M.

K-MELEON ROCKZZZZ

BTW: FF 1.0 is out - in case anyone's interested and hasn't noticed it yet.

thx raa i will at least look at it.

To compare FF with KM v0.9b at default, you'll need the following extensions listed below. These related FF extensions aren't absolute mirrors of the features since either of the browsers may provide some parts of the features that the other doesn't, but they're the closest I could find for comparisons sake. I don't know if they make a difference w/FF speedwise. But they would increase FF's download size if they were included at default.

Session Saver
Paste & Go
Any of the various Zoom extensions
Single Window or Petit Tabbrowser Extension
User Agent Switcher
Download Sort
ChromEdit
PrefBar
ConQuery
Text Link
Search Button
Sort Bookmarks
Flat Bookmark Editing
IE View
Mouse Gestures
keyconfig
undoclosetab
Compact Menu
Reload Every
Copy Image
Go Up

jsnj that's cruel. ; o )

that is at least 7 mb chrome with coresponding speed reduction for each seven mb.
(ca. 15% each on my machine)

(i only use page rank and web designer extensions if i have to use FF
- for the rest i have one better, faster, more configurable & more complete browser
& one that is even faster & can handle some extensions)

p. s. (& thx 4 Your good work)

K-meleon rocks! (Although I think that was said before!). I also like Opera a whole heck of a lot.

I tried to go the mozilla.org way---thunderbird and firefox--but everyone's observations here regarding extensions has rung true. Firefox was just too unreliable, inconsistent in speed, and buggy. Thunderbird I thought was great at first--I got tired of (no tomatoes, please) MS Outlook taking for ever to update my messages on a modem connection (!--I was so old fashioned back then!), but over time, sure enough, Thunderbird became turkeybird...slow, lumbering, bloated, good for holiday dinners. . .

I have to say that, as much as I loathe the MS empire, the recommendation received here for Maxthon has been very impressive for the few times I need to use IE. It seems to have many of the advantages of k-meleon, and is jaw-dropping fleet. Who would've thunk it?

Firefox has great roots, but I think k-meleon is true to the mission of a great terrific non-IE/MS browser. Congrats, guys!

jsnj:

On my FF install I use only:

MouseGestures
CompactMenu
ImageZoom
PlainTextLinks
TabbrowserExtentions (which includes your mentioned undoclosedtab+sessionsaver funcitonality and much much more)
X - Paranoia Button - love it (much more then the privacy plugin from romanito ;()
Bookmarks-Backup - is it available in km anyway?
External Application Buttons

most of them are only a few kb in size and to be honest, all of them leave the km-macros out in the rain.

Anyway, I'm glad that the development of km is still in progress and I'm still hoping that there will be real tabs available in the future (calling the layers 'tabs' like the wechselbalg crew intended to do isn't the real deal....)

I must admit that I didn't test any version (besides wechselbalg) since 0.8.2 but I don't believe that all extentions you mentioned are needed (I dont miss anything here on FF with the installed ones).

^o~o^

"Firefox has great roots, but I think k-meleon is true to the mission of a great terrific non-IE/MS browser. Congrats, guys"

Firefox came later - and won the race. Thats the sad fact. Years ago I was hoping that km could leave his entity as a niche-browser, but not anymore.

I'm still happy using it though....

I use both at work now.

KM is the fastest BY FAR. Also I use it on all my switches/routers web frontend, as the Java all works quicker. On Firefox it hangs a lot.

Firefox is better on MS designed sites - but KM is better on w3 sites.

Use both! There are many tools to do a job. Don't just use a hammer, else then every problem becomes a nail.

Nick

The list I provided was not to suggest that KM has more potential features than FF. That certainly isn't the case when you consider the countless FF extensions available and some of the native XUL features. I was just trying to provide a more accurate start base for comparison. You'll need to go and download those extensions to start on similar footing with KMv0.9b to compare them speed & feature-wise at default.


I have to say that, as much as I loathe the MS empire, the recommendation received here for Maxthon has been very impressive for the few times I need to use IE. It seems to have many of the advantages of k-meleon, and is jaw-dropping fleet. Who would've thunk it?

Try Avant Browser. It's faster and in some cases more configurable.


most of them are only a few kb in size

The entire list I provided amounts to about 490kb compressed in jars. And that doesn't include Tabbrowser Extensions which alone is 240kb. KM's macros dll & entire cfg file amount to 114kb combined completely uncompressed. And 38kb if you were to compress them together. You can probably add a few more kbs to KM for the corresponding menu additions & toolbars. But it's still considerably less than FF with the feature set

and to be honest, all of them leave the km-macros out in the rain.

There is nothing Compact Menu provides that KM doesn't. Same goes for Paste & Go, Go Up and Copy Image. AFAIK none of FF's zoom extensions provide full page zoom. And keyconfig isn't nearly as comprehensive as KM's accelerators file. So to state that all of FF's extensions leave the km-macros out in the rain is a definite overstatement.


TabbrowserExtentions (which includes your mentioned undoclosedtab+sessionsaver funcitonality and much much more)

TBE is a very good extension IMO, but to be fair to FF when comparing it to KM speedwise, I left that out in favor of Session Saver because by its own admission TBE slows down performance particularly for older PCs. Also, Session Saver is a closer match to the Groups & Session macros functionally.


Firefox came later - and won the race.

There was never a race. There has been 1 core developer working on KM only sporadically for the last couple years just to keep it alive for its users and to offer a comparable alternative browser for those dissatisfied with the other browsers. Not to "beat" or "win over" FF. The other people like myself are contributors either through code snippets or testers or documenters. I'm assuming the goal of this thread is not to show a "winner" per se, but to just contrast and compare speed & features and see why people prefer one over the other.

"Use both! There are many tools to do a job. Don't just use a hammer, else then every problem becomes a nail." Nick

Well said Nick! I love that and I couldn't have said it better myself! I'll have to try and remember that for use in the future. And this is why I use KM and Firefox, the Suite for "Powerhorse Work", Netscape to wax nostalgic, and Beonex just to have fun and remind myself of the days when Mozilla 1.0 came out. However, because Firefox is more stable for me this is the one I use the most, unfortunately, and it's because of the GDI bug on Win98SE systems. Although guess what people? It's back again to haunt us like a nightmare from the past in FF 1.0. -grrr!-

"I'm assuming the goal of this thread is not to show a "winner" per se, but to just contrast and compare speed & features and see why people prefer one over the other." jsnj

Again, wonderfully said! I love threads like this where the pros and cons, along with different features of different browsers, email programmes, other software, etc., are compared and described. I think they're great and I've learnt a great deal from such threads! jsnj himself well-knows that he's given URLS for a lot of wonderful software and software pages here that have kept me busy on a rainy day and glued to the 4-wheeler chair. (Thank you jsnj!)

I really found it fascinating his comparison of how all those different extensions would have to be loaded into FF just to equal the out-of-the-box power of KM alone. Impressive! And I sat here nodding my head reading the list because a lot of 0.8.2 was described in there and a great deal of "wechselbalg version" as well. Amazing!

My personal beliefs about extensions are that they're nice---but I can't write one. So if there's a feature I want I have to suggest it on the extension forum at MozillaZine and HOPE someone knows what I'm talking about---or find an extension which is close---but doesn't do all that I want. However, in KM, even someone with extensive brain damage like me (that's no a joke by the way) I can usually peck something out in macros that will do exactly what I want! And I've shown extension writers at MZ how it can be done with just a few lines of code instead of their big extensions and they're quite intrigued.

Well, I'm done prattling along. Let's get on with the thread. I just wish the GDI were fixed for old fogeys like me who refuse to upgrade to XP (I don't have the time to, literally, so why bother?) so that I could come back to KM as default. -sigh-

Amicalement,

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

Wow!

I didn't expected so many feeddbacks. Thank you guy for replying and for the quality of replies.

I think I will make a summary of these messages to help spread the word and will publish it (French and/or English) on my blog. I'll keep you in touch.

Hey and don't forget to visit over on: http://s3.invisionfree.com/K_MELEON_the_GECKO/index.php? Were just getting started there. Incidently I use bangbang023's 3rd/unofficial version's and one of the reason's I believe Firefox is doing so well, is because of the enthusiasm that the folks have over at Mozilla as well as one of the best alternatives to replace IE. K-Meleon will grow if people stop acting like it is their sole possession. That's one of the reason's why I fired up another forum, publicity is a tool in it's own right, here the engineer's and the programmers hammer it out, there are alot of folks that are getting the word out and are becoming interested in K-Meleon. It's not that old dinosaur any more that the people I meet on other forums insist on. So it is a mistake to make K-M out to be only a techie's browser, I for one as limited in my experience as a programmer, but I have changed certain config's that resulted to me as an improvement, alot of variable's this browser has, and the more talk that goes out the more mind's will catch on about how configurative this machine can operate even for a novice, we were all novice's at one time, you learn by trial and error, and not being afraid to venture out, if you make a mistake, and you are reasonable intelligent you will yield from it and learn something you didn't know a minute ago.

K-M to me is like a ducati and FF is more of a honda with saddle-bags, I am tired my friends can't remember since I had any sleep, I like Firefox, but I really think K-Meleon can be every bit as effective as a speed monster and at the same time is intelligently built by very formidable persona's. Get on that forum and leave your links to your blog man!!

jsnj:

"So to state that all of FF's extensions leave the km-macros out in the rain is a definite overstatement."

Yes, maybe it sounds like that What I meant was the possibility to configure most of them as you wish in an easy way, without rewriting/changing macro-scripts. I spended hours/nights to configure my km in the past to get it to work exactly like I want it to be (and had a high satisfaction level at this time), only to see that a few changes in the next version made my work useless and forced me to change everything again. To be honest, I refuse to spend so much time over and over again, if there are extentions available that let me configure a browser the way I want with only a few mouseclicks.

But, even if I'm using FF most of the time now, I'm still thinking that km is the better geckobased-browser of the two. What I meant with 'race' was that there weren't enough devs that believed in km to make their contribution to it..on the other hand, look at FF..(or phoenix as it was called before). It really rose like a phoenix.....

And in time so will K-Meleon, it runs like a "HEMI" on XP, and alot of the time it really isn't the browser it's maintanance on your OS that makes all the difference. I use O&O Professional version for defragging after that cleans and re-files my sources its tighter than a you know what. Maintanance is something I always try and keep up manually, I don't like those auto-pilot features. K-Meleon is breaking new ground, hang in and see!



J.C.A.N

wtf is a HEMI? ;o)

anyway, be sure that km runs even faster on w98se ;P especially with the newest hardware available.

I spended hours/nights to configure my km in the past to get it to work exactly like I want it to be (and had a high satisfaction level at this time), only to see that a few changes in the next version made my work useless and forced me to change everything again.

Interesting. What was made useless? Any macros from v0.7 will work in v0.8.2 & v0.9. In FF, you can almost guarantee that new versions render most extensions useless until they're updated to be compatible. Then there are extensions conflicting with each other which I've always had problems with. Hopefully since they're at the 1.0 stage, the extensions won't have to be adjusted with each new version.


... if there are extentions available that let me configure a browser the way I want with only a few mouseclicks.

Well you're luckier than me since you found extensions that allow you to configure FF exactly the way you want. If you can show me an extension or an easier method to fully customize all of FF's menus, context menus, & keyboard shortcuts, and then simply copy & paste those customized files to new versions, I'd be greatful. Menu Editor, Compact Menu, & keyconfig don't even come close to KM's configuration possibilities in that regard. But I do understand your point that it would be beneficial if KM allowed the user to add macros via a mouse-click or two. That would be nice. But then again the visible macro code copy & paste method allows the user to see exactly what he or she is adding and in some cases it's not too hard to figure out how to tweak the new macro a little more to your liking. Trying to personally tweak an extension is definitely more complex and time consuming.

From an AP review of FF:

Despite being a "1.0" release, Firefox is mature. And the breeding is good. It's the product of more than a thousand full-time engineers and volunteers and is based on the open-source Mozilla suite, which in turn has its roots in Netscape.

1000 full-time engineers & volunteers? Really? Just for FF? Or is that taking into account all who work on all aspects of Mozilla,org?

jsnj:

'what was made useless?'

I dont remember all, it was the time when monkeesage was here quite often and offered his own builds. One thing I remember was that the script to open a page in a backgroundlayer was different and I had to adapt my whole macro.cfg-file. Don't ask me for the exact syntax, it's 2 long ago since I made these things. It was even 2 long ago to remember all stuff I had done until the new version came out. Only thing I knew is that I had a perfectly configured km and most of it didn't work anymore with that version. It would have been not that hard to fix it again, but the fact that I couldnt port my time-consuming written cfg-files made me very disappointed.

You are right about the FF extentions, I was shipping long time with the 0.5 (or 0.6?) version of FF (it was still called phoenix there) cause I noticed that changes that I made also didnt work in newer versions.
Know, I'm using the FF 1.0 PR version, a skin from the moz-page, the extentions mentioned above (which I had to search until I found the extentions-mirror, cause not all are offical provided for the new version yet) and I'm satisfied with their functionality so far. I dont use keyboard-shortcuts and other stuff, but I can understand what you mean. Its much harder to configure FF if you want to give it a completely different look etc. I dont have the time to do this anymore, I'm busy with other programming stuff which I think is more worth(y?) to put my brain-energy in.
Compact-Menu is a nice extention, since it makes it possible to bring all my needed icons, adressbar, bookmarks etc onto 1 toolbar.

I'm still curious about the new km version, but I need tabs and the possibility to put them at the bottom of the screen. Until there isnt a way to import FF extentions, this will stay a pious hope I think.

Sensai, IMHO at this moment you are stating good reason to stay with Firefox, or use both browsers.

I would not like to see K-M with a lot of extensions. We already have Firefox; we don't need a second one. Firefox is the extension-browser, and K-M is the lightweight browser. That works fine. They serve different purposes, and a person can have them both, side by side.

I think a lot of people here do use both. It is easy to keep K-M for speed, and I like it for default, because on my slow computer it calls up so fast.

And then you can go ahead and load up Firefox with any extensions you like, so it becomes very useful. You don't need to worry about speed, because that's what K-M is for.

WFM. I like K-M just the way it is...<<CRASH!! o ) >> ...well, not QUITE the way it is....

I have been using FF 1.0 for a couple of days now. And I keep on coming back to km. km 0.9b2 is so much faster than FF 1.0 in my exp.

I must say, when I first discovered km, I was very dissapointed. Coming from FF, most things is done with mouse-clicks. In km, I have to fiddle with macros and stuff. But on the whole, I prefer km. I never thought I would say this.

As most people in the west are climbing the high-speed internet access bandwagon and dumping dial-up, the speed differences between km and FF and IE and whatever browser will be hardly noticed. Us here in ZA, well most of us are still on dial-up...

I think the time will come when dangling speed as a carrot to entice new users will be over in a couple of years' time. So maybe the focus for future km projects should be on security, user-friendly facilities, etc.

km, don't die on me, please.

You are in South Africa, Nicholas? Here on the Pacific coast of Canada, I could not be much further away from you unless I left the planet. :-)

Most people here have quite fast ADSL. Food and ADSL are cheap, but accommodation (owned or rented) is agonizingly expensive! However, ADSL by itself does not make the speed difference between FF and K-M hardly noticeable.

What happens is that the computer may not be able to cache and retrieve from cache quickly enough to keep up, unless it is a good fast machine. I've had a litany of problems with this Celeron 1.7 (479 RAM) because of that. As a result, K-M flies, while Firefox is like a truck. Also my crashes in K-M may be related (Firefox does not crash).

But, yes, computer speed will be a non-issue. However, then our darned halogen-projectors will be giving us very very slow smell renditions, so when we're looking at the diesel truck, we're still smelling the flowers from the previous frame!!! :-)

Yep, I am in sunny South Africa. Accomodation is relatively cheap. Food as well. ADSL is too expensive (for me at least). Cars = ridiculously overpriced. :-(

I get the "memory cannot be read" crash now and again. A pain at times, but I am sure it will be fixed by 1.0; for which I can't wait.

I must say the way FF is being marketed nowadays is quite admirable. Very professional.

I have a 1.7 P4 with 392MB of RAM.
km cache = 65536 KB (Memory) and 49152 KB (Disk). Cache comparison is "Once per session".

This is from Germany (housing overpriced and food dear, DSL comes with telephone
for aan additional ten $ or so & so i have never been on modem).

if ADSL is anything close to DSL Your crashes cn not be from that. I use Athlon1000
and Pentium500 cpu for online. Maybe it is Your Celeron or system is unstable -
but Carson remember one of my compatriots had these problems also - and with differnt hardware - so i think there is a glitch in 0.9. kind regards

I finally got around to installing and testing K-Meleon today while waiting for an instrumented Firefox build to finish.

The minimalist look is nice (theme I guess) though I put the icons, menus, bookmarks and url bar all on one line.

I suspect that I can't live with my Firefox power features that come from TabBrowser, Context Menu and EZ-Sidebar.

As far as speed goes, it seems to me that Firefox is faster on many pages and about the same on others. This is using my 4W Experimental 1 build using VS 2005.

I think that the look is too minimalist at this time. But I'll check back later.

Well, it was good to see you here, mmoy. :-)

-- And, for those who don't know, there goes the man who makes the fastest builds of Firefox on the planet. His are the so-called "Community Edition" or what I call the independent "freestyle" Firefox versions. Mmoy's work is second to none in Firefox. Nice to have him visit amongst the company of K-Meleon's best builders here. :-)

I'm curious as to which version mmoy tried, the official or the latest beta.