What's next for K-Meleon official developement? Is 0.9 the end of the line?

maybe ask @ official devs list. http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=14285

this is general user forum. & You read this thread
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?f=1&i=25998&t=25998

alternative read: http://boisso.free.fr/kmeleon.html
which could also be found via dev forum
best weekend

this is my unofficial answer to you... which means that everything i say isn't a known fact, but rather conclusions gathered from using these forums:

0.9 MAY be the end of the line as far as official releases go, but there are many other unofficial builds circulating, as you can tell by clicking on the link that guenter gave in the post above. If a 1.0 is released, it will be very interesting to see which features from the unofficial builds will stay and which will go.
Personally, I think a 0.9.1 should be released as a release to update the GRE and any small bugs that may exist... more as a maintenance release.

Brian

From: Ulf Erikson <ulferikson@fa...>
K-Meleon: Dead or Alive?
2005-01-08 14:56

Andrew,

I think my position to comment might be just as unique ;-)


Andrew is right on an important point: That line was not meant as a: "Do
as I want, or else..". It was a comment about my frustration. I *have*
asked myself more than once the last months whether it wouldn"t be
better to stop; Whether my offer to help build K-Meleon 0.9 had been a
mistake.

In case you didn"t knew I have never had any plans to continue after the
release. This release (when/if it happens) was not really planned to
happen, nor was any of the 0.8 releases.. since this project is more
dead than alive things tend to happen by.. accident? ;-)


I don"t use K-Meleon. Have not done so for almost two years. and a new
release will not change that.

What am I doing here then?

Back in the day.. I used to have an old laptop (pentium 166MHz, 32Mb, or
something similar) below the minimum requirements for the browser I
wanted to run; Mozilla. As a substitute I started to use K-Meleon.
Version 0.6 was terribly slow, the developers version 0.6.5 was faster
thanks the newer Mozilla back-end, but terribly buggy..

That"s when I started help out with coding. Brian had just left the
project and Jeff was too busy to help much, but at least Mark was there
to accept my patches and include them to K-Meleon. There wasn"t actually
much I could do with such a tiny computer. Some of the kplugins, not all
of them, and certainly not the main kmeleon.exe. When Mark left Jeff let
me access the CVS directly.

About half a year after the 0.7.1 release it was time for me to move
(physically). I throw away the laptop and later on got myself a new
computer. With my new toy I could not only run Mozilla, I could compile
it; I could dual boot in Linux. I had no need for K-Meleon. Mozilla was
the better choice for me.

One day I visited the K-Meleon website anyway. Just out of curiosity.
what would have happened to K-Meleon during my half-year absence?
Nothing! Not a single patch had went in to the CVS. At least I could
play with the source and see whether my new computer could compile
K-Meleon, and it could. I asked Jeff and Andrew what they thought about
a new release with the changes made short after the 0.7.1 release. The
answer was positive. But Jeff didn"t have the time. He gave me
administrative rights for the project so that I could make a release. I
never ever saw myself as a project leader. I had already left the
project! The idea was just to help with a new release which would get a
new Mozilla code-base and those old fixes that I already had made long
ago (but of course i couldn"t resist fixing some errors in kmeleon.exe
that i had been unable to fix with my earlier computer as well).

After the 0.8.2 release I was ready to leave. Andrew asked me then if I
please could stay around some longer. He had a group of users who wanted
to start with development. They would only need a bit of guidance, but
after that they would take care of everything. After a few mails all
went silent. None of them got started.. K-Meleon was a dead project for me.

Some months ago I asked Andrew again what he thought about yet another
K-Meleon release. Nothing much; Mozilla had surprisingly decided that
1.7 should be there stable release, it was release, it had even been
updated a few times with security updates. The idea was to update
K-Meleon to the latest Mozilla code-base and re-release the old 0.8.2.
Not more than a weeks work to make sure we have all Mozilla components
and chrome in shape. No plans or commitments for the future, just a
quick update. Yeah, sure ;-)

We are now three (or four?) months later. No K-Meleon 0.9, but a PS:
"Some kplugins don"t work on Win95". How could it take so long for that
message to come through? Is it that odd if I ask whether Win95 is
important enough to delay a release for? Of course I wish to fix it.
After all I was the one to break it ;-) But it *cannot* be done without
help from users of Win95! How long should we wait for them?

Since this was not the first time serious bugs were reported extremely
late, I have to tell you that I stand by my words: Due to the many late,
cryptic and sparse comments and bug reports I have been ready to throw
in the towel more than once. If those that can see a problem are unable
to describe the symptoms clearly fixing it becomes a fumble in the dark.
It"s not fun nor interesting. and we are already far further in
development than that quick update I had suggested long ago. Is it too
early to leave now or is it too late?

We"ll see if I can find time and energy enough to hang in until everyone
is happy and K-Meleon 0.9 can be released. I still hope so. I wish to
help those that still use K-Meleon! But I can only help if you report
bugs to the BTS and mail comments to the mailing list. The forums are
great to get help from other users in trying to reproduce suspected
bugs. But they need to be reported properly once they are confirmed.
Comments to the user forum scroll off the first pages in a few days.
Monitoring them would have to be done on a daily basis. I don"t have
time for that. Don"t ask me to take that time.

I will try to help you improve K-Meleon in the way you wish if you tell
me what you want and need. If you say that I should find that out myself
by searching the user forums I will say "No Thanks" any day of the year.


It"s your browser. I"ll help you if you help me. If you say Help
Yourself, the answer will be the same.


Can we please drop this subject now and go back to K-Meleon?



* Andrew I. Mutch [2005-01-08 20:11]:
> Carson,
>
> I appreciate that you are passionate about K-Meleon and I know you have
> been an active participant in the Forums. I can also understand your
> frustration and reaction to a comment that sounds like someone who wants
> to pack up their toys and wants to go home. However, I think it"s
> important to understand where Ulf is coming from and what drives his
> comments.
>
> I"m probably in a unique position to comment because I"ve been a K-Meleon
> user and supporter from 0.4. I"ve been through all of the ups and down
> since then and have worked with all of the developers since that time.
> It"s impossible to overstate Ulf"s role in the development of K-Meleon.
> Without his time and efforts, there probably wouldn"t be a K-Meleon
> browser, at least not in the form that we use it today. He stepped up at a
> time when it looked as if the project was going to die from a lack of
> coding expertise and he"s been keeping the project going since then. While
> the history highlights some of his contributions (and they are many
> including the Layers plugin when previous developers refused to create a
> tabbed browser), it probably doesn"t fully show his level of involvement
> in this project.
>
> http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?id=HistoryOfKMeleon
>
> I think part of the problem is a perspective. For relatively new users, it
> may seem that Ulf is taking on an air of haughtiness. In reality, he"s
> been extremely patient. Frankly, I"m surprised that he"s still working on
> the project. But for those who haven"t been here for the past several
> years, I can understand how certain impressions can be formed. That"s not
> a criticism of the newer users, just an explanation of how perceptions can
> differ based on one"s experiences.
>
> Back in the day, Ulf was a regular Forum participant. At that time, the
> Forums were not as productive as they are now (and lets admit that
> sometimes the Forums are not always on topic or civil). Ulf tired of
> dealing with that and stuck to communication through the developer"s list.
> It"s that experience which forms the basis for his comments.
>
> It"s also important to remember that Ulf has stated several times that his
> contributions at this point are based on his interest in coding, not
> because he"s a regular user of K-Meleon. You all might find that strange
> but for many coders, the development process is their reward. Because he
> doesn"t regularly use the browser, the only incentive he has is the coding
> process. If that becomes boring or political or he feels like he"s wasting
> his time, he can walk away from it. And the loss will be ours, not his.
>
> I think it"s also important to understand that Ulf has always had an open
> mind towards the development process. Unlike some developers, he doesn"t
> see it as his job to guide the development of the browser. Instead, he"s
> taken the opposite view. He"s asked the community to step up and define
> the role of the browser, what features we want and how we should proceed
> forward. He doesn"t operate out of an ivory tower. Again, this doesn"t
> always get communicated well to everyone and I take some of the blame for
> that.
>
> Finally, Ulf regularly asks for help that isn"t always forthcoming. From
> his viewpoint as a developer, he doesn"t think it"s too much to ask for
> testers and others to provide useful reports on their experiences. Too
> often his requests to the dev. list go unanswered or we get cursory
> reports of "everything"s great!" or "this doesn"t work!" That"s not useful
> information for him. I think the current group of users and testers in the
> Forum are excellent! But we need to make sure that those useful bits of
> information find their way from the Forum to the dev. lists.
>
> Personally speaking, I think that right now, K-Meleon as a project is as
> active and healthy as it has ever been. We have a great group of users and
> contributors in the Forums. Jsnj has done an amazing job of following-up
> on feedback as well as contributing towards new features. There"s a lot of
> spin-off projects that sometimes seem like distractions but in my mind are
> a sign that the project is alive and kicking.
>
> But it"s important to remember that Ulf is the only person actively coding
> on the "official" build. He has a great deal of knowledge and history with
> the project and I want to see him involved in the project for a long time
> to come. I don"t want to see us get to a point where we have several times
> in the past, including this past year, where development stalls and people
> have to develop outside the official process because there are no active
> "official" developers. That"s when open source projects die.
>
> So for 2005, I would like to see all of us commit to the following:
>
> - Recognize that there are several avenues of communication and that we
> need to ensure that information gets passed to all of them.
>
> - Participate on the developer"s list to ensure that the official
> developers get the feedback they need. I know that some feel intimidated
> by the prospects of participating here. But this isn"t some elite group of
> coding snobs at work here. The more feedback, the better. I"ve never felt
> like we"ve had too much feedback on this list.
>
> - Work to bring all of the Forum-based developers into the official
> development process. I know that there are a lot of people who have
> the skills to contribute to the coding and development of the browser. I
> also know that some of them have felt like their contributions or opinions
> have been wanted. That"s something we need to work on from both sides and
> find a way to get more people actively involved in the coding. Ulf is more
> than willing to allow others to code once they"ve displayed their ability
> to do so.
>
> - Develop a consistent vision of what we want K-Meleon to be and where we
> it to go.
>
> You"ve raised some points that probably need to be aired and said some
> things that some people may agree with or disagree with. These kinds of
> discussions can go on and on. Personally, I would like to use this as an
> opportunity to move forward and strengthen the K-Meleon project for the
> future. I apologize for the length of the message but I think it was
> important to provide my views on the issue.
>
> Andrew
>
>
>
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Carson wrote:
>
>
>>>(actually i am about to drop kmeleon all together
>>>for the very same reason, but we might see a release first)
>>
>>There is a lot of discussion, interest, and a great deal of love for
>>K-M expressed in the general forums. Most of us there are end-users.
>>End-users are not to be mistaken for idiots, but rather people who are
>>likely pretty capable in our own respective fields. We use K-M with
>>great respect, and we tend to feel it is the best browser the planet
>>has ever seen.
>>
>>We rarely speak here, because this place is way out of habitat for
>>most of us. We feel intimidated, and we don"t want to offend anyone
>>with our self-aware naivete. Reading some of your statements, Ulf, it
>>is no wonder we are hesitant.
>>
>>It is a real pity that you would isolate yourself in your expertise.
>>You have many admirers, but what an attitude! You may be a genius in
>>this kind of work, but how are you in medicine, ornithology, and
>>teaching dyslexic children the alphabet? It is not really enough to
>>create a masterpiece in one realm, and to insist that everyone else"s
>>knowledge should make them equals to you in that area.
>>
>>You aren"t showing respect for the people who respect you. It is not
>>your intelligence that sets you apart. You speak as though your
>>intelligence is in fact limited in its scope. What sets you apart is
>>that you are such a very fortunate man to have so many people so very
>>appreciative of your talents.
>>
>>Instead of acting like a spoiled brat full of passive aggression, I
>>suggest you leave your ivory tower occasionally and come visit the
>>general forums. But, before so doing, look around and see if you can
>>find some manners to bring with you. The forum is very liberal indeed,
>>but you won"t get much respect for rude answers.
>>
>>Think about it.
>>
>>Carson
>>Vancouver, Canada
>>
>>

Wow... I think that should be added to the History of K-Meleon on the wiki.

Brian

I've read the full history with interest, and I agree with Carson while I can see that the position of Ulf must be very frustrating.

I did found K-Meleon when it's version 0'8'2 was released. I started searching for an alternative for IE, a program that even for a newbee, is trully disgusting, and after trying several browsers I got in love with K-Meleon. I was (and still I'm) amazed of how could exist such a wonderful program. It was faster and more configurable than any, and worked perfectly at my then prehistoric pc.

Five minutes before reading this I was sure K-Meleon was healthly, alive as a project, and full of creative energy. I even used to think it's creators should be some group of millionaires from California.

Well, this has made me think about that. K-Meleon is a free program, you don't have to pay (or to crack it :-) to use and there's no publicity. So developers are working for free (echonomically talking). It must be disgusting to see that you're not alone but almost on developing if no one is enough skilled to contribute at the coding, and, if you are almost the creator, it must be hard to let it die, like stop feeding your dog or something. And if, as Ulf, you don't even use it ... he may feel stupid working on it for free and with too little useful help.

I would really like to be able to contribute to the project, but I've not any idea about coding or programming, I'm about to finish my laws universitary studies and all I know about computers (which is too little) I've learned by myself in my free time (and also for free). I've rarely found bugs (now I remember the hotmail bug, which I reported at this forums long ago and was solved in the 0'9 release) and don't know if this is good or bad. Should I start opening all Internet pages looking for bugs to report or what? The low bug reporting may not be a signal about the perfection level reached?

Me, having no tech knowledge at all, I've managed to create a customized install of the 0'9 version, translated to spanish and fully updated (Gecko and Chrome 1'7'12) to distribute between my friends and anyone interested. Ulf should have make what I did in ten minutes while to me cost me a week of frustrative hard work.

A program which is capable to move people to do this kind of effort is alive for sure. Is like asking to MA (the black big guy from the A-Team tv series) to play ballet. K-Meleon has make me start to know, learn and love about programs developing. Now I can value and recognize better the efforts of people like Ulf, and as me, there should be lots of people all over the world.

So I use K-Meleon for two reasons:

1. It's the best browser ever. It's my main (and only) browser, fast, customizable, useful and (at least for what I know) bug free. I keep using, not as Ulf, even after moved to a new powerful computer.

2. K-Meleon has moved me to a new world of program development. It makes me think about what could be better, how to solve other users problems (when my little knowledge let's me). I'ts a feeling like being a part of something good to the community. I don't feel the same with programs from big companies. I did never before had the minimal interest in program developing and now I do thanks to K-Meleon.

PS. My apollogies for this long e-mail, and specially, for talking as a hippie from the late sixties :-) but I love this browser.

I would like to actively contribute as a beta tester, spanish / english translator, or whatever my low knowledge let's me. If anyone could send me instructions about what is needed or what to do I'll be pleased to help.

Well, no one need agree with me there, because we are a good deal of a year out of context now.

I tend to get confused over dates when they are in 01-08 format, but I believe all of that was written last January. What is especially significant is that Ulf made his statement January 8th, and released the new K-Meleon nine days later on the 17th. (That remains our official K-Meleon 0.9, the {1.7.5} version downloadable from the green margin to the left. <--- .)

But I always thought Ulf answered for his position very well. My own point had been really to speak for all the people who would voice their concerns right here on this forum, but who would be reticent to display a lack of formal knowledge in a more "inner sanctum". There are always very good people who are intelligent and who contribute a lot in their own fields, and who show up as well on the fringes of other fields where they are less knowledgable. Sometimes their very reluctance to speak is itself a sign of respect for others whom they consider to know more.

Having said that, I still think a decent browser should be willing to pour my coffee and bring it in from the kitchen. Using K-Meleon, I have to get up and make my coffee myself! What kind of a browser is THAT?
;-)

I'm pretty sure you were just kidding, but still... by being able to go get your coffee yourself, you can choose what you want to put in it or if you just want it black. You're free to do as you choose with it. I like that.

Brian

hi im about to download k-melon hpe i dont waste my harddrive on another memory override browser!

@keagan,

Download it NOW. You won't be sorry.

what's the hpe stand for? high performance edition?

Brian

I think "hpe" was supposed to mean "hope", as in "I hope I don't waste my hard drive..."

A tad confusing about who is posting, or reposting Ulf's message, which I guess is appropriate, all things considered.

Andrew >> It"s important to remember that Ulf is the only person actively coding on the "official" build. He has a great deal of knowledge and history with the project and I want to see him involved in the project for a long time to come. I don"t want to see us get to a point where we have several times in the past, including this past year, where development stalls and people have to develop outside the official process because there are no active "official" developers. That"s when open source projects die. ...

I've been around K-Meleon for several years now...not as long as you (Andrew) and always as an end user, but the one thing I know for sure is that with only one official developer, things can go wrong very fast. Now I can't speak to the others who have done so much to help with interim releases, but I often wonder whether information shared can lead to other interested coders gaining enough expertise to pick up where Ulf wants to be left off or not left off...I'm never sure about that point.

I've never asked the question before, but I do so now. Has Ulf tried to train replacement developers? That is an important question, because before Ulf there were others who did the work and passed it on to him and he "may" be in the position to do likewise.

As an end user, I may be entirely in left field on this post, but nature abhors a vacuum and lack of understanding and knowledge about the participation or lack of participation of the sole official developer can only lead to misunderstanding. Which is clearly the case here.


N

The quote explains a remark by jsnj (which i did not understand then) that Ulf will not do Forum driven development & if forum was an inimical place
- i understand better why Ulf avoids it.

Most of what people here in Forum know has been passed on / learned here.
But we have no University trained adepts of Informatics Sciences in Forum.
( and that is what some past k-m contributors including Ulf are / cf. google )

Even when they only have aged hardware young programers are more likely to go Unix nowadays - so things will not improve.

Wanting to sew someone would not make any one a lawyer - and the wish to work with cvs and other things that are required in development does not give any one that training.

On the other hand things do not look really dark to me:
when we had 0.8.2 there have been many often silly dev requests.
With the improved macros of 0.9 and no active devs visible - IMHO the
nature of posts has changed.
There are more - i have made a little improvement (for myself) and i share.
As Enaitz says: this is painfully slow because we have to get the skills as well.
But we slowly get many things that we want.

My dreams: that we get independence of specific GRE (maybe that we can even use ie or opera rendering engines) and maybe/else support for unix or other OS popular with programers - the first would make us almost self reliant the second may give us more programers support.

If i must choose one i would take independence of specific GRE and go without aditional programers.

p. s. maybe there is hope: easier translations which was one other big dream i had - most of it is already done by Dorian, THX.

It occurs to me that K-Meleon's future may be with Linux, even though there is a wall between them now.

If you look at the recent developments (and maybe the wish for advertising, too), you can only see K-M following the same path, but way behind, Firefox. Do you agree? I would oppose that, personally, but so many suggestions and "improvements" have been made lately that make me think it's heading in that direction.

But if K-M does follow Firefox, K-M will surely disappear. People nurturing 98s will inevitably get XP and more power, and the more K-M becomes a Poorman's Firefox, the more likely they will abandon K-M when they can run Firefox at speed. Isn't that so? I'm not saying what I like; I'm saying what I see.

Because K-Meleon already performs very nicely for me, I've not been in a big hurry to see it "improve". I don't need it to improve. It's very nice as it is.

Still, the concept of K-M is much more Linux-like than it is Microsoft-like. K-Meleon is situated in a delightfully strange place, between Firefox and IE 6. More than Firefox or Opera, K-Meleon is absolutely a Windows browser; literally dedicated to Microsoft. It would not be surprising if Bill Gates actually had some affection for the outlaw lizard. It surely holds a tiny enclave of some of the most rebellious users that Microsoft has.

Seems to me that Ulf has made a pretty clear statement that he has no future interest in K-M, and that even his interest last January was merely whimsical. Seeing as Guenter is right, and that we are drifting now, I think we would do well to drift toward Linux. The course following Firefox would surely lead to obscurity--even if SeaMonkey wasn't already positioned there.

There are just two minor challenges along the Linux route: (1) Um, learning Linux . . . oh yeah. I guess I'd have to do that. And (2) K-Meleon is said to be impossibly separate from Linux tech. Well, maybe we should be reworking that, instead of reworking tabs.

lets go reactos then ; - ) seems the more modern OS concept.

I can't agree here Carson, the fact that K-Meleon is a windows-only browser is his primary advantage over Firefox and other crossplatform browsers imho. Porting it to linux would meant to create it on the same, imho bloated, concepts that other browsers are following already. If someone would make a crossplatform km, then it would be a real follower and it would really go down with all flags flying. Thats my opinion, cause you will never got as many developers for k-m as there are for the other browsers already. And these browsers already got hundreds of extentions to satisfy the needs of their userbase. A browser is a browser and stays a browser, you don't have to learn linux to use Firefox or opera on it. Also, I don't think it should be an all-in-one device suitable for every purpose. I like k-meleon for his responsiveness and that has in now way anything to do with running it on w98, nor on w2k nor on wxp. Believe it or not, I know and have used k-meleon and firefox on all these operation systems. It will ALWAYS be more responsive than FF on every windows-os you are going to use it. My pc is fast enough to handle all browsers, still it makes a difference. Besides, km is configureable as hell and most of -the things can be realised via macros or additional plugins.
I'm happy that Dorian spend some of his time to make it even better than it was before.
The only negative point that I have, which I mentioned in another thread already, is that the unofficial development is hard to follow, so it would be nice if improvements/updates and stuff could be hosted on sourceforge directly.
Ah and btw, I don't think that the userbase of k-meleon deserves a dev that doesn't even use it himself. I'm a programmer myself and I think if there isn't any idealism left on your projects -at least if they are not commercial ones- you better dismount from your horse.......

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, people have been known to try other strategies including:

· Buying a stronger whip
· Saying ‘ this is the way we have always ridden this horse’
· Appointing a committee to study the horse
· Arranging to visit other organisations to see how they ride dead horses
· Declaring that the horse is not dead, just resting
· Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed
· Declaring that ’no horse is too dead to beat’
· Purchasing a product to make dead horses run faster
· Forming a quality circle to find uses for dead horses
· Promoting the dead horse to management

Alexander wisdom would say that you:

-bring the focus back from the horse to yourself
-look at your goal: ‘To what end was I riding that dead horse in the first place?’
-set about establishing the best means of achieving your goal
-decide on the appropriate course of action re: the dead horse
-establish how best to implement it

cheers

sensai

@sensai
Bravo!
Peace,
Stuart

Ah and btw, I don't think that the userbase of k-meleon deserves a dev that doesn't even use it himself. I'm a programmer myself and I think if there isn't any idealism left on your projects -at least if they are not commercial ones- you better dismount from your horse.......

He has dismounted. And he would agree with you. But w/o him there would have been no 0.8 or 0.9. So would you rather KM have stayed at v0.7 just to appease your philosophy? I'm guessing not. Bottomline is if no coder/programmer steps up to the plate for Ulf to hand over administrative rights, then there will be little to no development. So far there have been a couple who have tinkered with the exe but when it comes to the time consuming task of commiting to CVS and fixing new bugs and managing the project etc.. they don't want to or don't have the time to, and that's understandable. But sort of blaming Ulf for the lack of development when it was not his project to begin with and when no one else who's capable seems to want to either, doesn't make much sense to me.

I can't understand why we're operating in such a vacuum here, and why this project is for all intents and purposes dev-less when we have several excellent people right here on this forum who could easily be given dev status? I won't mention names for fear of leaving someone out due to my poor memory but I think people know just who they are and what specific roles they could be assigned.

For once (or maybe our 2nd or 3rd time in KM history) we stand a chance of having not ONE dev running around here and officially doing things and making changes to the CVS for the positive---but several! People who could be doing chrome work, others making improvements and adding features to the exe, others fixing kplugins or even making new plugins, while others are making official macros to go into the build, or working with extensions, and another a dev in charge of the themes, so on and so forth.

And instead we sit around with our thumbs stuck "you know where", or resemble a mass of chickens running around with our heads chopped off. -sigh-

Al was right maybe? And had I known that what I was doing was so going to fragment everything maybe I would've kept quiet and kept what I'd found my "little secret" and done my experimentation in secret.

If I sound discouraged, upset and frustrated---it's because I am. I can't help it. I see all these different builds going on here and there. I wished it hadn't fragmented so. I would've liked to have seen everyone working together, pooling all their knowledge and ideas together. Hao has great ideas, Fred does, Dorian does, jsnj with the macros, Guenter with the chromes and extensions---everyone else with GRE updating and translation work, and those I haven't mentioned... wouldn't be great if all of this were pooled into ONE K-Meleon, instead 5 or 6, or how many builds?

I need to wheel away from the computer for a bit and go think things off... or maybe go to my science pages...

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

You are right, Eyes-Only. K-Meleon would be a much better browser if all of the developers worked together. It would probably be easier on all of them and also for us because of a decrease in confusion over which one is the best. I think the minimal edition and reloaded and just regular are all great ideas though, because choices are good, but when you have too many choices, people get discouraged and move on to something a little less confusing.
An official 1.0 would be great for K-Meleon. Maybe the actual version number would attract more people because anything less than 1.0 sounds like it still needs some improvement (usually).

Brian

I can't understand why we're operating in such a vacuum here, and why this project is for all intents and purposes dev-less when we have several excellent people right here on this forum who could easily be given dev status?

None have asked to. I'm guessing because it can be ALOT of work & time. Or maybe it's because KM has developed into little distros ala linux. People can roll out packages exactly how they want it w/o having to compromise or to adhere to anyone's approval or liking. That's kind of fun but disastrous for bug reporting since you never know what version people are reporting on. Ulf is willing to give me more administrative status & add me to the official dev team on sourceforge, but it'll require some reading and learning CVS etc which I haven't done yet. I may eventually do that if no one else comes along soon, but it is disappointing that there aren't more coders willing to join the dev team. I'm more comfortable being the cfg/js guy while tending to the forums and BTS. Also, Andrew is missed. He does/did most of the organizing and outlining of the project's direction.

I write this little note as someone
who is not a developer...a programmer...
who doesn't know what chrome is...
or macros...or GRE...
I do know how to turn on my
computer...open up whatever
the hell version of K-Meleon I'm
using on any given day...enjoying
it a lot for both what it is, and more
so for what it isn't...and looking
forward to its next incarnation.
Peace,
Stuart

jsnj:

think you got me wrong there, it wasn't my intend to blame Ulf for anything. It's just my opinion that there should be a bit more behind a project on which one works than the coding experience he can gain from it. Nethertheless I'm naturally happy that Ulf helped to get km where it is now and the same goes for your excellent macro-contributions.

cheers

sensai

Yup, I think we're all grateful for all the original Ulfort that went into making K-Meleon. And I would never have got it figured out without it coming equipped with jsnj-Inside. It has been said many times that K-Meleon really IS all the excellent people right here on the forum, who have been so generous with their time and expertise--and also who have been willing to lend a hand to people who are just starting out.

As for jsnj's concern: "That's kind of fun but disastrous for bug reporting since you never know what version people are reporting on." Oops. Here we have to bow to Al's wisdom, as he cautioned against exactly this eventuality, at least a year ago.

And Sensai, committees that study horses tend to come up with camels. Plus, the wisdom is dismounting from a dead horse sounds reasonable, and yet I've tended to favour the contradictory wisdom that "when you're on thin ice, you might as well dance."

In the end, I'm afraid I have little wisdom--and very little expertise, indeed--to offer. Come to think of it, all I DO have is a heck of a fantastic green lizard of a browser.

--Thanks to Ulf, jsnj, Ulf, Guenter, Eyes-Only, Sensai, fast sJonny, Hao, Brian Bruns, and SO MANY MORE, including the guys who have less hi-tech knowledge but always a friendly word to offer on this forum.

Wow! I certainly did not mean to open up a can of worms. Nevertheless, it looks as if K-Meleon has reached a point where it will be dropped or people will cowboy up and keep it progressing. I'm no programmer. Just a user that has enjoyed this particular browser for some time now. I can remember when Spybot didn't detect K-Meleon and now it does during its scans. It has reached a point of recognition and I would like to see development to continue and would contribute in as much as I have as a simple user. My wish list is to see K-Meleon in a Windows as well as Linux flavor. Not to sound too corny, but as a user that goes beyond just the user realm and communicates with open source users, programmers, developers and so forth, it sort of makes me a little depressed to see a fine program reaching the end of its life span. Based on this thread, one thing is for certain, and that is those involved with the inner working are definately not suffering from "groupthink" and I mean that as a compliment.

Keep K-Meleon open source alive if possible. Open source good. Commercial bad.

If there are developers and programmers out there interested in continuing development than interested users would probably need a "to do" list of things that could help this as well.

What I don't understand about open source browser warfare is the intense interest in Firefox and the going concern of K-Meleon?

In the immediate future, wouldn't it at least be possible to keep the GRE in the official download up to date?

I can't see what all the fuss is about.
The situation is exactly the same as with Firefox1.0.7/FirefoxBeta1.5
or Mozilla1.7.12/Seamonkey.
We have two existing branches :
A rock-stable 1.7.12 K-Meleon and an now sufficiently stable
development of 1.8 versions.
The second branch has realised thanks to Dorian almost everything
that is desirable to have in a browser : Autocomplete, real tabs,
findbar, bookmarks sidebar (although not yet flawless), favicons,
new macros, and the only thing that is missing now are the group
features for the new tabs.
This browser is alive and kicking.
It is now absolutely necessary to replace the outdated official version on the download page with at least the original version
with an updated 1.7.12 Gecko.
You would never find an old Firefox on the download page.
This is an absolute nonsense.
In addition to such an offer links to beta versions could be
put on the download page for progressive, adventurous people
as it is done with Firefox or Seamonkey.
As long as there are Mozilla 1.7.x versions available, there is
no reasonto give the 1.7.12 branch up, although it can be
complemented by an official 1.8 version, as soon as this is indicated.
The necessary development is already on the way, thanks to
Dorian.
So I think that the people, who have connections to the
official development team, should now urge them to allow
an evolution to take place.
If that happens, there is no need for sorrows about the
future of this browser, it can not be out target to get the
popularity of Firefox, this is not a commercial project.

Regards to all
Fred

@jsnj - 0.7.1 would be sufficiant - if we could get it running with new GRE ; - )

- same problem as You - i am not sure how much time i can use up for doing
serious work & additional to Your predicament i lack the training to do anything but slim a chrome (i can write some valid xhtml - self trained - but that is it).
So i can not do anything that has any value.

This chrome-work i can try to do in future for official or unofficial development.

@Fred &Dekkan - i agree with the idea to have updated 0.9_1.7.12 at front porch.
( i do not like the idea to give advantarous newbees support to infinished browser.
- testing and improving must stay in forum only! )

And i personally would like that we keep up the 0.9_1.7.x line because that is the type of GRE that will be available for a hopefully long future (unless my dream comes true and we get a k-m that snaps in with every/any RenderingEngine).

I feel: it is not the same as with FF and so on. At k-m home all is still very compatible - there are very specilaized themes - but the 2 GRE bases are merely the vehicle for our advanced Macros system.
Additionally: we have none that get too exited and want to make factions and rifts.

@All
Suggestion & Question:
Who can pack
(means: who has the skill and the program that does it)
an updated 0.9
(i suggest to use kko´s update to standart)
in the way the old one is packed.

IMHO: We need to use alain´s English setDefault.exe
(works with other language defaults - e. g. Spanish and German defaults)
optional?
(maybe include jsnj´s translation macro?
or additional some other that are unspecialisted musts).

- any ideas?
& Please: No feature requests - only finished/tested items permitted!

Then we test it for some days (that is sufficiant -as we know it is rock stable).

When that is done? glib talking Carson or some other that writes flawless English will ask Ulf by mail whether we can post a finished update/servive release
at the front porch. Lets make clear that we want to post finished work - and do
not need anything but his permission or possibly him uploading it.

This will be then the next standart k-meleon.

It is easier to do this than to write long comments about...
Other projects have died in long discussions about why... how & ...
(e. g. free Win 95 project / now c. @ reactos).
So lets do.

Ulf ? He seems so gifted that all looked easy
- and too many people took him for granted ( that is the problem ).

We might be better off when we have Forum driven Development
- because maybe we will find someone that already knows to work a cvs
(and just does not know how much time he can spent).
- because maybe we find someone that ... can write a docu
- else we must somhow do without...

meantime: It is sufficiant to try - and the next that has time can continue...

Incremental, semi official - with people signing on for a job for which they
think they have time and skill.

Because all will know - there is none to ask: can i have...
greetz