why use K-melon when we have phoenix?

Why?

* You can fully customize the K-Meleon interface adding and removing any menu or menu items that you like. You can't do that with Phoenix. That's important to those of us who need to support a browser in a public setting.

* K-Meleon's interface is native to Windows which allows it to run more efficiently than Phoenix's cross-platform XUL interface.

* Phoenix can be a memory-hog. K-Meleon consistently outperforms Phoenix, Mozilla and IE on older and slower PCs.

* K-Meleon encourages user participation in the development of the browser. Phoenix does not.

* K-Meleon supports Opera Hotlists. Phoenix does not.

How's that for a start?

but If i switch to linux then where is kmelon

It's called Galeon:

http://galeon.sourceforge.net/

You've got to be kidding me... That's like saying why have Chevrolet when we have Ford (or vice versa). Variety is the spice of life. Download both K-Meleon and Phoenix and use them for a while. Decide which you prefer. But please don't suggest that because Phoenix is out there, K-Meleon is redundant or irrelevant.

I looove being able to customize the menus of K-Meleon.

"why use K-melon when we have phoenix?"

Actually the question I like to ask is, why even bother visiting the K-Meleon website and post a question like this in the first place, if you are so happy with Phoenix?

"You can fully customize the K-Meleon interface adding and removing any menu or menu items that you like. You can't do that with Phoenix. That's important to those of us who need to support a browser in a public setting."

you can move everything around with phoenix, you can even put it all on one toolbar. you can even put the "back" button on line #1, the "forward" button on line #2 for example.

<back><forward><bookmarks bar><menu bar>
<stop><reload><address bar><google bar>

your other points arent that great either..

>>you can move everything around with phoenix, you can even put it all on one toolbar.<<

Last I checked in Phoenix v0.4 you can't move the tab bar on the same line as the rest. Like this:

http://home.attbi.com/~jsnj/kmeleon.html

> You can fully customize the K-Meleon interface adding and removing any menu or menu items that you like. You can't do that with Phoenix.

Um hold on... ever heard about something called XUL?
You can do anything you like with your interface on all XUL browsers using XML + CSS + JS. That is one of the advantages with XUL.

> K-Meleon encourages user participation in the development of the browser. Phoenix does not.

??? How do you mean?
The Phoenix forum got 2000+ posts in less then a week, support webpages are poping out of the ground, people are designing themes and downloadable extensions, not to mention that it is an open source project where you can send in code just as to normal mozilla.


The other 3 points you mention however is right on the money.
K-Mel beeing faster and using less memory are especially noticable on a slow comp.
If you are looking for a fast, low resources requireing, standards compliant browser on the Win OS, then K-Mel is it

Stefan,

You are correct that you can edit anything in XUL. However, I would say that editing K-Meleon's interface is well within the means of the average user. Doing the same in Phoenix? Pretty difficult I think.

Regarding memory requirements: I believe that most of them are from the gecko part, which is common to both kemoeon and phoenix. The edge of kmeleon here is not that big.

It is noticable because people tend to measure it on startup, before much content was loaded into the browser.

> You are correct that you can edit anything in XUL. However, I would say that editing K-Meleon's interface is well within the means of the average user. Doing the same in Phoenix? Pretty difficult I think.

I would say that depends a bit on exactly what part of the interface you want to change.

If I eg would like to change the position between the RELOAD and the STOP button in Phoenix all I have to do is rightclick the navbar, choose customize and drag and drop the button I want to move.
Moving 1 specific button in K-Mel is a bit more complex.
The download and extension and place buttons for it anywhere on your top bars by simple drag and drop is pretty nifty too.

Thus, if the thing you want to change is available in the default customatization functionallity in Phoenix, it's generally easier to do in Phoenix then K-Mel.

However if what you want to change isn't available in the default Phoenix customization you have to go into manually editing the XUL itself, which is generally much more complex then to change stuff in K-Mel.

In short, it's not as clear cut like 1 is always better then the other.
Both browsers have strenghts in customatization in different areas.
Which one you like the most is of cource a matter of personal preference

One thing is for sure though, either if you choose K-Mel or Pnx you can't go wrong, as both are greate browsers.

Another way to put it would be to say that K-Meleon makes it fairly easy to kludge in some additional *functionality* in many ways, where Phoenix (this is just my impression - i've never used it) apparently gives you drag-n-drop control over *existing* GUI elements, which might be all some people care about anyway... but it's definitely enough reason to provide a niche for K-Meleon... why ask why?

> apparently gives you drag-n-drop control over *existing* GUI elements

and extra buttons for extensions (plugins) you install.

But otherwise, that is a good summarization IMO

BTW, one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet that is a clear advantage for K-Mel currently, is that K-Mel is quite mature while Phoenix is in very early stages morfing quite much even from day to day.

This means that eg an easy way to moving over your Pnx profile from 1 milestone to the next (perhaps a month later) is currently not guarranteed and even adviced against.

I'm pretty confident that K-Mel won't have such issues when it goes from 0.7 to 0.8 in 6-12 months(?).

> This means that eg an easy way to moving over your Pnx profile from 1 milestone to the next (perhaps a month later) is currently not guarranteed and even adviced against.

Milestones have been happening in significantly less than a month. As a matter of fact there have been 4 of them in about 6 weeks.

>I'm pretty confident that K-Mel won't have such issues when it goes from 0.7 to 0.8 in 6-12 months(?).

I'm pretty confident that you won't have such issues with Phoenix in 6-12 months either.

--Asa

>* K-Meleon encourages user participation in the development of the browser. Phoenix does not.

You misspoke, right? You were kidding? You weren't?

Phoenix makes builds for windows and linux publically available to any users/testers every single day (does kmeleon?) and has had over one hundred thousand downloads in the last four or five weeks. There have been over ten thousand posts to the mozillaZine Phoenix forums, nearly 1000 bug reports in bugzilla, patches contributed by non-core contributors, not to mention more than a dozen themes and a handful of extensions all contributed in the last five or six weeks.

Phoenix doesn't "encourages user participation"? Were you confusing Phoenix (mozilla.org's browser project) with the computer motherboard maker or something?

--Asa

Yeah !!!.....Asa

"why use K-melon when we have phoenix?"

That is easy.

I use K-meleon because I think it blows Mozilla/Phoenix/Netscape out of the water.

It is this simple fact that explains why I am here.


-Alan
kmeleon32@yahoo.com

You've gotta admire these Phoenix advocates, they still keep trying to convert people. A couple more conversions and you guys will be receiving your free toaster in the mail! ;-)

They still haven't sold me on Phoenix though, it just doesn't have the same charm and appeal K-Meleon has.

the decision to choose between kmeleon and phoenix doesn't even require a thought.. i've used both and this is what i think

- the phoenix interface is bulky.. especially if you're using tabs. big buttons big graphics and somehow the interface feels 'heavy'.
- lotsa menus lotsa features.. those that i dont even need (but ofcourse, maybe someone else does)
- i can use kmeleon as my default browser, it loads up in 1/10th the time of phoenix
- its lite and functional.. took me a few mins to set up the interface my way.. with macros for functions this n that, and its perfect.. i dont see myself doing that with phoenix.

conclusion? kmeleon is a perfect browser.. phoenix is just a copy of mozilla with a few things taken out/put in.

> You've gotta admire these Phoenix advocates, they still keep trying to convert people.

???
Are you really this clueless about what is happening in this thread?
There is a difference between trying to "convert people" and pointing out huge flaws in the arguments of benefits of K-Mel vs Pnx.

Any meaningfull discussion should be about FACTS, not fiction.
K-Mel definitly has advantages in some areas vs Pnx, but some of the things beeing posted on the K-Mel forums in general are not always among them.
It only lowers the credibility of K-Mel to make a huge list of advantages when half of them is not true. Any K-Mel user downloading Pnx just to try it out will also start doubting the things that are really advantages when he discovers that such a list is not correct.

And as far as conversion goes, I have certainly suggested for more people on the Pnx forums to try K-Mel then the opposite on this forum.
In fact my standard reply to a windowsuser posts like "I love Phoenix, but it's a bit slow on my old comp" is a link to this website.

Besides, K-Mel and Pnx are not in competition against each other. They are two greate standards compliant browsers compeating together against the vast mayority of crappy non standardscompliant browsers out there.
For every user swithing from eg IE to either of the two, everybody wins (from webdesigner to normal users to disabled persons).

> - the phoenix interface is bulky.. especially if you're using tabs. big buttons big graphics and somehow the interface feels 'heavy'.

Next time you try out Phoenix, check out CUSTOMIZE.
Start with checking the box "use small icons".

> - lotsa menus lotsa features.. those that i dont even need (but ofcourse, maybe someone else does)

See above

> - its lite and functional.. took me a few mins to set up the interface my way.. with macros for functions this n that, and its perfect.. i dont see myself doing that with phoenix.

You are able to set up macros for K-Mel but not able to customize the most basic things in Pnx?
Did you spend more then 2 minutes using Pnx?

Stefan buddy whatever rocks your boat.. just dont shove it down everyone's throat.

Phoenix might be better for some ppl, but kmel works wayyyy better for me.. faster and easier to customize.. yeh i CAN change the buttons, hence i said the interface is just 'heavy'. Anyhow I dont criticize your choice, I just stated the reasons why kmel IS much better than phoenix for me.

Hi Stefan,

Hey, is it okay if I could have a moment of your time to ask you a few questions?

I am wondering.... does it hurt your feelings that I do not like Phoenix or Mozilla? Do you somehow feel rejected by the fact that I dislike XUL as a UI for my browser?

If so, then please don't feel hurt or rejected. It is nothing personal to either you or anyone else who happens to prefer Mozilla and/or Phoenix. Really, it isn't. I mean it.

I run a PII-600 w/196MB RAM and 20GB HD. Every single app, game, utility, and OS that I use runs perfectly well on it. I could easily afford to upgrade to the latest and greatest but I am not compelled to simply because I have no need to.

On my machine I can tell a huge difference between K-Meleon and either Phoenix or Mozilla. Phoenix is somewhat faster than Mozilla in loading, but not much. Both Mozilla and Phoenix feel sluggish and bulky. This is a feeling that I personally despise and it is due to their UI's being based on the cross-platform XUL..... as K-Meleon is extremely fast and snappy in loading time, UI responsiveness, and page rendering.... especially compared to Phoenix/Mozilla.

Simply put, I don't care for XUL as the UI of my web browser. In the extremely rare event that I come across a web site that requires executing a XUL application then good ol' Gecko can do that just fine.

There are other things I love about K-Meleon, too, in addition to performance. For instance, KMeleons fully (and easily) customizable UI, an open and extensible plugin architecture, and a simple, yet powerful, macro language that I hope to expand on even further.

I only say all of this because in the short time I have been here at these forums (approx. 8 days or so) all I read from you is talk about Phoenix and/or XUL.

Bear in mind that my response to you is not an open invitation for you to try and sell me on the 'holy greatness' of XUL or Phoenix... nor is it an invitation to enter into a debate about the divinity of 'cross-platform' ideologies. There is absolutely nothing to debate. I do not like Phoenix or Mozilla or XUL. This is a fact that bears as much certainty as does the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.

I like K-meleon. That is why I am here.


-Alan
kmeleon32@yahoo.com

> but kmel works wayyyy better for me..

I'm just glad you are using a Gecko based browser. Makes my life much simpler in regard to making webpages. My whish would be for K-Mel to have 100x more users next week.

> I just stated the reasons why kmel IS much better than phoenix for me.

Of which half where only down to customization...
I just made a long post in this thread about the importance of discussing facts, not fiction. Read it

> does it hurt your feelings that I do not like Phoenix or Mozilla?

It doesn't.

> Do you somehow feel rejected by the fact that I dislike XUL as a UI for my browser?

You and others are allowed to dislike XUL as much as you possibly want to for me. That however is still not a valid reason to make up things that are not true.

> all I read from you is talk about Phoenix and/or XUL.

Yes, sadly there are a large ammount of people on this board that for some reason think that making up stuff out of the blue about other browsers in some way helps K-Meleon.
All the ignorance, spreading of missinformation, namecalling and telling people to shut up about other browsers on this board creates an en enviroment that is very bad for generating progress and meaningfull discussions. In the long run this will actually hurt K-Mel since if you can't get a good discussion about features by eg compairing it with another browser, progress will slow down.

After reading this forum for well half a year now I was getting really tired of this and seeing less and less "normal" people posting on this board I thought I'd try to get discussion back on track a bit by "attacking" ignorant psts with facts.
Obviously things are shaping up, becuse it's been a long time siince there was such a long thread like this involving other borowsers that didn't end up in a swearing contest.

As a last note. K-Mel has lots of real advanatges over eg Phoenix, so there is absolutely no reason to make up stuff just to badmouth eg Pnx. K-Mel is strong enough to stand on it's own merits and doesn't need to use mudslinging to "defend" itself.

"That however is still not a valid reason to make up things that are not true."

Come on, now. I don't think anyone deliberatley 'made up' anything. Maybe they worded something wrong or made statements based on old info that is now void, but looking through this thread I see no one attempting to out and out lie to anyone.

Let's examine for a moment what Andrew said with a bit more of an open mind:

"* You can fully customize the K-Meleon interface adding and removing any menu or menu items that you like. You can't do that with Phoenix. That's important to those of us who need to support a browser in a public setting."

This is actually true. I fully understand that if one unpacks some jar files and digs deep into whatever, that one can add/remove menu items and such in Phoenix or Mozilla. That is not the same thing, however, as how it's done in KMeleon. In KMeleon it is obvious and available to the user via the UI. How many people can get a Mozilla build and add a button to their toolbar that will launch their favorite mail app? Not many, that is for sure.

I have used Mozilla on and off for years now. Never, I have rearranged the UI to my liking of my own accord. I have only used KMeleon for about 10 days now... after three days of use I had the entire default UI completely customized.

In the context of what Andrew was saying, he is absolutely correct.


"* K-Meleon's interface is native to Windows which allows it to run more efficiently than Phoenix's cross-platform XUL interface."

This is correct.


"* Phoenix can be a memory-hog. K-Meleon consistently outperforms Phoenix, Mozilla and IE on older and slower PCs."

This is correct.


"* K-Meleon encourages user participation in the development of the browser. Phoenix does not."

I think what Andrew meant here was getting involved with the source code. That may have changed now but I do know at one time that the development of Phoenix was restricted to Hyatt, Ross, etc... just a few people. I remember even reading it myself once.

If they have indeed changed that policy (did they?) and Phoenix is now open for other folks to submit patches then that is just an honest and understandable mistake by Andrew.


"* K-Meleon supports Opera Hotlists. Phoenix does not."

This is correct.


So, of what Andrew said there was only one real error... if that is the case.... and it was an honest mistake at that. Not some blatant pre-calculated lie.

I certainly wouldn't define what Andrew said as "huge flaws in the arguments of benefits of K-Mel vs Pnx." like you did.


Now lets look at Ammars statements:

" - the phoenix interface is bulky.. especially if you're using tabs. big buttons big graphics and somehow the interface feels 'heavy'."

He is correct. He didn't say that the 'big buttons' could be made smaller... was he supposed to? The main point was the UI is bulky and feels heavy.


"- lotsa menus lotsa features.. those that i dont even need (but ofcourse, maybe someone else does)"

This is not true. An error was made here. Unlike Mozilla, Phoenix is very trimmed down UI wise. I certainly wouldn't look upon 'lotsa menus lotsa features' as a bash against Phoenix, though.


"- i can use kmeleon as my default browser, it loads up in 1/10th the time of phoenix"

This is correct. I don't know the exact time but I do know that K-Meleon loads far faster than Phoenix on my system.


"- its lite and functional.. took me a few mins to set up the interface my way.. with macros for functions this n that, and its perfect.. i dont see myself doing that with phoenix."

That is correct, too. Ammar setup his own UI schema in K-Meleon in a matter of minutes using macros for 'this n that'. I don't see him, or anyone else, being able to customize their UI like that, especially with new functions and what not, in a matter of minutes in Phoenix, if at all.


So Ammars big error here was: "lotsa menus lotsa features"


In summary:

Andrews honest mistake (if it is a mistake):

"K-Meleon encourages user participation in the development of the browser. Phoenix does not."

and Ammars "lotsa menus lotsa features"

..somehow bring you to the conclusion that a Phoenix FUD campaign is taking place by people "making things up out of the blue"?


Do you want to know what I think? I think you are blowing things way out of proportion. The problem is that you are probably a Phoenix user more than anything else. A Phoenix user hanging out in a K-Meleon forum that gets very defensive about anything regarding Phoenix (or even XUL).... while at the same time trying to advocate it in a very subtle way.

If you want to find a place full of erroneous statements that are made on a near daily basis then visit the forums at Mozillazine. I would never waste my time trying to correct any of that, though, because I don't really give a rip.


-Alan
kmeleon32@yahoo.com

"Do you want to know what I think? I think you are blowing things way out of proportion. The problem is that you are probably a Phoenix user more than anything else. A Phoenix user hanging out in a K-Meleon forum that gets very defensive about anything regarding Phoenix (or even XUL).... while at the same time trying to advocate it in a very subtle way."

Agreed. Every chance Stefan gets (like in this thread), he uses it to promote Phoenix over K-Meleon, in fact I haven't really read anything from him promoting K-Meleon in such a way, apart from the fact that he seems to agree that K-Meleon is good on older machines.

Stefan, you have to expect people to be pro-K-Meleon around here, these are the K-Meleon forums, not the Phoenix vs K-Meleon Browser War forums, or the Phoenix Advocates Against Misinformation forums.

???
"Are you really this clueless about what is happening in this thread?
There is a difference between trying to "convert people" and pointing out huge flaws in the arguments of benefits of K-Mel vs Pnx."

Another flippant remark taken the wrong way by somebody who is far too serious, er, has too much of an invested interest in the subject being discussed. Jokes go sailing over the heads again ;-)