Damn, so now I have 3 browsers jockying for my online attention.
My requirements for the ultimate browser:
-small
-fast
-compliant
-sexy looking
-mouse gestures
-tabbed browsing

How does k-meleon compare to Opera and Phoenix?

It's smaller than both, faster than Phoenix, more compliant than Opera, as sexy looking as you want it to be, and has plugins for mouse gestures (if I'm not mistaken) and a pretty good imitation of tabbed browsing. But why don't you just try all three and tell us how you feel ?

Klaartje you know how to charm a browser lol - Well said, you made my day...

encoderX
http://encoderX.co.uk

i had all three on my computer. i use km now since it's as fast as opera and faster than phx. it could stand to be more user friendly like phx, but it's still #1 overall. like someone said before, km is butt ugly, but you can change it.

oh no. its got that aweful plug-in gestures system with the back to front mouse clicks.

otherwise, its not bad. as its windows only, presumably things like mouse gestures could be hard coded inside withouth worrying about porting?
or does sticking to the mozilla tree mean we are s..t out of luck

im gonna try it some more for a while anyhoo

I've just installed Phoenix, and it's one sexy baby alright. KM looks okay itself, but the Phoenix skins are just gorgeous!

ok, sooorry... I know I'm preaching for the "enemy"...

but, seriously, after examining the two contenders, I really think the k-meleon team should focus on redesigning those menus. Text-based configuration is no way to go.

We're just THAT lazy.

I don't understand why people care so much about the looks. There are some nice skins for K-Meleon and that's certainly all I need. The Galeon skin is really stylish. I don't want anymore eye candy.

What do I need to know (programming wise) to help the KM people?

"I don't understand why people care so much about the looks. There are some nice skins for K-Meleon and that's certainly all I need. The Galeon skin is really stylish. I don't want anymore eye candy."

Half the time most people probably aren't even paying attention to how their browser looks anyway, the concentration being on the webpage you are viewing.

>...the concentration being on the webpage you are viewing.

Precisely. A browser just shouldn't get in the way. :-)

Skins are not an issue for me. There are enough to change the look, if you wish. I'm using Chimera right now and think it "may be the one."

N

I don't like any of the skins.. so don't have one set right now.. I really don't see the need.. Its merely cosmetic.

I use & like the Green Chameleon Skin - by Andres Aule skin. Good thing is you can create your skin(s) quite easily. Having nice graphics on top is OK, (impresses folks who see my fantastic KM browser anyway) why not they aren't exactly difficult to have/change skins plus they are very small in size

Just my 2 eurocents worth.

encoderX
http://encoderX.co.uk

After using the Phoenix browser for a week or so, I'm realizing how unstable it is. Maybe it's the 2.0 Mozilla code, but it's crashing way more than it ought to. Never had this problem with KM, but I haven't used it as intensly.

I mean Moz 1.2 code

> I mean Moz 1.2 code

Currently each day a new Phoenix is released from the lates nightly TRUNK (which is at 1.3b currently)
Once 1.3b branches Phoenix will be on 1.4a
http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html

This naturally makes Phoenix a potentially much more unstable browser then eg K-Meleon and if you are unlucky you can get a pretty banged up version if you just download the latest Phoenix.

Thus if you are not comfortable with using beta software, don't use Phoenix.
There are big warning signs on the releasenotes page and they are not a joke.

I'm sure you will be quite happy with K-Mel though, becuse they spend a lot of prerelease testing to make it stable as *ell.
I don't expect Phoenix to even get close to K-Mel in stability before a 1.0 release.

Stefan,

Just want to rectify something in your last post, as to the Phoenix releases :

As in every serious project, the Phoenix team does release milestone versions (0.4 0.5 ...), which differ from the nightly builds. These are supposed to be more stable.

But, yes, it's still not very solid.

Unfortunately, I tend to use Phoenix for my daily browsing these last few weeks, because of the esthetics (beautiful skins), and ease of configuration.

The macro language isn't something I particularly enjoy tweaking with (in the K-Meleon menus).

> As in every serious project, the Phoenix team does release milestone versions (0.4 0.5 ...), which differ from the nightly builds.

OK... that was very interesting news for me.
Could you please tell me where to find this information of yours that states Milesstones differ from nightly builds?
Or even what the difference is?

Becuse to my knowledge a milestone is just the Nightly which happens to have fixed the last bug targeted for that Milestone, using the latest nightly TRUNK of Mozilla (the same as all the nightlies).

I used K-Meleon and Phoenix....

On my machine km craches much more freq than phoenix. I've been using both browsers from their inception and Phoenix has only crashed on me once and that was caused by its somewhat flippy support for plugins.

I'd suggest using both browsers b/c they both have their strong points and minimal weak points. Anything but IE.

I haven't used Phoenix much (it's K-mel and Galeon when on Linux), what would you (Jacob, or whoever has an opinion) say are their stong and weak points, respectively, apart from stability/stableness and skins?
/H

im a k-meleon and phoenix fan. Opera is caca

K-Meleon is small and fast, it uses Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine without the bloated XUL interface which is what slows Mozilla down so much. K-Meleon is highly customizable via a few text .cfg files and extensible with its macro facility.

I've never used Phoenix, the idea is to get away from XUL. Phoenix strikes me as an experimental browser in which the goal is to try and optimize the XUL stuff and eventually incorporate any improvements into Mozilla.

Opera is the smallest of the browsers but part of the reason for that is the executable files are compressed. Opera 6.x is too strict in its rendering so some pages don't display properly. It also doesn't support SMTP authentication so its email client is unusable for send mail on most servers today. Opera 7 beta sucks because of its nasty UI changes which they say were done to make it less confusing to users. Opera 7 only truly supports MDI (a.k.a. layers or tabbed browsing), has huge Fisher-Pricey buttons, and some ridiculous "virtual folders" (or something like that) in its email client, UGH !!! Also Opera wants money for their browser, the free one has a banner ad, though it can be easily defeated.

As for that buggy, insecure, piece of crap browser which comes with the OS, go here and download IEradicator to remove it - http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html

I've tried all three. I'm now using Phoenix.

I tried Opera for a few days, but just couldn't get used to the interface. It seemed fast, but I had a few problems with pages I frequent (I don't remember which).

I used Mozilla for a while right after 1.0, but gave it up for K-Meleon because Mozilla was just too bloated and slow. K-Meleon is nice, but it just doesn't feel very "complete" to me. I find bookmarks to be a real pain in K-Meleon. I loved the ability to access favorites in the right-click menu, but managing favorites just didn't work well. (I don't want my bookmarks alphabetized!) I also missed the sidebar under K-Meleon. Finally, I like real tabs, not layers. Layers work, but feel "hackish" to me. Bookmarks, tabs, and the sidebar were my main reasons for switching to Phoenix.

I've been very impressed with Phoenix. It isn't quite as fast as K-Meleon, but is MUCH faster than Mozilla. I used to think XUL was the thing slowing Mozilla down, but apparently it wasn't. Phoenix is improving at an amazing rate. I've found it to be more stable than K-Meleon (thought you mileage may vary). I'm using a recent nightly right now and love it.

The great thing about all of these browsers is that we now have real choices. K-Meleon (for Win), Phoenix (for Win and Linux), Mozilla, Chimera (for Mac), Galeon (for Linux), and Opera all work well enough. Try them all and pick the one you like best (even IE if you don't mind popups).

If you convert your favorites to Netscape bookmarks then you won't have the problem with them being alphabetized. K-Meleon handles Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks better since it is based on Mozilla.

XUL is indeed the thing that's slowing down Mozilla because it's a user interface based on an interpretive language (XML). The Phoenix devs are doing work to try and improve the XUL performance but it will never be as fast as a native OS user interface.

> im a k-meleon and phoenix fan. Opera is caca
Godflesh, you are very right!
Jochen

@ asmpgmr
I do´nt know what is the difference between "layers" in k-meleon and "tabs" in phoenix.
Can you please tell me?
Jochen

Why, exactly, is Opera "caca". I think it is a very nice browser.

I do´nt know what is the difference between "layers" in k-meleon and "tabs" in phoenix.

Quote from
http://kmeleon.freewebsites.com/layers.html

The layers.dll tries to mimic tabbed windows. It keeps a stack of Windows in layers -- one on top of the other -- all with the same size and position. Switching to a new view is done by simply bringing a new window to front. By keeping all but one of the windows invisible the taskbar is kept clutter-free. Even though you still have as many browser windows as usually.. the result is an illusion that may or may not fool you....

Mozilla/Phoenix, on the other hand, can handle several "tabs" in one window.

/Hugo

okey, thnak you!
Jochen

I always find Opera works well for a time but then gets buggy on me. This is the second time I tried Opera, and although I like it, it is very bulky to use. I was pleased to find K-Meleon as a stripped down browser. It is very quick for me! (I guess I did something right in setup!) ;-) I had tried Mozilla before and got so annoyed after 4.0 hours that I deleted it completely. K-Meleon works how I expected Mozilla to. And, so far, I'm staying with it.

-DW