I noticed a post in the request section about K-Meleon's site and I wanted to expand a little on this something people were missing the point on in that post.

Obviously the people that use K-Meleon don't want appearance over efficiency, or bells and whistles, and a lot of extras that aren't needed. But then what does the code and gui of an application have to do with creating a website? I'll tell you nothing...

The K-Meleon DEV team is missing one very IMPORTANT aspect here, and it's called MARKETING! Marketing doesn't mean you have to change your product, marketing is just a means to bring the masses in to start using your product.

This isn't about the appearance, efficiency, or bells and whistles aspect, this is about REACHING THE MASSES!

The questions the developers need to ask here is, do we want to reach the masses and grow with a bigger user base? Growing in user base size also doesn't mean the software has to grow with more features and bloat either.

K-Meleon can simply live by their principles, and give the people a browser without compromise.

The thing is, if you want to reach the masses you need APPEAL, and the website has no appeal to draw and bring people in.

Ask yourself these questions, why can't K-meleon be as it is, but with a website that has style and appeal, makes the user interested and draws their attention, makes them want to sit up and pay attention and check it out?

Does making a professional site that brings style and appeal mean the software has to change?

Is the reason the site has never changed is because no one has the time to bother with it?

I'd imagine you've heard some of this before. K-Meleon is a GREAT browser, but the website does not reflect the level of the quality.

Bringing in more people means possibly more finacial support too for this project, and what is wrong with that?

One problem I see and know that could be going on here and it's called being to geek to realize, to lost in the code to understand. Some geeks have no style and sense of fashion, let's face it some people in general have no style or sense of fashion either, so you think I'm joking? Well then you have not been around the Unix/Linux world to have seen the geeks I have seen over the past 15 years and the ways in which they also present their products to the masses with their geek techno sites.

LOOK at it this way, this is TRUE the world over. Things of power, wealth, riches, quality, success, and so on, do you see them coming in little brown card board boxes, or brown paper bags? Do you SEE the picture I'm trying to PAINT?

It is natural the world over that people associate quality and style with LOOKS! This is one of the biggest reasons you want to have a site that reflects some style and professionalism, otherwise to the average person it looks like nothing.
For some they will think there is really nothing there worth bothering with, and you're going to find, only the more adventurous are going to be drawn in.

Let's be clear here, quality doesn't mean looks, and vice versa, it's not the point here, it's SIMPLY about drawing attention. You also have to remember in the world of computing there are still users the world over intimidated by all of this out there, their computers and the web, this is another aspect to consider, about all of this.

Let's face it, we live in a world of color, and in the western world people want to be entertained. Most people that use computers LOVE entertainment in some form or another, and when you make a website that is just flat, black and white, well I hope you see this picture too, it's called, BORING, and most westerns are not into boring.

If there's one thing to be said about all of this, the site simply puts people to sleep.

I hope what I've said here makes sense. I've been on the web since the day it was born. I have worked in eCommerce, run Content Management Systems (CMS) for people and eStores, done web design and I know the web and what the average person is looking for in an internet experience, so I don't just talk from general ideas of rambling, but a man of over 20+ years of web experience from a professional stand point.

All I can say is if you don't believe any of this, then go look at what internet eCommerce and marketing is all about.

@DasFox - very impassioned argument. If you would like to improve the site, you might try contacting some of these on this page: http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=14285

If you reach your objective, I hope that this site won't going fancy because when that happens, the web loses usability as, for a very nice example, YouTube. YouTube now is superfancy... and? and the result is that it has lost a lot of usability. Is that what you want?, great!!! but no for me, thank you.

I'm spanish and with spanish webpages these days happened whith updated webpages, they are superfancy and the usability is now 0 (ZERO).

Well, I love the site how it is, what could I say



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2008 01:48PM by JohnHell.

I see nothing wrong with this site as is. Style is in the the eye of the beholder.

Nobody is against an improved website.
But nobody did it either.

We just need a designer to do it.

I think something with a dancing lizard would be nice. Flash required, of course.

Quote
noob
I think something with a dancing lizard would be nice. Flash required, of course.

Don't you know GIFs?

No, please, BAN flash.

I am of the opinion that rather than updating the site (which in my opinion is far more than adequate) it would be better to update the content within it.

For instance, many of the links lead to extremely outdated materials. Updating the materials so that they match the current version(s) of K-Meleon would be more preferable than boogering up the site with all kinds of things that flash or blink in distraction just to add something that catches your eye. Current and up to date information catches my eye and impresses me more than anything. Flashy, blinking, wild colored things distract and dumb things down. Information informs and documents.

Quote
DasFox
The thing is, if you want to reach the masses you need APPEAL, and the website has no appeal to draw and bring people in.

To appeal to masses a product or source must pretty much have something for everyone in the "masses," kind of like McDonald's is among fast food operations. And of course McDonald's, like nearly all FF operations now and most big name browsers, is no longer fast.

The KM browsers are very easy to customize, or to learn to customize. If some one wants an all-in-one browser, there are many available. Why re-invent the wheel just to make it 'still' turn in the same way?

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~

Just like one person mentioned, and is true, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but does Opera's, Firefox's, or any other big name player's site look as 2 dimensional and lifeless as this? No of course not, that's all I'm trying to point out, time to move with the changes and update the site to a standard that looks more like the 21st century computing and not a 1980 Unix hackers site on Sourceforge...

When someone mentioned here, they hope to not loose functionality of the site with something more fancy that makes the site more difficult, well all I can say is every good webmaster knows how to make a quality site, easy to navigate and functional...

I hope everyone get's the point now? --> Time to step into the 21st century...

THANKS

AFAIK Source Forge is not necessarily trying to sell any thing. And KM is an open source project. And in any case, all that really matters is the dissemination of information. Bells and whistles cost money and just get in the way. Why buy a DeLorian when a Ford or Chevy will due just fine. After all, no one here is trying to sell or impress.

However, If you want to shell out a bunch of money I'm sure the DEV's can find some thing to do with it.

Charlie

~~If it ain't broke, why screw it up?~~



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2008 01:58AM by caktus.

caktus,

I agree with you. nothing to sell, just a great browser to give. All I do here is just for fun and pleasure, and the guys who want bells and whistles are wrong.

K-Meleon is not Maxthon

A+

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Mozilla/5.0 (x11; U; Linux x86_64; fr-FR; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Ubuntu/12.04 K-Meleon/76.0

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Web: http://jujuland.pagesperso-orange.fr/
Mail : alain [dot] aupeix [at] wanadoo [dot] fr

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Ubuntu 12.04 - Gramps 3.4.9 - Harbour 3.2.0 - Hwgui 2.20-3 - K-Meleon 76.0 rc

---

I guess I'm not making my point here clear, LOL...

I never said anything about Bells and whistles in K-Meleon, and building a nice website doesn't cost much if you want to do it yourself and know how to.

The Mozilla project that develops Firefox is also opensource, and Sourceforge is a repository for Open Source. Sourceforge has nothing to do with the development of K-Meleon...

THe only money that needs to be spent in building a site if you know how to do it is just buying the domain name, and hosting, and I would hope that for as long as K-Meleon has been in existence that someone would provide hosting...

k-meleon is different and though it might have not been initially intended; it is targeted towards different people and not to the masses.
in a new web-design, something very important must be taken into account..k-meleon is the last decent browser that will work smoothly on old machines with out-dated systems win9.x nt4 etc. users of those systems with outdated browsers will be coming here looking for something that can accomodate their needs whilst working perfectly on their slow machines, that simply means the content must be basic avoiding pointless eye-candy flash animations or anything that doesn't serve the site while adding to its' server(s) bandwidth needlessly. personally i don't have any problems with the current's site layout and as far as marketing goes; i just read "the browser you control" and i'm sold, i'm sure there are a lot of people like me. in my opinion, a ''visitor'' who runs off because the site is too spartan without actually taking a few minutes to read about it; is someone who shouldn't be using k-m in the first place.

i don't want a new layout that appeals to every tom, dick and harry and eventually we'll have blonde housewives flooding the forum with stupid questions like help..i don't know where i've installed the program.

that said, i do agree with paularoid.. the only drawback i find with the site is the outdated and dead links.. or tutorials that link to early versions that doesn't work on the current releases.. those may be kept as archives but serious updating has to be done to serve the upcoming 1.5. that's about it.

Talking, and saying a browser for Windows is targeted for different people is stupid, we're not running Unix here...

This browser is for anyone that wants a nice light and fast browser period!

I never said anything about making a bloated website either, or using flash, and animation on it too...

Last time I looked Mozilla doesn't use flash or animations or anything bloat on their site either...

No one said anything either about making a site that everyone can agree on. There's an OLD saying, you can please some of the people some times, but you can't please everyone all the time...

well..some of the people are already pleased

Quote
disrupted
well..some of the people are already pleased

As I mentioned before it's not about pleasing anyone, it's about understanding Marketing and eCommerce...

It's clear to see by the look of this site that the developers don't understand this concept, and it's very typical to see in open source...

Are the developes working for free on their own time? If so sooner or later this gets old, everyone likes to get paid for a job, and if they think they don't then they are living in a dream world, because as time passes everyone changes, and sooner or later the fun part time coding hobby dies, I've seen this story played out for 15 years in open source, but K-meleon does seem to being going strong...

If anyone around is getting what I'm saying and you've been around open source for the past 15 years you know exactly what I'm talking about, many great projects have come and gone over the years, because sooner or later people don't have time to work for free...

Why wouldn't the dev team want to improve a situation, bring in more people and increase the chances of finacial support to help back the project? Unless they themselves are independently wealthy?

That's the point. You forget that this project is built from free time, not as a business as you may be trying to tell us. I mean, the people behind k-meleon (I don't know them and their lifes) "work" (sorry, I don't like that word, they share) for fun and in their free time.

Your point seems to be to convert this project in a software company developing software and I think that the reality of this project isn't that. It is just the developing of a free software and open to the community (Internet). There isn't any business behind that.

You point also that "K-meleon does seem to being going strong", yes, and it had bad times too. That was because there weren't many people with programming knowledge helping, now they are more and the project grows and if in the future k-meleon has bad days, maybe it will die, but it's normal, but in an open community and active as this, I don't believe it in the near future.

I'll point you to check the nPOP mail client community because it is the same like this. The main developer had no time years ago, but now it has, has released few new versions and also the sub-versions are being developed, all by the community and without any marketing business behind, just because they want to make a nice mail client for them and for those who find it and would like to use.

(I feel I repeated the same on each paragraph )

IMO, many of the masses grew up using only IE. IE, the browser with everything thrown in, including the kitcken sink. Point and click on an icon and type something in the address bar is the only thing many people have ever done on their browser. When they read about customizing K-Meleon by writing macros, they think about DOS and UNIX. Of course many people use K-Meleon with the default settings and checking/ unchecking items in Preferences is as far as they will ever get in customization. Nothing wrong with macros but many people have no inclination or knowledge to write them. Too much work just to surf the 'net. Not too much work for enthusiasts though.

Quote
JohnHell
That's the point. You forget that this project is built from free time, not as a business as you may be trying to tell us. I mean, the people behind k-meleon (I don't know them and their lifes) "work" (sorry, I don't like that word, they share) for fun and in their free time.

No I didn't forget this project is FREE, I was pointing this out already. I'm trying to SAY that in this free project of people that have a life, and only make a hobby out of this because they think there is no money in this, or they don't want to do it for money, etc., etc., the truth here is that if the community grew and brought more people in, there is the possibility of people making donations, helping with things like building a nicer site, etc...

No one is talking about making this a business, I'm simply saying that if the developers would create a more inviting looking site, spent a bit of their free time marketing it, there is the possibility it will draw some attention, and possibly some of that attention might bring some money in to help them.

There is NOTHING wrong with getting donations for your hard work and free time, and I can't imagine the developers turning this down to help with the project, taking those donations and putting back into the project to build a nicer site, get some hosting, etc...

Your point seems to be to convert this project in a software company developing software and I think that the reality of this project isn't that. It is just the developing of a free software and open to the community (Internet). There isn't any business behind that.

My point isn't to convert anything, it's SIMPLY to ABOUT BUIDING A NICER SITE, THAT IS ALL...

You point also that "K-meleon does seem to being going strong", yes, and it had bad times too. That was because there weren't many people with programming knowledge helping, now they are more and the project grows and if in the future k-meleon has bad days, maybe it will die, but it's normal, but in an open community and active as this, I don't believe it in the near future.

I'll point you to check the nPOP mail client community because it is the same like this. The main developer had no time years ago, but now it has, has released few new versions and also the sub-versions are being developed, all by the community and without any marketing business behind, just because they want to make a nice mail client for them and for those who find it and would like to use.

(I feel I repeated the same on each paragraph )

perhaps dasfox can contribute his expertise and efforts to the already established http://www.spreadkmeleon.com/ this site's name is apt for marketing and it does need a new design while leaving the sourceforge site as it is.. this way everyone will be happy and those who need screenshots and more detailed description can find it at spreadkmeleon.com

Hopefully the developers have already aquired the domain name, kmeleon.com, because kmeleon.com should be the domain used

Using a name like spreadkmeleon.com would be more appropriate as a fan site or blog, not the actual product site...

there used to be a kmeleon.org but i think it's dead now.. maybe it can be revived?

kmeleon.com and .org are taken

I'm not sure where I was hearing this, but are the developers French? Because the .com is owned by someone in France...

If these guys never bought the domain names for this project then someone really SCREWED UP!

A pity that the k-emeon named sites are not owned by K-Meleon team at SF now.
In the past someone was unattentive or did not have money when it was essential.

Yes: French or ...

Look for posts in K-Melon Wiki or at http://home.arcor.de/sjschaper/klip/wei1.html. provide with some info especially They provide info if You read Foreign languages or use the translation menu.


The Dev team active currently: Dorian = French - kko = German (Freiburg at the French-German Border) - currently all Dev-supporters are chiefly from European countries (alain FR, desgas & Enaitz ES - me/guenter from DE; a Russian Team, Hao from China, he = in the US for studies now, & k-emeon has one active dev supporter = rmn that speaks possibly English as mother language - surname rather from Indonesia or New Guinea then from Australia = English.).

Past - initial developer: Christophe = French, Sebastian = German (the later was rather an user but no trained dev). They are the IMHO 2 most essential.

Later: Major contributors and maintainers from US including the ones You know from about: (during my time: jsnj, MonkeySage & Andrew & one not listed that has nick referring to programming asm). During that time and later Ulf = Schweden, Fred = CH (Switzerland) & people from various countries that supported Ulf and later Fred for his 2 maintainace releases. You can google the old names for info about PPL.

This is a first hand comment: All happened during the time - that I was here / = I came here first for 0.6 - but started to be anything other than a fringe runner when 0.71 was out & I started to post/help (I first complained in a post because I had to reinstall) when 0.8.2 arrived & and when I had shortcomings with the use of java applets. ( See this home page of Sterntaler for exceptional quality lake applets and ancient K-Meleon adverts // Mine 8-. Means K-Meleon has been adverticed since 2005 @ the German Google's current and past premier Lake Applets page.).

p.s. Java applets are a hobby for me since long (about 2002/2003) - I left Opera for good when Opera did not support Java for a minor Opera version.

IMHO we should raise/collect money to buy k-meleon.org or com!

Pramgmaticaly: We can always try to re-collect the invested € = € by selling adverts on a page we own after we bought it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2008 01:26AM by guenter.

AFAIK kmeleon.org was owned by Chirstophe before it stops renew it without warning.

If you want to get it back, this would probably cost around 1500 - 2000 euros, if the owner want to sell it and at a reasonable price. A waste of money IMO. Ads are just out of the question

I looked and k-meleon COM, NET, and ORG were taken. I think k-meleon.info was available for $9.95 US dollars. Is that a one-time charge or a monthly fee?

What no one ever bought the name before?

Well looks like a good time to come up with a better name, and this time BUY a domain name...

Like I said, the creator of the project bought kmeleon.org before