Hi everybody,
I am running K-Meleon on my old Pentium 1 150 MHz laptop under Win95 in order to have the best browser in the world on it with the coolest rendering engine gecko.
Well. I had some problems using 0.9. First of all I tried to install it over my old k-meleon 0.82 which gave me a nice mix of the old preferences and the new ones, so I uninstalled K-Meleon, checked that there weren't any files and dirs left and installed it again. OK. No problem until here. I should have installed it to a new directory the first time. But that way I got a COMPLETE NEW INSTALL, you see. So the following problems aren't version conflicts...
Here they come: I had 6 menus named "c=||||", that didn't open and K-meleon crashed no matter what other right-cllick menu I tried to open. Whew. That's what hell must be like
After some experiments, I got it running correctly. You have to disable the rebar menu plugin and the bitmapped menus plugin to make K-Meleon 0.9 Win95 compatible. But this gives you quite an ugly UI as the menu is grey while the rest of the toolbar has a background image. Consequently I unchecked "Show Toolbar Background" in the Preferences/Display dialogue. After that K-Meleon crashed during startup only milliseconds after launching it. I had to kill the lines that manage the background image in my prefs.js and restart K-Meleon, which set the default vallues again. By manually editing the line

user_pref("kmeleon.display.backgroundImageEnabled", true);

(changing it to false) I finally got a nice looking plus working K-Meleon on my Win95 C Edition (German)!
I'm quite convinced that these problems happen to lots of Win95 users (if there are any left...) Is there any chance to make it work correctly (just like 0.8 did) right away?
I've found that these problems are quite similar to http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?f=3&i=6777&t=6098 , but the problem is: They are not solvable for just "any user": You have to be very experienced with older K-Meleon version to get somewhere without menus - you can't "toggle" the plugins as you don't get to the configuration dialogue...!!!

I don't quite know how to file bugs (Bugzilla scares me a bit). Can anybody here do something about this anyway?

Thanks in advance
Christian

In my opinion install again the 0.82 version.....
it is not sure that new version of programme works well with old win version.
Are you sure that 0.9 K-meleon will be better for you? Generally I am waiting some months before chanching the version. During this time there will be always improvements.
B. G.

I think there are quite some improvements in K-Meleon 0.9 that I want to use. Appart from security issues, it's also the ability to block content etc. that is very interesting for me. I am already using K-Meleon on my fast WinXP machine (that runs Linux quite often) and now on Win95, so I can tell you, that version 0.9 has got many improvments, that like using.

win95: i think it is from win dll version not updated when there is trouble like that.
afaik mainly mfc42.dll which You can also find by google instead of updating the whole system. see info on Documentation. keyword was "trouble" or so.

Content blocking can be used with 0.8.2.
late themes of that version have that already
- also private isues such as 0.8.2+ which has block buttons for js, java, images &
popup; others can be added with help of info from wiki & forum.

i have the same problem

My menu :
ï|.|~|x|

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?id=FAQ#install1

go to section troubleshooting

comctl32 might also need update.

Hi

I'm the author of the thread you referenced in the original post. I use a clean Windows 95 OSR2 install with all the latest updates/patches from Microsoft installed.

Version 0.8.2 worked fine but 0.9 suffers from the described menu problems. The workaround we've talked about seems to get it fully functional.

I agree that this ought to be looked into, even if there are very few Windows 95 users out there. K-Meleon markets itself as a lite browser and therefore a key market ought to be users running older operating systems on slower computers who require a lite modern browser for their machine.

I have an idea that I think *could* solve the problem. It's only a hunch though and there's little logic behind it. The idea is to install the Windows (Active) Desktop Update.

This can be done either through installing IE 4.01SP2:

http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/32bit/4.01_SP2

Or if (like me) you have already installed IE 5.5SP2 (the latest version that supports Win95) you can follow the instructions here to retrospectively install it:

http://www.oldfiles.org.uk/lightspeed/Active_Desktop.html#with_IE

I have a hunch that K-Meleon 0.9 may work without modifcation if this patch is installed.

Unfortunately, I am currently unable to try this out myself therefore I don't know what effect (if any) it has on K-Meleon's functionality ('out of the box').

I recently updated from v0.8.2 to v0.9 on my main (albeit, aging) "workhorse" system, which runs (mostly) under Win95B (a.k.a. "OSR2.1"). I encountered many of the same problems noted in both this thread and the one cited by the OP. Hand-replacing [rebarmenu.dll] and [bmpmenu.dll] with the ones from v0.8.2 (as suggested by that earlier thread) fixed most but *NOT* all of these issues. Two things in particular remain in the "very annoying, but not completely debilitating" category...

1. - The context menus that pop up whenever you right-click on a URL or image (such as to save the image to disk, or open the URL in a new window or background layer) are rather severely malformed. I have a screen-capture .JPG which illustrates this quite nicely; but alas, I don't know how to attach it to this post, so I'll have to describe it.... While at least some of the expected choices/items do appear on the context menu, there are what appear to be about eight very skinny "blank" item sections (i.e., the spaces between item separator lines) at the top, with NO text in them (in fact, there wouldn't be room for text, as each section is only about half as tall as one line of text). At this point, I am not certain if these are merely extraneous "extra" spaces, or whether there are some menu items missing that are supposed to appear in these spaces.

2. - When switching themes (since v0.9 came with "Phoenity" enabled as standard, this inspired me to play around with themes a bit, but I quickly went back to "Klassic" with the toolbar background disabled -- I'm a big believer in the K.I.S.S. Principle), the various toolbars (and their associated settings) nearly always become thoroughly scrambled (typically, each toolbar "element" (such as the "Go" buttons, the "Zoom" buttons, etc., were auto-placed on their own separate full-width toolbar -- a gross waste of screen real estate, to say the least), requiring me to re-size them and drag them around to form some semi-sane arrangement.

Finally -- and sort of as a side note, but still *very* important IMCO... I initially attempted to install v0.9 "over top" of my existing v0.8.2 installation, in order to (hopefully) preserve my preferences and customizations (such as the addition of an image-toggle button, for example). This did not work AT ALL. Even after fixing the screwy menu bars (again, by replacing those two .DLL files), the browser was thoroughly broken -- no matter what "Bookmark" or "Hotlist" item I tried to bring up, or what I (manually) put in the URL bar (including known-valid fully formed explicit URIs), K-Meleon would not load ANY page, nor would it give an error message. It was as if it were stuck looking only at the loopback interface, which in turn was invariably returning an empty page (note, I'm not saying this is what was really happening, only that this is how it *looked*). Hrmph. I then wiped that installation out and re-installed v0.9 "from scratch" into an empty directory. This brought me to the point noted above, where I still needed to fix the menu bar; but at least the browser "worked". So now I need to go back in and hand-apply all my old customizations, etc., yet *again* (which I've not yet done; so I can't report on how whether they will "break" v0.9). Now, I know that it has long been standard advice to completely un-install any old version of K-Meleon before installing a new version, but... This is getting *really* old. If KM is to ever be considered "ready for prime time", it *must* handle in-place updates/upgrades gracefully. I'm really rather amazed that it has even gotten to v0.9 without this glaring problem being addressed.

Regarding the menus

I had the same problem with WIN95. I don't know if it is related but it maybe it is worth a try.

After install I did a "find"on my computer for these DLL files

(you have to be closed out of K-Meleon for this to work)

rebarmenu.dll
bmpmenu.dll

I chanded the .dll to .old

Then I restarted K-Meleon and it worked fine after that.

I am running Windows Me, and yet I had many of these menu problems myself. Fiddling with downgrading or disabling rebarmenu.dll and bmpmenu.dll fixed almost all of the problems, but not all, and of course everything looked ugly without those plugins.

Dave's notion that turning on Active Desktop might solve the problems has worked out for me. I now have the Active Desktop on, the plugins set back to normal (i.e. 0.9 versions and enabled), and I haven't had any problems in ages.

I don't know about Windows 95, but I strongly encourage people who do have an Active Desktop to turn it on and give it a try.


A. G. Kozak

I also use Windows 95 osr2 and have the same jibberish for menus. Not having an active destop is one of the things that makes win95 faster than win98 on old pc's, keeping it low on the ram usage, so even if the issue can be solved this way, I'm sure the win95 users out there would appreciate if an alternative fix could be found.

FYI bamboum, k-meleon 0.9 is much faster than 0.82, it is woth the upgrade.

I got it working fine with Win 95 in 24 MB. I don't remember the details, but search and you should find it. I just set two menu options. There is at least one other discussion on this.

Ah, yes, here it is: http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?f=3&i=7087&t=6098

Are there any plans to fix this? In my mind, the big benefit of using kmeleon over other mozilla derivatives is speed. On fast machines that can run XP, the benefit from using kmeleon over firefox is negligable. But on a slow machine, this is the difference between being able to use a modern, secure browser and being stuck with Netscape 4.

I have a pentium 100 with 80MB of RAM that is still in use. All the software has to be carefully chosen so as to not bog the system down. Windows Â’95 is the OS because it has some proprietary parts, and I do not have the patience to hack together a custom installation of linux or teach my family how to use new programs.

I have applied all available service packs and patches to Windows Â’95.

Kmeleon 0.8.x worked great! The only problem was that there are some newer features in more recent mozilla builds that are included in kmeleon 0.9.x that I would like to take advantage of. So now I am stuck with the hacked-up franken-install of 0.9.x with some 0.8.x components because the menus in 0.9.x do not work in Windows Â’95 (no matter what the FAQ says).

I use plain mozilla on my more recent machines, but mozilla and firefox are both unusable on this Pentium 100.

Hi,

First - A big Thank You to everyone who helped make K-meleon possible.
The programmers and everyone who reported bugs and suggested fixes.

It is nice to see that the "users of older systems" have not been completely
forgotten. ("What? you don't have 15GB of Ram and a 7.99 Ghz Octagon CPU?
Get out of the stone age") <-- that gets old fast.

I also use Win95B (osr2) and just recently came across K-meleon. (0.7)

Following the advice I found on this forum, I was able to make the menus appear
in 0.9 by turning off the loading of the two plugins (files) rebarmenu and bmpmenu.
(in about:config).
Everything is now working. (ok, so there is no background on the icons, no biggie)

I am using an old Tobshiba T4800CT laptop (75mhz 486 cpu) maxxed out at 24mb
of ram. (pentium 100? My machine would SCREAM at that speed ;-)

Yesterday (7-2-05) I had installed 0.7 on it. It had no menus at all. So I followed
the advice found on the home page and updated the various system files.
Voila! menus arrived. It was a tad slow (486 cpu, what did you expect? :-) but
acceptable. Then I found out about 0.9 and decided to use that.
Just an FYI - 0.9 seems noticeably faster than 0.7. (I never tried 0.8x).

I was using Win3.1 up until 2003 (and netscape 4.08 at 128 bit encryption),
233mhz pentium cpu and 256MB ram. (8 gb hd) With Win3.1 it was FAST.
(running on top of NW-DOS 7.0) I had to finally switch because 99% of web
sites would not let me on with NS 4.08. (even NS 4.77 on my MS ME system was
being told it was "too old" to use).

what does k-meleon report itself as? Mozilla? Netscape? IE?
Quite a few sites are still stuck in the MS IE only mode.

Hi David!

Depending on how you have it set in "Privacy" in your preference settings, that's how K-Meleon reports itself. I'd say a good deal of the average users straight from the box just leave it on the "Default" setting, whereas many of the "power surfers" probably set it to MSIE 6.0's user string (though I could very well be wrong on that).

I have mine set to "Default", have always had it set there since Day One for me (and I started playing around with KM at the end of v0.6 I think? I got serious at 0.7.1), and have never been denied access to a website. Maybe once or twice in my entire 13 years of being on the net I may have either had a website not render to readability in my Netscape, later Gecko-based browsers (there are always slight differences in rendering, sure!), or I've been told I actually had to have IE in order to be allowed entry and usage of the website. In that case I've gone on to another site. If they can't take the time to code for me and others then I guess they need my $$$ like a hole in the head, right?

However, I've rarely ever bought anything at all over the net anyway.

Hope this has helped a little in your user string question though? The rest was just me musing about other things as usual. LOL!

amicalement!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"