I really enjoy K-Meleon's bare bones philosophy and its speed. But someone with the skill should try and develop a K-Meleon editor to handle the script language. Cutting and pasting, and trying to decipher the workings of the script language is just not cool. If I wanted a developer's version, I'd go for the developer browser, Mozilla. K-Meleon, otoh, with its Windows API structure is just a fast, mean browsing machine!

N

K-Meleon's macro language is great, it's simple and straightforward, here's the reference manual:
http://kmeleon.freewebsites.com/kmeleon-manual/macro-lang.html

There's no if/then/else but you can use the ternary operator (condition ? true-statement : false-statement) to essentially accomplish the same thing.

I beg to difer. Any macro language script is fine, IF you have no desire to go beyond a certain small audience of tech-savy individuals. But there are many who have zero desire to learn or little time to spare to learn and when you look at PREFBAR, etc., in XUL-based browsers, you have to ask the simple question? "Why bother with K-Meleon?"

And it is a crying shame, because, imo, K-Meleon is an elegant, fast, mean browsing machine and I like the speed of using Windows APIs instead of emulation layers. So, there has to be at least one programmer out there who is willing to modify a text editor to handle this particular scripting language. One little programmer?

N

I beg to difer. Any macro language script is fine, IF you have no desire to go beyond a certain small audience of tech-savy individuals. But there are many who have zero desire to learn or little time to spare to learn and when you look at PREFBAR, etc., in XUL-based browsers, you have to ask the simple question? "Why bother with K-Meleon?"

And it is a crying shame, because, imo, K-Meleon is an elegant, fast, mean browsing machine and I like the speed of using Windows APIs instead of emulation layers. So, there has to be at least one programmer out there who is willing to modify a text editor to handle this particular scripting language. One little programmer?

N

Why bother with K-Meleon ?? Because it's small and fast. You mention XUL-based browsers but that's the very reason why Mozilla is slow. XUL is an XML-based interpreted language which forms the basis of an application framework. XUL is very CPU intensive and disk intensive (reading .jar files, .rdf files, etc., accessing a XUL cache file which can grow to 3+ M. Frankly the Mozilla developers could learn something from the K-Meleon developers about good UI design which is flexible but small and fast. K-Meleon's UI is controlled by only a few relatively small .cfg files and is easily customizable and also extensible with the macros. Of course it isn't cross platform but once the UI is done it's done so why does it need to be ? I never understood the advantage of a cross platform UI, I only see the obvious disadvantages which are evident in Mozilla, slowness and use of lots of disk space.

As for the macro language, well it's simply not hard to understand since they used fairly standard procedural high-level language constructs and functions and they did provide a reference manual for it. Note you don't have to use the macro facility to use K-Meleon.

DEVELPOERS THAT LISTEN

>DEVELPOERS THAT LISTEN

I've never used any piece of software before where the developers were so easy to reach and so quick to lend a hand if needed. Perhaps you'd find them more willing to listen if you didn't shout ;-)

Seriously. What haven't they listened to, in your opinion?

PFMJI on that reply, but my answer to your question of what they're not listening to is simple. They're stuck on the philosophy that cutting and pasting with a brand-new script language is cool. When that is the opposite of cool, imo.

Sorry if that offends, but K-Meleon, is a great browser. A simple little utility to "tweak" its configuration is not too much to ask for.

The idea that that request is akin to asking for a full-blown XUL/XPI style Mozilla browser is nonsense. It is just common sense to go for a decent little utility.

N

I've only been using K-Meleon for a few weeks now but I had NO problem understanding their macro language, they provided a macro language reference manual and example macros, what more do you possibly need besides complete info and examples ?? I wrote several macros to extend K-Meleon to my liking where as to do the same things in Mozilla are really difficult (or impossible) and at the very least involve changing files contained in .jar files which get overwritten when you upgrade. Bottom line you don't need to use the macro language at all to use K-Meleon. The other configuration (.cfg) files are simple text files and are all pretty obvious but their functionality is documented as well. K-Meleon is FAR easier to configure than Mozilla.

Shrug. We differ on this. You think it's just fine to have to cut and paste using a brand new script language and I think that is counter-productive and that K-Melleon would be well served by employing a simple configuration utility that forgoes cutting and pasting and learning a script language, no matter how simple.

N

No, I'm saying the macro language is simple and straightforward to use and it's well documented. I didn't have to cut and paste anything, I just looked at the macros that came with the distribution and the macro reference manual and wrote the macros I wanted. The K-Meleon macro language uses standard procedural language constructs and functions, they've provided 100% of the info that's needed to use it.

ndebord,

File an RFE here:

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/bugs/

and describe exactly what you want from the utility. I personally don't deal with the macros myself but I can see users who want to but don't want to get into the code so a utility would be useful to them. I don't know if it would be "simple" to create but one of the developers might find it easy to put together.

If we implement everything for the "average Joe User" then we end up with another Mozilla, IE or Opera. KM team should really pick their target group and stay faithful to their needs. And, in some sense, I feel like they've already made their choice. Current KM offers you nice flexibility given you make small effort on your side to learn things (very few things, actually).

You do not need yet another checkbox-frontend for KM. It's not that you edit your KM config daily, after all. I'm not against idea of gui configurator per se but I think that KM has it's own user base who likes current DIY attitude pretty much. It gives sorta different feeling about browser. It stops becoming "another browser" and becomes "my browser" when you've gotten your hands dirty for few times with prefs and configs.

The attitude says it all. KM is not for the "average Joe User" but for the techno-nerd geeks.

A gui configurator of some kind is just basic common sense.

I'm not asking for XUL or the kitchen sink here.

N

Why do you keep going on about this ? What exactly do you want or need that you feel you need to write a macro to do ?

K-Meleon's target audience is anyone who wants the Gecko rendering engine without the slowness of Mozilla's XUL application framework.

K-Meleon is the only browser that I know of which has a macro language but you don't have to use it, in fact you don't have to install the macro plugin so why worry about it ? If you're not a programmer (and I'm guessing you're not) then the macro lanugage probably isn't for you but that doesn't stop you from using the browser. Adding a gui tool makes no sense and would be unnecessary bloat that has nothing to do with the browser. They've given you all of the information, asking for more is unreasonable and makes it sound like you just don't want to read the doc. Try and find complete info for Mozilla and even if you could, try and do something with it. It's a nightmare due to what I consider to be a questionable UI design. K-Meleon wins hands down in speed and configurability.

I want a GUI to handle Edit/Preferences/Config.

Right now, you're looking at coding for accel, menus, macros and if you were to decide to edit PREFS.JS with a text editor and god forbid, make a mistake, the next time you run K-Meleon, it reverts to all the default settings. Fun.

Why do I go on with this, you ask? Let's reverse the question. Why do you insist that everyone needs to learn the script language? Is this a browser or a programmer's tool? As for the macros not being required. Fine. I could run it without, but why? Macros add to the brower's utility.

As for the scripting language. Yeah. I figured out some of it and modified K-Meleon to some degree to suit my tastes, but what a PITA.

And you're right, I'm not a programmer, I'm a writer and in the trade. I absolutely love K-Meleon, but there is a limit to bare-bones philosophy.

N

For crying out loud, prefs.js is a Netscape/Mozilla standard and has been so for a long time. I've made many changes to prefs.js in K-Meleon, Mozilla, and Netscape 4.x, it's definitely not a problem. While prefs.js is processed internally as Javascript, it is just a settings file much like a .ini file. Again there is documentation for prefs.js online. Also many prefs are available via the preferences menus, if you don't understand something then don't change it.

K-Meleon is fine the way it is, if you have a problem with it then try configuring Mozilla and see which is more trouble to configure. There are a lot more preferences since Mozilla handles more. Good luck trying to redefine an accel key or menu to your liking in Mozilla, it's a major effort.

Also if someone doesn't want to read documentation then they shouldn't complain, the documentation is there to tell you how software works and how to use it. Software isn't going to write or configure itself.

Hello, Average Joe User here.

Couldn't a plugin be made to fix this?
So those who can, can write macro's and all the other scary stuff, and those that can't, can have a nice simple interface?
People aren't born with the ability to write script language you know.

Still, I like K-Meleon as it is. There's usually a helping hand when you need one.

No need to get upset here. There are people out there who build their own cars , there are people out there who build their own computers from pieces and there are people out there who like to tinker with their browser. You don't have to learn "scripting language" to use KM. You need to follow instructions if you want to configure extra options but you don't certainly have to learn anything if you don't want to.

What options you would like to have gui for?

I hope the K-Meleon developers spend time fixing bugs and adding useful features like global history when embedded Mozilla supports it and URL autocompletion and other browser functionality, not some hand-holding gui thing which will just bloat the distribution file unneccesarily and provide no useful browser functionality.

Referring to macros and config files as "scary stuff" is absolutely ludicrous and no a plugin won't "fix" it since there is nothing broken as far as configurability goes.

You can use K-Meleon without configuring a thing but if you want more then you have to be willing to read the documentation, that's what it's there for. Anyway most of the stuff is quite obvious even without reading the documentation. Also why keep going on about this ? No other browser has some wretched gui thing, Mozilla doesn't, Netscape 4.x doesn't, IE doesn't, so why should K-Meleon ? K-Meleon is meant to be small and fast and that would be contrary to that goal. Plus it couldn't write or configure stuff for you, it isn't a Hogwarts browser.

Hey, I know when to stop flogging a dead horse. I'm preaching to the faithful here.

N

> Referring to macros and config files as "scary stuff" is absolutely ludicrous

No, it's not. It's just a way of showing you what things look like from my side of the keyboard. And you know as well as I do that there are many users who see things this way. You may not like it, but that's not going to change it. And calling people's viewpoint 'absolutely ludicrous' is not going to do much good, either.

>and no a plugin won't "fix" it since there is nothing broken as far as configurability goes.

Of course it isnt't broken. If the word 'fix' doesn't appeal to you, try reading 'improve' instead.

Hey, there are people for whom neither scripting language (whatever that means) nor English is a first language.

>Anyway most of the stuff is quite obvious even without reading the documentation.

*For you* it probably is.

Why doesn't anyone answer sven's question:
>What options you would like to have gui for?

Let the developers know what you expect from this GUI, and they might code it. But you have to remember that the developers may still reject the idea because first, they have another things to do, and second, there is a possibility that they are not able to do it (AFAIK, programming is not a very easy thing to do, and Klaartje confirmed this in his last statement).

For ndebord and Klaartje, I think the best way for both of you to learn KM's macro scripts is by reading the macros that people have made. Try using the forum search to find them. I have to admit, Ulf's manual may be a little too hard to understand for people who don't have any programming backgrounds.

I'm not sure that there will be a response from "Ulf" or the other developers. If you look at the threads, you notice that this is my second post on this topic. The first time around I said "need sophisticated config editor" and guess what? I got ZERO posts from anyone in this improvement forum. So I reposted and made the subject "What KM really needs"

Aside from myself and Klaartjet, the overwhelming response I see is akin to devoted followers of Linux, you know the feeling, "I love my hair shirt." Which is why Lindows, Libranet and the ilk are making such waves in that OS.

Like it or not, "Joe User" these days is not a techie. I go back to the C: prompt and wrote batch files and simple Basic and even QBasic in my day. But in the last few years of MR BILL domination, most end users are simply not aware of the ins and outs of the guts of the beast they use. Batch files and ini files were replaced by complex registries. So the skill level went down (and in my case, my programming skills never amounted to a hill of beans).

So, when you look at K-Meleon, you see a very fast browser with an attitude of keeping it lean, sleek and did I say fast? I applaud that.

But when you open up Edit/Preferences/Config and look at the choices there, you are presented with a given: A script language and a primitive editor. some say you should the program and write macros using a reference file that essentially just lists the guts of the script language. No real help file. Not really a manual of the quality I have seen in the past. And, there are little missteps along the way. For instance, I wanted to put a comment line in PREFS.JS the other day, to placehold a search engine I wanted to use as an alternate. So, reading the blurbs, I used what I thought was a comment character. I put an # in front of the line! Boy was I wrong. PREFS.JS choked big time & when I next ran K-Meleon, it reinstalled all the defaults. Luckily for me, I always keep backups of files I'm going to work on. Another time, I tried to manually change accel.cfg and menus.cfg to add the search engine a different way, e.g., add in a new hotkey pointing to a different search engine than google. Well, first offf, when I searched through the config and JS files, I didn't find any mention of google anywhere as the default search engine! So I scratched my head and ran around to a few K-Meleon Reference sites and FOUND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. THen I read one of the posts in the Forum and found that you had to insert a search engine line in PREFS.JS and could change the default search engine URL there. Still haven't figured out how to add a new search engine to the toolbar, although I have got a very nice menu search key under <Go> that does absolutely nothing..

So, I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER. Sue me. But give me something better to handle the options that are now handled in barebones fashion in Edit/Preferences/Configs (Menu, Accelerators, Prefs, Macros, Toolbars).

OK, you want to leave PREFS out because nobody, not Mozilla, not Netscape, not old Communicator, not IE, not Opera, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY has anything GUI to handle that, BE MY GUEST.

Finally, I am not going to post a bug report asking for a GUI. BECAUSE I don't know what exactly to ask for. I leave that to my tech friends who know who to phrase it so it can possibly get a fair hearing.

And, last, but not least. K-Meleon is a great browser. Like Linux some of the config options need to be prettied up. The browser itself doesn't need to be saddled with XUL as are Phoenix and Mozilla. User ergonomics used to be a catch phrase, but it had a bite to it. You either adapt to fill the customers' needs or you remain a niche player. :-(

N

For starters you really need to get your terminology straight. By "script language" one can only assume you mean the macro language. The .cfg files are simple configurations files which allow you to define key functions (accel.cfg), menu items (menus.cfg), toolbar buttons (toolbars.cfg), and optional macros which can be used in the others (macros.cfg). The options you can set in the preferences menu are stored in prefs.js though there are certain things you have to set manually.

I have never blown away prefs.js in K-Meleon, Mozilla, or Netscape 4.x, besides there is a backup (prefs.bak) in K-Meleon and Mozilla, did you bother looking in your profile subdirectory ? As for the other .cfg files, I've changed every one to my liking and added functionality via macros like a Search menu item with several Google sites, a view page info function, and a better up_directory macro. I can honestly say from experience that nothing better is needed, K-Meleon is fine just the way it is as far as configurability goes. Also there is NO way to have a gui write macros for you, how the heck would a program possibly know what you want to do ??

The point of K-Meleon is to have a small and fast browser not encumbered by XUL or extras like a web editor. Trying to write some gui thingy to hand hold people who don't want to read documentation and understand how stuff works would be a complete waste of time that could be better spent implementing useful features. I know if they actually went in the direction of adding useless and inane feature bloat then I certainly wouldn't be interested in K-Meleon anymore and I suspect others wouldn't be either.

OK, let me make a few things clear:

1) Most people who post here are not directly associated with the K-Meleon development team so don't assume comments about "won't" or "can't" are statements from the people who are actually doing the coding. Even when the developers say "won't" as was said some time ago about Tabs, it doesn't preclude someone from coming in and doing it, which is exactly what happened with the Layers/Tabs when Ulf created the Tabs plugin.

2) There's no reason that add-ons can not be created that don't have to be part of the core browser package. There's two guiding principals with K-Meleon: fast and configurable. If someone writes a useful add-on, we can always make it available as a separate download.

3) "Finally, I am not going to post a bug report asking for a GUI. BECAUSE I don't know what exactly to ask for."

We don't need a technical guide to what you want. Just describe what you want to do and what problems you have encountered. We'll work out the technical details of that.

4) Posting on the Forums is not posting to the developers. Some developers read all of the posts here. Some don't read any of them. If it is not filed as a bug or posted to the developers list, there's no guarantee that the person who might be able/willing to code that is going to see that. Please file a bug/request for this. It may or may not be done. Personally, I can see some value in it and don't think it needs to be some huge bloat. But I'm not the one who is going to code it so that's just my two cents.

About configuring K-Meleon...

Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's hard. It's usually doable and there's always help if you need it. If the way I can change the way my K-meleon works gets easier, I would be happy. But I'm already happy now, because I like K-meleon as it is.

So, if anyone would code a tool (as an add-on) that can be used to make changing certain settings easier, I would certainly welcome that, and most probably use it. But I wouldn't say K-Meleon *needs* it.

This is an old thread by now and our positions are well established. I'll just leave everyone with one litte observation.

Don't you just love looking up hex code to change default colors in K-Meleon?

N

That has been a standard since Netscape Communicator, it allows you to precisely specify the 24-bit color you want. Stop complaining about stuff being hard when it is definitely not.

I'd just like to add my own (hopefully) short comment to this already-too-long thread...

As far as I can tell, there is no way to give macros a GUI, short of making a full Visual C-type IDE that would be many times the size of K-Meleon. Macros simply don't work well as a GUI. The accelerators and configs *could*, given sufficient work, be given a GUI, but why? Is there anything wrong with typeing "CTRL ALT K = opennew(http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/)" rather than selecting "CTRL ALT K"from a dropdown list, selecting command "open in new windows" from another drop down list, and entering "http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/"; into a textbox? This format is so insanely simple and well documented that nearly anyone should be able to do it.

Macros, I admit, are slightly more complicated to someone who has never programmed before. But how can you make a GUI for macros? If someone can explain this to me, I may change my view. But until then, I see no reason for a GUI.

If you think I'm wrong, feel free to reply. I may even agree with you after reading your post.