The page load is great! I can load almost anything in 1 second! Amazing. Great themes! But I don't like the implementation of the tab bar. It is just not the same experience. The usability is terrible. I would like REAL tabs like in Mozilla Firebird. Until then, I will be using Firebird.

Hi Traxillian!

Not sure if I understand completely what it is that you mean here. Actually, K-Meleon doesn't use "tabs", but uses "layers", in other words, they aren't true tabs such as those experienced in Mozilla and Firebird, but instead they are completely independent windows of the browser that are layered on on top of another.

With the writing of macros, however, you can get the "layers" to function so closely to tabs in Firebird as to be indistinguishable. People taking a look at my KM browser even think I have tabs! I've changed the word "Layers" to "Tabs:", placed in a "Tab Open" button, and a corresponding "Tab Close" at the end of the bar... Everything opens in a new "tab" with a middle mouse-click---just like Firebird, and they close with a middle mouse-click as well. Sure there are some differences, granted. But I can easily switch between my Firebird, Mozilla, or K-Meleon and get the feeling that I'm using one and the same (except for the fact that there's no theme for Firebird like mine).

At the end I've included a screenshot of my KM with an "Modern Look" Netscape 4.x theme. Pay particular attention to the "tabs".

Be Well!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

http://eyesonly.no-ip.info/Software/internet/Shells/Desktops/KMel.gif

Hi Eyes-only...have run into you on other threads.

I too have been able to get my KM pretty well customized to where I don't really miss Firebird, but there is one FB tabs feature I do miss. It's the setting that you can use which hides the tab bar if there are no additional tabs open. In other words, as long as you have only the main window open the tab bar is hidden, but when you open a 2nd one then the tab bar appears. This gives more screen space to those of us with smaller monitors.

Hi teeb! Great seeing you again!

Yeah, I don't know of any way of doing that, unfortunately. Well, my theme for K-Meleon is always "in flux" as I'm always looking for ways to save space as well in order to give myself as much of a viewing space as possible. I don't know if you clicked on my screenshot above, but I've since changed the look yet again. If you click the above link you should see a different version of the theme now. I've condensed it to just two bars. But I've gone into "about:config" and changed the length of my layers to 85 pixels and back awhile I had grouped a bunch of my bookmarks together into folders on the personal bookmarks toolbar, moving those that I least use into folders in "Bookmarks" themselves. It still gives me a lot of room on my toolbars for my URL bar, all my added buttons and everything else. Plus I never have more than 4 layers opened anyway.

What do you think of this for space-savings? Sort of like "having your cake and eating it too" as they say in English. LOL!

Peace my friend!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

This gives more screen space to those of us with smaller monitors.

Yeah, I'm also a stickler for screen space too, so for me KM starts in Fullscreen w/rebar & status bar visible so all tools are 1 or 2 clicks away. All my toolbars including the layer bar are along 1 strip at the top. I'm not one for opening 20 layers at a time, 10-12 is my max, so half the screen width is adequate on a 1024 by 768 view. I've hacked the hotlist plugin toolbar to be used as a dropdown menu replacing the standard menu saving more space. This is a screenshot of my setup a little over a month ago. It's changed a little since then and I change themes about once a month, but you get the idea. No other browser allows me to setup this way.

http://home.comcast.net/~jsnj/KClipboard102803.png

To Eyes-Only and jsnj, thanks for the info. (And sorry if we seem to have taken over your thread, Traxillian, but I think this kind of discussion benefits all of us.)

I'm using a 17 inch monitor with 800x600 and I too have my KM down to just one bar. I'm not enuf of a whiz to do the special trick with the standard menu, but I have eliminated the GO dropdown, and I have the HELP covered just by sliding the button toolbar over it. However, my bar is a little more crowded than yours, jsnj, because I also have a small URL window on it. But the whole things works pretty well for me...and come to think of it I really don't miss the FB disappearing tab-bar feature that much anymore!

I'm assuming that layers were implemented as a quick and dirty way to do tabs.

Am I wrong? Other than making it easier to switch between them, is there some other aspect of layers that makes them 'better' than tabs? If not, how hard would it be to move to real tabs? I assume they'd need to be drawn in the browser window as opposed to using some MFC toolbar thingy - is there more to it than that? Well, I guess you'd need to know for each tab whether to paint stuff as it downloads...

Mozilla and Firebird's tabs are really slick. Konqueror's are kind of awkward. So I guess it's not trivial.

That is so neat the way you have that set up jsnj! And wow! What a lot of options you've added to your menu there! It's like you've completely re-written the menus! You're right: What other browser gives us such range of versatility?!

I'm curious teeb: If you have a 17" monitor why do you have the resolution low? My son had loaned me a 17" slimscreen and to keep it in line with my shell's theme (I'd only made it for one resolution unfortunately) I placed it at 1024x768 and found that even with my bad eyes I had no problem with it. All I had to do was increase the font size and that was it. I am glad though I went and got a 19" viewable though. But I still regret, a bit, that I'd given my 21" viewable to my daughter. Damn... I'm a good dad! LOL!

As to your question Rob: I'll have to leave that to the experts in the matter because it goes far beyond my field of expertise. I'm going to "guess" though that it's a "Windows thing" and to make it true tabs they'd have to dip into the Mozilla XUL formatting. But this is just an extremely uneducated guess on my part because I've unfortunately lost all my programming abilities due to a brain injury. >sigh<

Just for the record I'm going to let my secret out as to how I answer many of the questions here: I keep a couple of layers opened here and use "Search" to dredge up answers, search the Wiki, check the macros, etc. And here all this time you guys thought I actually knew something?! Cheat, cheat, cheat! But I love to help.

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

<i>I'm curious teeb: If you have a 17" monitor why do you have the resolution low?</i>

E-O, it's partially a matter of just what I'm used to...and partially because of family and friends. I have several websites I do (as a hobby) that are visited by a lot of different people, some of whom have high-resolution monitors but many with older machines using 640 x 480, and it's always a headache to try to make the sites look good on everybody's machines. I've found that if I design to 800 x 600 it seems to do pretty well for everbody.

Besides that, since my toolbar is pretty minimal the main difference between the two is only more space for the layer "tabs", and I seldom need that.

If you want to take a look, here's the URL:
http://members.worldkey.net/~penwit/kmcompar.htm

Very nice set up that you have there teeb! And I guess I was thinking of the last time that I'd placed my screen on an 800x600 resolution, but come to think of it I was going by my wallpaper that I had at the time I bet, which was set for like 32bit colour. LOL! So needless to say it looked horrible! DUH!

But okie, I can see your compromise now at keeping it at that resolution. My website is 1024x768 but I have it marked at that too.

Take care my friend!

Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"

The toolbar by default should have buttons to open and close new layers.

This would make the browser more functional. Especially if you don't know how to implement these changes yourself.

My website is 1024x768 but I have it marked at that too.

E-O, your website looks just fine at 800 x 600 too.

I'm very happy with the layer buttons in K-meleon and the right click options!