K-Meleon
K-Meleon is an open-source browser based on Gecko, the rendering engine for Mozilla. It is intended to be a light, fast, and customizable browser.
K-Meleon has been designed specifically to run on Win32 (Windows) computers. There are no plans to port K-Meleon to other operating systems. If you are looking for a Mozilla-based browser for Linux, visit the Galeon project. Camino (formerly Chimera) is a Mozilla-based browser for Mac OS X.
This release primarily contains bug fixes that affect K-Meleon 0.8 and 0.8.1. Most of the new and improved features are included in K-Meleon 0.8. All K-Meleon users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.
The fixes in the 0.9 release include the following serious bugs:
Bug 12: K-Meleon
K-Meleon is designed with a minimal interface that emphasizes speed and utility. It does not include features like e-mail client and web page editor that make Mozilla and other browsers bloated, slow and cumbersome. The K-Meleon developers will consider enhancements that improve the performance and usefulness of the browser.
Currently, K-Meleon programmers are very few in number (unlike Mozilla), and they are people who have other "real-world" jobs that take much of their time. Changes to the source don't happen on a daily basis so nightly builds have not been required by the developers. We are always open to new developers.
With the availability of KMeleonWiki, it is hoped that there will be active development even when there is no active programming.
K-Meleon uses the Gecko rendering engine developed for Mozilla which provides excellent support for current (X)HTML, CSS (level 1 and some level 2), and DOM standards.
K-Meleon provides several features that will be familiar to users of Internet Explorer including:
K-Meleon provides several features that will be familiar to users of Netscape and Mozilla including:
K-Meleon supports Java. If you want to use Java in K-Meleon, see the section on How do I enable Java in K-Meleon?
Note: Java support only works when the Browser Identification in the Privacy option section is set to Default.
The Loader automatically loads portions of K-Meleon at start-up to allow K-Meleon to launch more quickly from the Desktop. The Loader is an optional component and can be enabled during the installation. Be aware that if you use the Loader, K-Meleon never "exits" so changes in various components will not take affect until you close the Loader and restart K-Meleon.
The first time K-Meleon is run with the bookmarks plugin installed, you will be prompted whether to locate your existing Netscape or Mozilla bookmarks. If you choose to do so, your bookmarks will be shared between K-Meleon and Netscape/Mozilla. You can also choose to have a new bookmarks file created for K-Meleon only. In Mozilla, your bookmarks file is stored in your profiles directory, which is different depending on your operating system:
K-Meleon automatically locates your Internet Explorer Favorites when it is run with the Favorites plugin enabled. Your Favorites are shared between K-Meleon and Internet Explorer.
The first time K-Meleon is run with the Hotlist plugin installed, you will be prompted whether to create a new Hotlist for K-Meleon only. You can also choose to locate your existing Opera Hotlist and share that list between the two programs.
You can add and edit Bookmarks through the Bookmarks menu. If you choose to share Bookmarks between K-Meleon and Netscape/Mozilla the changes will be available in your other browser as well.
You can add and edit Favorites through the Favorites menu.
You can add URLs to the Hotlist through the Hotlist menu. If you chose to share Hotlist between K-Meleon and Opera, your additions will be available also from within Opera.
To enable a plugin: Click on the Edit menu and then select Preferences - Plugins. In the Plugins window, select the plugin from the list and click the Enable/Disable button. Its icon will change to a checkmark on a green background. The next time K-Meleon runs, the plugin will be loaded.
To disable a plugin: Select the plugin from the list and click the Enable/Disable button the plugin. When the icon is unchecked, the plugin will be disabled the next time K-Meleon runs.
K-Meleon automatically detects these 3rd party plugins: Acrobat, Sun JRE, Quicktime, Windows Media Player 7.
Any Mozilla plugins (Shockwave, Adobe, etc.) should work by being copied into the plugins directory under K-Meleon. For an example of setting up 3rd party/Mozilla plugins, see FlashPlugin and the guide installing Flash Player 6 on K-Meleon 0.7. You can check the status of any plugin by entering about:plugins in the K-Meleon location bar. A page will be displayed that shows all of your currently installed plugins. A comprehensive list of plugins and instructions on how to enable them for Mozilla-based browsers is available.
You must first install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to run Java applets in K-Meleon. You can download JRE 1.4 from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/download.html. After you install JRE, K-Meleon automatically detects your JRE installation and no other configuration is necessary. To see if JRE is properly installed, type about:plugins in the URL bar. If you see Java Plug-in listed, K-Meleon properly recognizes the JRE.
Note: If you change the Browser Identification in Preferences - Privacy, Java will not work.
K-Meleon currently supports a command-line option for starting that browser with a specific URL. Example: "C:\Program Files\K-Meleon\k-meleon.exe" www.yahoo.com This loads Yahoo! instead of the browser specified home page when K-Meleon is started.
K-Meleon also supports command-line options for Profiles. You can start with a specific profile by using -P <profile> where <profile> is the name of any existing profile that you have: Example: "C:\Program Files\K-Meleon\k-meleon.exe" -P Fred This launches K-Meleon with the profile for Fred.
K-Meleon also offers you the option of starting with the most recently used Profile by using -P mostrecent. Example: "C:\Program Files\K-Meleon\k-meleon.exe" -P mostrecent
If you have a profile stored in your Application Data directory, you can reference that location using -profilesDir $appdata Example: "C:\Program Files\K-Meleon\k-meleon.exe" -profilesDir $appdata If you do not have a directory, it will create one for you.
The home page and other browser preferences can be set in the preferences panel. The preferences panel can be accessed by selecting the Edit menu and the Preferences option. For developers and advanced users, a complete list of the K-Meleon specific preferences is available.
Key commands can be enabled, disabled, and modified by clicking on the Edit menu, selecting Preferences - Configs, and then selecting the Accelerators tab. A step-by-step guide to modify the key commands is available.
Macros can be enabled, disabled, and modified by clicking on the Edit menu and then selecting Preferences - Plugins. Select Macro Extension Plugin and then click on the Configure button. Follow the instructions provided in the macros.cfg file. See the Documentation section for more examples.
Profiles can be added, deleted, and renamed by going to the Edit menu and selecting Manage Profiles.
Click on the Edit menu, select Preferences, and then Proxies to configure your proxy settings. K-Meleon can also be configured to work properly with proxies such as Junkbuster that do not support the most recent HTTP specification. By default, K-Meleon tries to use HTTP 1.1. To use K-Meleon with a proxy that only supports HTTP 1.0, change the HTTP version under Edit - Preferences - General.
K-Meleon only accepts hostnames for manual proxies.
You can change the image used for the background image or even turn it off by clicking on the Edit menu and then selecting Preferences - Display. A help guide? for using this feature is available.
We have a number of translations for the menu and tool bars in our Resources section. K-Meleon also automatically attempts to recognize character sets and display them properly.
K-Meleon allows you to control cookies the browser accepts. It also allows you to control the browser identity?. You also have the ability to control and disable popup? and popunder windows. Advanced users can setup additional site-policy privacy features by editing the prefs.js file. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/ConfigPolicy.html for more details on advanced privacy features.
You can control which cookies K-Meleon accepts in the Preferences panel under the Privacy option. You can allow all cookies, only allow cookies from the site you are visiting or block all cookies.
K-Meleon allows you to set the UserAgent string that identifies the browser to the sites that it visits. You can access this feature in the Preferences panel under the Privacy option
The setting for blocking popup and popunder windows is located in the Preferences panel under the Privacy option.
Disable popup windows: This option blocks popup and popunder windows that launch when a page is loaded or exited. Most online advertisers use this method to generate their popup and popunder ads. This method still allows new windows generated by a mouse-click which are typically user-initiated versus advertiser initiated.
K-Meleon 0.8.2 provides SSL support.
K-Meleon allows you to disable Java and Javascript. You also have the ability to control and disable? popup windows.
The dlls shipped with Windows are improved and enhanced with each version. Users of older Windows versions, Windows 95/98 and Windows NT, may have to update some dlls to run K-Meleon. If you experience problems with MFC42.dll or with menus and plugins not displaying, please download the following update:
K-Meleon does not use Internet Explorer components. The libraries which are used are only a set of controls which are used commonly by Windows applications.
A site not displaying properly is normally caused by one of two issues:
Please report these bugs and we will attempt to determine the source of the problem.
You need to disable the rebar menu plugin to enable the Alt + accelerator key combinations. See How do I enable or disable a K-Meleon plugin?? for more details.
A file named "xuldoc.xpt" is missing from K-Meleon's components directory (normally c:\program files\K-Meleon\components). It will be included in K-Meleon's next release. Until then, you can add the file separately. Follow these steps:
You should then be able to browse and view articles throughout the ESPN website.
The Personal Security Manager (PSM) in Mozilla, which K-Meleon is built on, uses sockets for communication between its security components. These communications are internal to the browser and do not go out the Internet. There is no danger in allowing K-Meleon this access.
Mozilla does not provide proper support for 256 colors. See Mozilla Bug #88560?
This is a known issue with K-Meleon when using the Bitmapped menus plugin with the Silver theme enabled in Windows XP. The current workaround is to disable the Bitmapped menus plugin.
This type of problem is usually the result of the DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) option being set in the Windows registry for the type of URL that you are trying to open. Go to the Windows Start menu, select Settings, Folder Options, then select the File Types tab. After you find the URL type in the list, click Edit, click Edit again, uncheck the "Use DDE" box, then click "OK" until you are out of the dialog.
If you know what you are doing, you can delete the DDE flag directly in the Windows registry for the URL type.
Submit your questions to the K-Meleon Forums. If you think you have found a bug, ask first in the Forums. Then file a bug report in our Bug Reporting System.