RSSK-Meleon Browser Showcases Gecko
By Nate Mook | Published August 22, 2000, 4:34 AM
Christophe Thibault, known for his work on K-Jöfol, has released a very simple Web browser dubbed K-Meleon, which uses the much anticipated Gecko rendering engine also found in the upcoming Netscape 6. What's different about K-Meleon however, is that it has the look and feel of Internet Explorer. "I have always liked the new Gecko engine, however the clunky and bloated XUL interface of Mozilla has turned me (and other Windows users) away from the browser," Christophe told BetaNews, "so I decided to write my own on a bored and cloudy day." Taking a break from coding Winamp 3, Christophe spent Sunday writing K-Meleon with great success. The browser has a much familiar and quick IE interface, along with the speed of the advanced Gecko engine.
K-Meleon takes many features from Microsoft's top browser, including Favorites and an almost identical toolbar. Weighing in at 2.85 MB for a full install, K-Meleon however does not mimic it's size. In early beta stage the browser is not perfect, with much left to be added, including context menus, HTTPS, history, cookies saving, and MIME type handling. Although, Christophe has released the full source to the browser, allowing developers to extend his initial work.
Interestingly enough, most complaints about Mozilla and Netscape 6 lie in the interface. Most Windows users are so familiar with Internet Explorer that a slower-loading browser just wont cut it these days, even with an advanced rendering engine such as Gecko. Christophe hopes K-Meleon will turn some heads and show people how it is not necessary to sacrifice one for the other. K-Meleon also loads much faster than its bulkier counterparts - something which has kept IE in the top spot.
"I made [K-Meleon] into what I could for one day of work," writes Christophe, "I hope that some people will take the source code and make improvements."
Download K-Meleon from FileForum, or snare the 183KB Lite version if you have Mozilla M17 already installed. Those interested may grab the source here.
I have used Mozilla for some time now.
I do not hate the default interface, but it could look much better.
I won't say that IE's interface is good either. However, Mozilla has the good option to skin the interface the way you like it. That's what I find pretty cool. So that's also why I focus more on the features than on the interface.
However, currently I ****ed up Mozilla (again) by using some skins (damned !!!). So when I start Mozilla at home I can only see the splashscreen. When I try to start Mozilla at work it gets even worse. My other skinnable browser (Neoplanet is its name) than tries to download it as if it was some program that I clicked for download from the Internet. Does anyone know what could cause that ?
What makes Neoplanet think that I want to download it instead of starting it ? And how do I make my Mozilla at home startup again ?
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|I am running a 'debloated' IE 4 and am therefore not familiar with Navigator.Using kmeleon I noticed 2 things:
It wants to launch a server with the browser, when I go on line.
Other than stated, it saves cookies.(check it out ) http://www.gemal.dk/browserspy/spy.html
Could somebody please explaine the funktion of the server.
As kmeleon delivers
what it claims my rating is *****
otto
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|Great little use of gecko for a fast pleasant internet browse.
Once it has the save function etc etc it will be fantastic. Even as it is it has a funtion on my desktop now.
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|Galeon is a GNOME Web browser based on gecko (the mozilla rendering engine). It's fast, it has a light interface, and it is fully standards-compliant. You can download it at:
http://galeon.sourceforge.net/
It requires Gnome and MOZILLA M17. You can download an RPM version at http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/software/RPMS/. To compile from sources you will also need devel package from this site or gtkmozembed.h from another MOZILLA package. Because of license issue I cannot distribute it.
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|I don't get what's so special about this browser that it warrants all this attention. While I applaud the guy's efforts, I know it's not hard to knock out something like this. Most of the hard work is in the Gecko engine, the rest is just plumbing the engine in and copying the L&F of IE.
Size wise it might look small, but if you pruned all the standard chrome and extraneous stuff (mail, news, wallet, etc) from Mozilla and wrote a simple chrome skin it wouldn't take up any more room either. And you'd benefit from a browser that ran on any platform, not just Windows.
Besides, both Neoplanet and Custom Browser have built fully working browsers around the Gecko engine before this, complete with bookmarks and other features. Neoplanet managed this feat 1 1/2 years ago and it's skinnable too. Further, you can even switch between using IE and Mozilla.
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|Those other browsers may be okay, but this one is great in its own right! Especially considering that all this was done in one day!! (Imagine what a month would turn out!) In windows, I like the IE interface. A crome skin...uhgg..wouldn't match and I could care less about cross platform. Cross platform is just AOL/Netscapes marketing plan and means nothing for me. Mozilla's interface _IS_ slow, as sad as that may be. Thank god they are going to GPL it.
If Galeon and K-Meleon would progress a little further,
*- they would be all I would ever need -*
They just started off and already show great progress.
Shesh..mozilla wasn't even stable enough to run untill recently, 2 years down the line. How many programmers do they have working??? I had great great faith in them, but not I realize that the community must drive the direction of a product. Netscape has had their whole XUL aggenda all along rather then getting us a good working browser. Maybe mozilla will turn into a great development platform afterall once it hits a final release.
--the main thing I know is that GPL give me my freedom.
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|Is it just me, or is this build lacking Proxy Support? I can't seem to find any settings for such.
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|It's just you :P There is proxy support, check out this thread:
http://gnullsoft.kmeleon...f=1&i=101&t=101
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|Check out the reviews for the full version of K-Meleon. A kind person offered insight to configure the browser to use proxies. Its not too hard, go check it out.
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|too bad the gecko engine is going to cause major headaches for web developers.
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|Uhhh ... Gecko is 100% W3C HTML 4.0, CSS and DOM compliant. Most web developers are welcoming Gecko.
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|most welcome 100% compatibility, however Gecko drops support for non-standard and unsupported tags. Things like layers and some newer DHTML will not work at all under Gecko. A large number fo web sites will have problems with the Geck Engine and according to Wired WebMonkey, people will have to code a different version of their site to work with Netscape 6/ Mozilla. 100% compatibility sounds nice to complete geeks and marketing strategists but to the rest of the world it's only good on paper, not in practice.
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|Now that is a pretty short sighted view. Yes there will be some problems in the beginning, but once people start writing compliant code the headache of being a webmaster will be greatly reduced. Or so it should be; it depends on what microsoft does in terms of supporting the standards. If they choose to continue with their proprietary stuff then you will still have to write two versions of your site. If they too adopt the standards, however, "best viewed with any browser" will become a reality.
The other point I would like to make is that not that many people are supporting netscape any more. It is a sad but true fact that netscape doesnt have much marketshare right now. Consequently, a lot of people are dropping support for it. So I dont think the impact of dropping nonstandard code will be as profound as you seem to believe.
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|This is all well and good but you forget that the W3C approval process does not move in web time. XML, HTML+Time, HTML 4.0, CSS2, et al will have been already implemented it before the W3C gets around to approving them.
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|you claim gecko will be a headache for web developers. Hah! What is a headache is having to write 30 different versions of our scripts for each individual browser on each individual platform, and knowing that theres still something we've missed, so oops, it still doesn't look the same on every system. Web designers have gotten into the bad habbit of using this proprietary bulls*** Microsoft and Netscape have thrown at us, and going by actual standards should be what everyone should have done all along.
Well, just thought I'd rant a little bit.
Matrix9180
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|Some of you, in fact most, are some of the dumbest most ingnorant people I've ever seen.... almost as bad as Lewis Mettler on ZDnet....
Does MS make proprietary standards? Yes, when the open standards don't do everything that MS wanted them to do... but... does MS support the standards too? YES... they have BOTH, not just there proprietary standards. Do they support all of them 100%? No... Does ANY of them support 100$? No.
And it is VERY highly doubtful that Gecko will have 100% standards support. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if IE6 supports more of the standards than Gecko will.
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|I'm using those new-fangled Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer with Intellieye Technology mice, and the scroll wheel seems to be working for me. Try getting the latest Intellimouse software loaded into the system tray, and K-Meleon should register it. At least that did the trick for my mouse, I don't know about the others.
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|Apart from the fonts being small and some of the options not working, it works pretty well and i hope this project is expanded apon..
Later
jeff
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|The wheelmouse is working fine on my K-Meleon browser, i can even switch through previous addresses in the address bar with it, however the fact that the text goes white and cannot see it everyonce in a while is a pain, i just hope i type this correctly =P i am running windows ME woithout the intellieye software running
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|Christophe, works for Nullsoft on Winamp3.0, which is owned by AOL. Sooo. That means, AOL did develop this browser :) Do they get to redeem themselves now? no. cause they're AOL and suckage is in their nature..
-steve
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|This is _not_ an official Nullsoft project. It is this guy's personal project, thus AOL doesn't get any say in it.
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|hey steve... did you really think you could get away with speaking out against aol and not have anybody recognize you? oh... and in relation to your .plan on the winamp site... good lord you lead an intersting life =P
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|Yeah, and I'm [ insert name of an Nullsoft employee here ].
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|Hey, Steve-o *if* that's really you, not. Please de-homo the Winamp website. That white and yellow shiznit kills my eyes. Hehe
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|Dont' worry, the anti-goth campaign is on the way out anyway... we just went anti-black because it was black for SOOO long. It'll be back to it's wonderful dark look soon enuf.
-steve
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|Since we have the source, could I compile it on Linux? Will it work?
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|It uses MFC
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|http://galeon.sourceforge.net is the Linux answer to the Windows answer to Galeon!
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|K-Meleon and Christophe Thibault rule :). I am so glad to see the Gecko engine put to good use. Also, the fact that it's open source is totally awesome - I think this little browser may generate quite a following with developers and end users both. Good work.
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|lovely thati say!!!
see AOL
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|This guy wrote something a million times better than the netscape release in just a DAY???? hmm but how will AOL feel about a single employee writing a better browser in a day than the whole of their netscape team could throw together in several months?
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|Well, he *did* use someone else's rendering engine (a very big job that would take most of the time of browser development), but I still find this browser quite impressive for 1 day's work. You are so right though :). Netscape is a disgrace for a web browser now, although I hate to blast the Mozilla guys - it's just too damn bloated and slow IMHO. The best thing AOL/Netscape could do for the Netscape browser is to drop Mozilla and use this little beauty for Netscape 6 :).
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|thats the problem, netscape seem to have just taken the mozilla distribution and rebadged it and then added even more bloat to it. What they SHOULD HAVE done is gone back to the bare gecko engine and started to built on it from that level again.
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|In fairness to the Mozilla people, it looks like K-Meleon uses standard Windows UI, rather than the custom, but cross-platform UI toolkit that Mozilla uses. Since the former approach is much easier to build, and runs much faster, it's preferred (IMO) if one is only going to support a small number of platforms, and if one is building a browser, not a platform.
It's been easy to build IE-based custom browsers for years; just drop a WebBrowser control on a VB form (or with a bit more work, into an MFC form). If Mozilla's XPCOM (and I've never looked at the Mozilla source; I've always used IE on my home and work machines) is compatible enough with real COM to make building Mozilla-based browsers relatively easy, then there's a slim chance that something good just might come out of the Mozilla project.
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|Perhaps you missed the part of the article talking about all the things that are not included. Also this thing only runs on one platform. Do you have any idea how many mozilla runs on? And lastly, this is only a browser. Netscape is working on a browser, email/news client, and html editor.
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|I think you just underlined exactly why K-Meleon is a better choice than the rest of 'em. If I want an e-mail client or html editor I'll use an e-mail client or html editor.
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