K-Meleon
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K-Meleon_Logo.gif
The K-Meleon Logo
K-Meleon is a web browser based on Gecko, the layout engine written by the Mozilla Foundation. The aim of K-Meleon is to provide a light-weight browser running under Microsoft Windows using the operating system's native interface for the application's toolbars and menus - similar to Galeon or Epiphany on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, and Camino on Mac OS X.
Because of the lower resource requirement, K-Meleon is more responsive than Mozilla Foundation's web browsers like Mozilla Suite or Firefox. It is beneficial for systems where the hardware is aged and system resources are limited.
K-Meleon also has a highly flexible interface design. All the menus and toolbar buttons can be completely customized using its configuration files. This feature can be very useful in an environment where the general public has access to the browser such as a library or Internet cafe. Despite its usefulness, it may be intimidating to an end-user, as there is no GUI to customize the individual toolbars. A user must edit the toolbar configuration file to make any changes in the button layouts, although one can move around the toolbars by simply dragging their handles.
K-Meleon is released under the GNU General Public License and runs on the Win32 platform. The latest release is 0.9, released on January 18, 2005. K-Meleon was originally written and developed by Christophe Thibault [1] (http://www.ronography.com) in 2000.
As the Windows native interface is used instead of XUL, no Mozilla based themes and only a few Mozilla extensions can be installed into K-Meleon. This severely limits compatibility with other Mozilla applications. However, K-Meleon has its own set of addons like macros and skins, which can extend the functionality and customize the appearance of the browser. One other difference between other Mozilla based browsers is the Mozilla profile directory is located in the program's directory instead of the user's application data directory. This may cause errors for users with limited file system access.
See also
External links
- K-Meleon home page (http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net)
- Library Journal article on K-Meleon (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA232354)de:K-Meleon
es:K-Meleon fr:K-Meleon it:K-Meleon ja:K-Meleon csb:K-Meleon pl:K-Meleon fi:K-Meleon