K-Meleon facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
K-Meleon

K-Meleon 76 on Windows 10
Developer(s)	Christophe Thibault, Sebastian Spaeth, Brian Harris, Jeff Doozan, Mark Liffiton, Rob Johnson, Ulf Erikson, Jordan Callicoat, Dorian Boissonnade, Roy Tam, et al.
Initial release	August 21, 2000; 24 years ago (2000-08-21)
Stable release	76.4.7  / C++, JavaScript; Error: first parameter cannot be parsed as a date or time. (C++, JavaScript)
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Standard(s)	HTML5, CSS3, Atom
Available in	7 languages
Type	Web browser
License	GPL

K-Meleon is a special kind of web browser for computers that run Microsoft Windows. It's known for being very light and fast. This means it doesn't use up a lot of your computer's power. K-Meleon is also free and open-source, which means anyone can use it and even look at or change its code.

Early versions of K-Meleon used something called Gecko. This is a special part of a browser that helps it show web pages correctly. Gecko is also used in popular browsers like Firefox. K-Meleon became quite popular in Europe. It was even offered as a choice when people set up their new computers.

K-Meleon was created to be quicker and lighter than other browsers at the time. It has always been designed to use only a small amount of computer memory (RAM). This is why K-Meleon 76 can still work on older versions of Windows, like Windows XP and Windows Vista. Many newer browsers no longer support these older systems.

One of the coolest things about K-Meleon is how much you can change it. You can easily customize its toolbars, menus, and even keyboard shortcuts. K-Meleon also lets you use "macros." These are like small programs that add new features to the browser. You can even write or change them yourself! Because it's so flexible, K-Meleon was often used in places like internet cafes and libraries.

K-Meleon's History

The K-Meleon project started in the year 2000. This was a time when many new web browsers were being created. A company called Netscape decided to make their internet software open for everyone to use. They started the Mozilla project. K-Meleon was one of the first browsers to use Mozilla's special web page engine, Gecko.

The creator of K-Meleon, Christophe Thibault, wanted to combine Gecko with the look and feel of Windows. This made the browser use fewer computer resources. It also helped K-Meleon fit in perfectly with the Windows operating system.

How K-Meleon Used Gecko

Christophe Thibault released the very first version of K-Meleon, called 0.1, on August 21, 2000. He made this first simple version to get people interested. For the next version, 0.2, he added important features like context menus (the menus that pop up when you right-click). He also moved the project to SourceForge so other open-source developers could help.

K-Meleon 0.2, showing a right-click menu

Later, new developers took over the project. They added more features like pop-up blocking and ways to manage cookies. They also introduced special text files called "configs." These files let users change how the browser looked or worked. There was also a "macro language" that allowed users to add even more features. Early reviews said K-Meleon was small, fast, and looked a bit like Internet Explorer.

K-Meleon was built using open-source code from Mozilla. But it focused only on being a browser, unlike Mozilla's main software. Mozilla's software included tools for email, news, chat, and even web page editing. K-Meleon aimed to be a simple, standalone browser for Windows. It was released two years before Firefox, which was Mozilla's own standalone browser.

Mozilla's browsers used a special technology called XUL to create their look. This allowed them to work on many different operating systems. However, it sometimes made the buttons and menus look different from other programs on your computer. K-Meleon was smaller and blended in better with Windows. It could even use your existing Internet Explorer favorites as its own bookmarks.

K-Meleon 0.7 with a simple "Hello World" message, a special theme, and extra tools

K-Meleon 0.7 came out in October 2002. It used the Mozilla 1.0 engine. Even when Netscape, the company behind Mozilla, faced changes, K-Meleon kept going. Mozilla continued to improve Gecko, and K-Meleon was updated with new versions. In 2005, a developer named Ulf Erikson said he would stop building K-Meleon. Then, in January 2006, Dorian Boissonnade became the main developer.

K-Meleon 1.0 was released in July 2006. This version made the browser fully translatable into different languages. You could even translate parts of it using a simple text editor. Version 1.0 still used the text-based config files, but it also added a new way to change settings from inside the browser itself.

Version 1.1 made the macro system even better. At first, all macros were in one file. Later versions had many more macros, and users could share their own. So, developers separated macros into different parts. Version 1.5 then added a true tabbed interface, making it easier to browse multiple pages.

In Europe, K-Meleon 1.5 was even offered as a choice when people set up Windows. This happened because Microsoft was asked to give users more browser options. By 2010, Windows users could pick from 12 popular web browsers, including K-Meleon.

K-Meleon's 7x Releases

In 2011, Mozilla stopped supporting the way K-Meleon used to embed the Gecko engine. This made K-Meleon's future uncertain. But in 2013, after a few years without new updates, the K-Meleon team started working on version 74. Even though Mozilla changed how Gecko could be used, they still had a technology called XULRunner. K-Meleon 74 used XULRunner instead. Besides the new engine, version 74 also brought small improvements and fixed some bugs.

K-Meleon 75 added a spelling checker, automatic form filling, and a new way to change the browser's look (called a skin system). The lead developer, Boissonnade, started working on version 76.

The Goanna Branch

Two screenshots of K-Meleon 76, showing how it looks with the same K-Meleon theme but different system themes

Today, K-Meleon is actively developed using Goanna. Goanna is a version of Gecko that was created for another browser called Pale Moon. Mozilla changed a lot of its browser engine with something called Firefox Quantum. In 2017, Roy Tam changed K-Meleon 76 to work with Goanna. The former lead developer, Boissonnade, was happy about this.

K-Meleon using Goanna still works on older Windows versions. It also uses less computer memory than many popular web browsers today. K-Meleon is updated regularly. It's also a "portable application," meaning you can run it directly from a USB stick or your computer without needing to install it.

Customizing K-Meleon

You can change how K-Meleon looks and works using special text files called "configs." Things like the menus and keyboard shortcuts can all be changed in these files. These configs can also use "macros," which are like small programs you can open and edit in a text editor.

For example, you could write a simple macro that makes a small window pop up with the message "Hello world!".

HelloWorld{
        alert("Hello world!");
}

To make this macro run, you could add a special keyboard shortcut. If you add the code below to the "accelerator config" file, pressing the Ctrl, Alt, and H keys at the same time would launch the "Hello world!" macro.

CTRL ALT H = macros(HelloWorld)

You can also create custom toolbars with more options. The code for this is similar. The example below would create a new toolbar with a button that triggers the "Hello world!" macro.

NewToolbar{
   !NewButton{
           macros(HelloWorld)
   }
}

This way of using configs and macros gives you a lot of control over the browser. However, it can take some time to learn, especially compared to other browsers. Some reviews have mentioned that K-Meleon "requires some knowledge of computer code to get the most out of it." Other popular browsers use simpler systems where users don't need to know how to code to add features.

Because it's so flexible, K-Meleon was very helpful in places where the browser needed to be set up in a specific way for public use. This includes libraries and internet cafés. Administrators could hide certain features from users. For example, a library could hide the address bar or limit access to only certain websites, like the library catalog.

K-Meleon on Older Windows Versions

K-Meleon is special because it works with many older computers and software. Version 76 supports Windows XP (released in 2001) and Windows Vista (released in 2006). These Windows versions are no longer officially supported by Microsoft. Most major browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox stopped supporting them years ago.

For a web browser to be safe, it needs to support modern internet security. This includes something called Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. Most major websites today use TLS encryption through HTTPS. Older versions of K-Meleon can still get updates for TLS certificates. This allows them to access secure websites even on very old systems like Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me.

K-Meleon Release History

K-Meleon was first released in 2000 and has been updated for over 20 years. The newest version, K-Meleon 76, gets regular updates. All versions of K-Meleon are made for Microsoft Windows computers.

See Also

In Spanish: K-Meleon para niños

• Comparison of lightweight web browsers
• Comparison of web browsers
• List of web browsers