New firefox-like browser (K-meleon)

[prathapml]

Hey,

We've all heard of firefox and mozilla browser. But have any of you got the feeling that it was a bit too slow? (loading, page-rendering, etc.) Now don't start flaming me about that "slow" comment - this is only the opinion of some people I met.

Well, the fact is that the firefox and mozilla browsers, and the thunderbird mail-client, and all their off-shoots for Mac OSX are based on a HTML rendering engine called "gecko". This was meant to be superfast and is a free and open-source engine. The above aren't the only gecko-based browsers. There are more (faster?) browsers also around that are as good/secure as mozilla range of offerings.

The K-Meleon browser at http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net is one. It hasn't seen a new release since december 2003. It is the windows port of a linux browser called galeon. Well, I recently checked it out because I started to tire of firefox, but needed a similar browser.

- Supports theming/skinning.

- Supports mouse-gestures.

- It is as fast as firefox for page-rendering.

- It is super-fast while loading (starting up).

- Unbelievably small download and install size.

- Has tabbed (they call it layers) browsing and pop-up blocking.

- K-Meleon is gecko-based, therefore is an off-shoot of firefox

- Most (not all, no download manager) of the other features firefox provides.

- Has a minimal UI clutter, but the graphical features you need are still there for when you need them.

- Easily configurable through its interface, as well as plain-text configuration files (therefore suited for unattended).

- It is free and open-source.

I found it good enough to switch to it, because anyway WindowsUpdate and some other MSN-passport sites aren't compatible with the gecko engine, so if some sites (very rare) don't display properly on K-Meleon, I can always use IE. Let's not make this thread a slanging match between IE and mozilla fans, we all know that everybody has their own opinion. This is an invitation to you people to check out a new option, that you may not have been aware of before. Also, the K-Meleon project is looking out for developers to join their team - so those who want to have some experience know what to do.

The bottom-line : If you liked firefox, but had a few gripes with it, K-Meleon is worth a good, hard look.