K-Meleon

K-Meleon is an open-source, lightweight web browser for Microsoft Windows. K-Meleon can use the secure Goanna layout engine based on Mozilla's Gecko or the Gecko engine itself. K-Meleon was one of the first projects to use Gecko outside of Mozilla's original internet suite. K-Meleon began with the goal of being faster and lighter than the cross-platform suite of applications. It was the first stand-alone Gecko browser for Windows, predating Mozilla Firefox. It still has lower system requirements than most browsers and supports legacy systems.

K-Meleon
Developer(s)Christophe Thibault, Sebastian Spaeth, Brian Harris, Jeff Doozan, Mark Liffiton, Rob Johnson, Ulf Erikson, Jordan Callicoat, Dorian Boissonnade, Roytam, et al.[1]
Initial releaseAugust 21, 2000 (2000-08-21)
Stable release
76.4.6[2]  / October 7, 2022 (2022-10-07)[3]
Repository
Written inC++, JavaScript
EnginesGecko, Goanna layout engine
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows
Standard(s)HTML5, CSS3, Atom
Available in7 languages
TypeWeb browser
LicenseGPL
Websitekmeleonbrowser.org

Customization was another primary design goal of K-Meleon. In addition to extensions, K-Meleon also supports text-based configuration files and macros that allow end-users to customize every aspect of the interface. Due to its configurability, K-Meleon was once a popular choice for public-facing computers like those in internet cafes and libraries.

History

Christophe Thibault started the K-Meleon project in the early 2000s. During this time, web sites were smaller and many projects created new browsers.[4][5] K-Meleon was one of several browsers built around Mozilla's embedded Gecko web engine.[6] The Mozilla Application Suite used Gecko to both render pages and also create graphical interface elements like toolbars and menus. Christophe Thibault designed K-Meleon to combine Gecko with native Windows interface elements. This approach was less resource-intensive and allowed the browser to better blend into its environment.[7] In Thibault's native French, the browser's name is pronounced the same as caméléon, the French term for a chameleon.

Development
K-Meleon 0.2 was a simple, lightweight browser.

Christophe Thibault released K-Meleon 0.1 on August 21, 2000.[8] While working at Nullsoft, Thibault created the first release during a single day off. He began by building and branding Mozilla's test application for embedding the Gecko layout engine. K-Meleon 0.1 was simple but quickly attracted attention to the project.[9] For the 0.2 release, Thibault implemented many expected features including context menus and moved development to SourceForge to welcome contributors.[1][10]

K-Meleon was built with open-source code from Mozilla but offered a few key advantages over Mozilla's application suite. K-Meleon was released before Firefox and was the first project on Windows to separate the browser from other Mozilla Internet Suite applications.[11][12] K-Meleon also used the native Windows application programming interface (API) win32 to create its user interface. Mozilla used the browser's rendering engine, not just for web content, but also to render the browser's interface via their cross-platform XML User Interface Language (XUL) layer.[13] XUL allowed Mozilla to build one application for several operating systems, but it increased the size of the application and by design generated graphical controls that did not match the rest of the system.[14] K-Meleon was integrated into the look and feel of the Windows desktop and was less resource-intensive than other browsers on Windows. This was similar to the approach that Galeon (GNOME Web) had taken on the GNOME desktop and that Camino would take on macOS.[15]

K-Meleon, Galeon, and Camino were a direct influence on Mozilla shifting their focus to the stand-alone Phoenix browser which would become Firefox.[16][17] Dave Hyatt, one of the founding Firefox and Safari developers, criticized Mozilla and Netscape's work on the Internet Suite as trying to "co-develop their UI with the rest of the world" in contrast to focused browser projects like K-Meleon.[18] For a few years, Mozilla promoted other Gecko browsers including K-Meleon, and officially endorsed Camino, but would later focus their brand on Firefox.[19]

Thibault welcomed contributors and soon handed the project leadership over to new developers including Sebastian Spaeth, Brian Harris, Jeff Doozan, and Ulf Erikson. Within a year the new contributors had moved features into a modular system of C++ libraries called Kplugins. The K-Meleon team released several new versions of the browser to fix bugs, improve stability, and add features including pop-up blocking, encrypted downloading of web pages using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), and online proxies for anonymity or content filtering.[20] The developers introduced text-based configuration files or configs and a unique macro language to customize the browser. In K-Meleon, macros are a smaller type of browser extension designed to be human-readable and easily modified or created by end-users.[21]

K-Meleon 0.7 supported themes, NPAPI plugins, tabbed browsing, configuration files, and a macro language. This screenshot demonstrates a simple "Hello World" macro, the Tango theme, and several plugins.

By October 2002, K-Meleon 0.7 included many of the browser's core features and rendered pages with the Mozilla 1.0 engine.[22] Version 0.7 implemented skins to theme the browser's appearance.[23] Version 0.7 leveraged Mozilla's codebase to support Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) plugins. NPAPI plugins were an industry standard for embedding media and interactive content in web pages.[24] Ulf Erikson implemented tabbed browsing functionality with his optional "layers" feature. Layers provided the functionality of tabbed browsing, but on an API level implemented tabs as layered windows. As a side effect, the operating system would repaint the window and perform the animation for opening a new window each time a different tab was selected.[25]

Ulf Erickson announced that version 0.9 would be the final version he would build. He was the project's developer but stated that he was no longer using K-Meleon as his primary browser after moving to Linux.[26] In January 2006, Dorian Boissonnade became the lead developer and began working towards a 1.0 release.[27] Boissonnade had co-developed an unofficial build of K-Meleon with Hao Jiang for the Chinese-language Classic Club Forum (CCF) before becoming an official developer. They incorporated major modifications from K-Meleon CCF including an improved localization system.[28] Released in July 2006, K-Meleon 1.0 made the browser fully translatable, adding to the Unicode webpage rendering that had been present since the beginning and the partial localization support available since 2004.[29][30] The layout engine was also brought back up to date with the latest Gecko release from Mozilla. This brought improvements to security and usability, including support for favicons, a flexible search engine system, and better support for multi-user environments.[31]

The macro system was changed in K-Meleon 1.1. Earlier versions of K-Meleon placed all of the macros into a single config file. As the number of macros grew, this became less manageable. Version 1.1 separated them into module files that could be more easily shared, downloaded, and edited.[32] Macros and configuration files were also split into a default stored in the browser's folder, and customizations stored in a user's profile as part of the transition to a multi-user design.[33] All K-Meleon versions released since have retained compatibility for this system.[31] Version 1.1 used the Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine from Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and SeaMonkey 1.1.[34]

Version 1.5 introduced a true tabbed interface. Unlike the optional "layers" plugin, tabs only repainted the webpage display area.[35] True tabs could support drag and drop, and sets of tabs could be restored as a session when restarting the browser.[36] K-Meleon 1.5 also included a more in-depth graphical interface to change settings from the browser, while maintaining backwards compatibility with the existing configuration files.[37] This was the final version to run on Windows 9x systems.[31]

In 2009, Microsoft struck a deal with the European Commission. To resolve accusations from Opera that it was abusing its market position to push Internet Explorer, Microsoft introduced a browser ballot.[38] Beginning in 2010, Microsoft was required to offer Microsoft Windows users in the European Economic Area a choice of the 12 most popular web browsers including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, K-Meleon, and several others.[39] Shortly after the ballot was released, K-Meleon downloads peaked near two hundred thousand per month.[40] Other browsers saw an even greater increase. Opera reported a three-fold increase in user base.[41] Six of the less popular browsers filed a second complaint against Microsoft. Microsoft's ballot design initially showed the 5 browsers that were at least as popular as Opera and did not show the remaining 7 browsers unless users clicked a horizontal scrollbar. Shawn Hardin, CEO of Flock, alleged that the ballot did not provide European consumers with the required "information on the 12 most widely-used web browsers" but rather limited it to 5 large projects.[42]

In 2011, Mozilla dropped support for embedding the Gecko layout engine.[43] As K-Meleon had previously relied on this API to combine Mozilla's display engine with its win32-based interface, there was speculation among users and tech news sites that K-Meleon could soon die.[44][45] Mozilla's change did directly result in the end of the Camino web browser which created a native interface for Mac OS X. Marco Gritti, the lead developer of Galeon had already forked that project to create GNOME Web and added support for a WebKit backend. GNOME developer Christian Persch described Mozilla's support for embedding Gecko on Linux as, "unmaintained and stagnant."[46]

In late 2013, the K-Meleon group began developing new versions based on Mozilla's XULRunner 24 runtime environment in place of the discontinued Gecko Runtime Environment. K-Meleon 74 was the first stable release to use updated versions of this environment.[47][48] This was the final version to support Windows 2000 and therefore still receives occasional updates. K-Meleon 74 introduced limited support for the XUL-based extensions that were then popular on Firefox.

K-Meleon 75 was released in 2015 with a Mozilla 31 backend, TLS 1.2 support, a new skin system, a new toolbar implementation, spellcheck, and form auto-completion. Prior to version 75, buttons were defined in pixel size by their skin or theme. For high-resolution monitors, this could result in either tiny or blurry icons. Version 75 introduced a skin system that allowed end users to adjust the icon size, and would automatically adjust the default icon size to a degree. K-Meleon 75 includes an expanded version of the previously optional JSBridge plugin. This plugin allowed XUL-based extensions (like those for other Mozilla browsers) to interact with K-Meleon's win32 interface. Boissonnade began work on version 76 but suffered a complete hard disk failure during beta testing.[49]

Goanna branch
These screenshots of K-Meleon 76 on Goanna use the same custom "Feather" theme but different Windows themes.

Since 2017, all active development on K-Meleon has taken place using a fork of the Goanna engine.[50] Roytam forked the most recent version of K-Meleon in 2017 to run on the Goanna engine. The project's lead developer, Boissonnade, expressed enthusiasm and approval of this new branch but stepped away from the project without formally transferring control or ownership.[51] This branch also includes tweaks and bug fixes for the K-Meleon shell from another community build called K-Meleon Pro.[52]

With Firefox Quantum, Mozilla rewrote most of the Gecko engine from the ground up. The Goanna engine is a maintained fork of the old Gecko engine created by Pale Moon developers. K-Meleon incorporated the improvements in web-rendering technology from Goanna Tycho and continues to port back security updates from the current version of Goanna.[53] K-Meleon also shares code with Arctic Fox, a project that aims to maintain a secure browser for older systems including Windows XP and PowerPC Mac OS.[54]

K-Meleon is actively developed but has not implemented recent web features introduced by Google like Shadow DOM.[55] K-Meleon also does not support the online Digital Rights Management (DRM) introduced in 2017. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) criticized the World Wide Web Consortium for including DRM in the web's specification as antithetical to free and open-source software. FSF executive director John Sullivan responded to the standardization of DRM by saying, "We're mourning the Web."[56] Larger free software projects including Kodi and Firefox have handled the incompatibility of DRM and free software by signing an agreement with Google to side-load their proprietary Widevine DRM implementation. Many smaller projects like GNOME Web, Basilisk, Falkon, K-Meleon, and the aborted Metastream project have been unable to support these proprietary encryption methods.[57] [58]

K-Meleon on Goanna is updated on a weekly rolling release schedule. By default, the browser comes as a multi-lingual portable application that can run directly from the host computer or removable media without affecting the Windows Registry.[59] As a fork from the official release chain, K-Meleon will not update automatically; it can be manually updated. It is also included in the PortableApps.com repository.

Legacy Windows versions

K-Meleon supports legacy versions of Windows that other browser vendors have abandoned.[60] The current version supports Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. Microsoft's last major browser release for those operating systems was Internet Explorer 8 in 2009, and Microsoft ceased security updates for them as of 2014.[61] Google ceased updating their popular Google Chrome browser for Windows XP on 15 April 2016.[62] Mozilla Firefox supported XP and Vista until 2018.[63] The only other browsers to still provide updates to these operating systems are unofficial ports like the Mozilla-based Mypal.[64]

Even older versions of Windows receive some updates.[65] Web browsers originally written for Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 98 cannot access modern websites because they do not support Transport Layer Security (TLS). When TLS 1.2 was released in 2008, major browser vendors were no longer targeting Windows 2000 or earlier.[66] An increasing number of websites use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to send webpage data. For improved security and privacy, HTTPS encrypts communication via TLS.[67] K-Meleon 74 can access secure websites on Windows 2000 using an older version of the Goanna engine. It provides both TLS 1.2 for access to HTTPS sites and greater web compatibility than web browsers originally released for the OS.[68] K-Meleon 74 can run on Windows 98 using KernelEx but not natively. K-Meleon 1.5 can natively access secure websites on Windows 98 using TLS patches. However, there are no updates available for K-Meleon 1.5's web engine.[69]

Comparison of Browsers for Windows 2000
BrowserVersionLast UpdateHTML5test Score[70]Acid3 CSS Test
Internet Explorer 6[71] 2010 19 Fail
Firefox 12[72] 2012 274 Pass
Opera 12[73] 2013 269 Pass
K-Meleon 74[68] 2021 349 Pass
  TLS 1.2 Supported

Customization

Every component of K-Meleon's interface can be controlled by the end user or system administrator.[21] Many features can be controlled from the graphical user interface. Toolbars can be enabled, disabled, or positioned from the browser window. Many settings can be adjusted from a preferences panel. Deeper customization is possible using text-format configuration files, or configs. The menus, keyboard shortcuts, icons, toolbars, and buttons can all be customized via K-Meleon's configuration files. These configuration files can, in turn, call upon macros. K-Meleon's macros are a type of small browser extension that can also be opened in a text editor by end users.[74]

A simple "Hello, World!" program could be written in K-Meleon's macro language as below:

NewMacro{
        alert("Hello, world!");
}

A user or administrator could add a button to trigger the macro above by adding the code below to their toolbar configuration file.[75]

!Name{
	macros(NewMacro)
}

This combination of configuration files and macro modules provides users a greater degree of flexibility than in other browsers.[76] It also creates a learning curve for customization that is not present in most browsers. Popular browsers rely on systems like WebExtensions for customization where there is a distinct divide between end users and extension developers.[77] K-Meleon does support several types of extensions including simple macro modules, C++ plugins called kplugins, and XUL-based extensions similar to but not compatible with those previously used by other Mozilla applications.[78]

However, K-Meleon never had a community of extension developers comparable to those of Firefox or Chrome.[79] The most popular browser in 2020 was Google Chrome which had over 130,000 WebExtensions available for download.[80] Mozilla Firefox supported XUL-based extensions until 2018. When the Classic Adds-Ons Archive preserved the add-ons for Firefox in 2017, there were over 16,000 available.[81] In contrast K-Meleon never had more than a few hundred extension developers despite support for a small number of major extensions like AdBlock Plus.[82][83]

The use of the native Windows interface means that K-Meleon handles themes differently than other Mozilla applications. K-Meleon's appearance will change when the Windows theme changes. K-Meleon also supports a theming system that can define icons, toolbars, buttons, and toolbar backgrounds(using Lim Chee Aun's Phoenity by default).[84] Like K-Meleon's configuration files and macros, its themes are open to modification by users. They are distributed as directories that can be opened via the file manager, and users are encouraged to modify their themes, especially the toolbar background. K-Meleon does not have the same capability that classic XUL themes did to customize interface controls like scrollbars, as it leaves those up to the win32 API.

This flexibility was a reason that K-Meleon was popular in the early 2000s for environments where the browser needed to be customized for general public use, such as libraries and internet cafés. It allowed an administrator to create a custom browser interface for patrons, save this interface in the file system, and then distribute the interface to all public-facing computers.[85] In the mid-2010s, libraries shifted to more enterprise cloud-based solutions, and internet cafes largely disappeared with the increased use of mobile computing devices.[86]

Release history

All versions of K-Meleon are written for the Microsoft Windows operating system. All versions support Windows XP, Version 74 is the latest to support Windows 2000, and Version 1.5.4 is the latest to support Windows 98. K-Meleon is not designed for Unix, but can run on POSIX-compliant systems if they have an implementation of the win32 API like the Wine compatibility layer.

Color Meaning
Red Old release; not supported
Yellow Old release; still supported
Green Current stable release
Purple Current test release
Blue Future release
Major version Release version Gecko version Release date Significant changes
0.1 0.1 M17 August 21, 2000 First release; mainly a rebranded WinEmbed, using the BCG Library; customizable menu and toolbar, IE Favorites support.[87]
0.2 0.2 M18 November 26, 2000 Project hosted at SourceForge; right-click context menus; improvements and bugfixes.
0.2.1 M18 November 27, 2000 Bugfixes.
0.3 0.3 0.8 February 13, 2001 Major rewrite using MfcEmbed instead of WinEmbed and the BCG Library; plugin support for menus and toolbars; preferences dialog; customizable menus and accelerator keys; basic authentication; page source view; option to save files to disk.
0.4 0.4 0.9 May 11, 2001 KPlugin interface, support for Netscape bookmarks and fullscreen display, macro extension and history plugin; (bitmapped) menus, accelerator keys and toolbars customizable through configuration files; cache support; support for external source code viewer; configurable cookie and image settings; possibility to disable Style Sheets, Java and JavaScript; web search.
0.5 0.5 0.9.4 September 27, 2001 Support for SSL, Wallet and external protocol handlers; customizable UserAgent string; improved Java support and profile handling; pop-up blocker; symbiotic loader; various improvements and bugfixes.
0.6 0.6 0.9.5 October 30, 2001 Toolbar plugin; improved proxy support; file upload; numerous improvements and bugfixes.
0.7 0.7 1.2b October 31, 2002 New plugins: Layered windows ("tabbed browsing"), support for Opera bookmarks (hotlist), external program control; automatic detection of popular third party plugins; text zoom, print preview, page setup and type ahead find; skin support; various improvements and bugfixes.
0.7.1 (0.7 SP1) February 12, 2003 Numerous plugin improvements.
0.8 0.8 1.5 November 10, 2003 Various usability improvements.
0.8.1 December 13, 2003 Mouse Gestures plugin; improvements and bugfixes.
0.8.2 December 23, 2003 Improvements and bugfixes.
0.9 0.9 1.7.5 January 18, 2005 Privacy plugin, Flashblock extension and Aggreg8 RSS feed reader; new default skin (Phoenity); numerous usability improvements.
0.9.12 1.7.12 January 10, 2006 Community-driven Gecko update; various new features (partly unique to this version).
0.9.13 1.7.13 April 25, 2006 Community-driven Gecko update; various new features (partly unique to this version).
1.0 1.0 1.8.0.5 July 15, 2006 Full localization support, first official localization (German); find bar and improved URL bar; configurable download options, XUL-based advanced preferences panel; overall improvements for macros and menus; new default RSS/Atom feed reader (NewsFox).
1.0.1 (1.01) 1.8.0.6 August 14, 2006 Gecko update.
1.0.2 (1.02) 1.8.0.7 September 22, 2006 Gecko update, some improvements and bugfixes.
1.1 1.1 1.8.1.4 May 22, 2007 Multilanguage support, several official localizations; modular macros; session saver plugin; improved cookie permissions and password support; easier customization of search engines and mouse gestures; upgradable configuration of accelerator keys, menus and macros.
1.1.1 (1.11) 1.8.1.5 July 22, 2007 Gecko update and bugfixes.
1.1.2 1.8.1.6 August 8, 2007 Gecko update and bugfixes.
1.1.3 1.8.1.10 November 26, 2007 Gecko update; update checker plugin.
1.1.4 1.8.1.12 February 11, 2008 Gecko update and bugfixes.
1.1.5 1.8.1.14 April 8, 2008 Gecko update and bugfix.
1.1.6 1.8.1.17pre July 18, 2008 Gecko update.
1.5 1.5.0 1.8.1.17pre August 8, 2008 True tabs instead of layered windows; improved multilanguage support; native preferences panel replaced by XUL-based former advanced preferences panel; new configuration options; feature improvements; Unicode build for Windows NT, non-Unicode build for Windows 9X.
1.5.1 1.8.1.17 October 16, 2008 Gecko update, improvements and bugfixes.
1.5.2 1.8.1.19 December 25, 2008 Gecko update, improvements and bugfixes.
1.5.3 1.8.1.21 May 8, 2009 Gecko update and bugfixes.
1.5.4 1.8.1.24pre January 8, 2020 Gecko update and bugfixes. TLS 1.2 support. This is the final version to run on Windows 98. It receives occasional support to access modern secure websites.[88]
1.6 1.6.0 Alpha 4 1.9.1 May 5, 2010 Gecko update.
1.6.0 Beta 1 1.9.1.16 November 13, 2010 Gecko update.
1.6.0 Beta 2 1.9.1.17 December 12, 2010 Gecko update.
1.6.0 Beta 3 1.9.1.20pre December 12, 2011 Gecko update.
1.7 1.7.0 Alpha 2 1.9.2.14pre December 26, 2010 Gecko update.
74 74.0 24.7.0 September 8, 2014 Gecko update, improvements and bugfixes. The jump in version number is due to some website misreading K-Meleon's useragent. This is the final version of K-Meleon that supports Windows 2000 and still receives occasional updates.[89]
75 75.0 Beta 1 31.0 November 25, 2014 Gecko update, improvements and bugfixes.
75.0 Beta 2 31.0 January 14, 2015 Improvements and bugfixes.
75.0 Beta 3 31.4 February 6, 2015 Gecko update, events processing changes, added navToggleJS (toggle js pref and js in all page) and pageToggleJS (toggle js in current page), Es locale, fixes from previous thread: JSBridge RemoveButton, macro setcmdicon, wrong context menu on contenteditable (mainly webmail), tab bar context menu action not working.
75.0 Beta 3 Update 1 31.4 February 23, 2015 Some fixes for toolbars, fixed deadlock with "open with" dialog, update for addbutton, setcmdicon, setbuttonicon, about:downloads, added automatic favorites refresh (may not work all the time).
75.0 Beta 3 Update 2 31.4 March 3, 2015 Fixed about:home memory leak, fixed missing status bar icon, macro injectJS, added "hidden" for second parameter, run the script in an hidden page, macro getpref, fixed localized prefs, fixed image in toolbars.cfg, fixed menu on toolbar when holding left button, added favorites(Refresh), added spellcheck: 2 commands, spellcheck(mouse): check word under mouse cursor, spellcheck(caret): check word at caret, fixed spellcheck in Facebook comments.
75.0 Beta 3 Update 3 31.4 March 9, 2015 Added spellcheck command to change dictionary, fixed slow startup and other minor things.
75.0 RC 31.5 March 14, 2015 Gecko update, fixed click not working in menu and other weird event problem, fixed being trashed when closing windows session, fixed checkbutton, add appRestart (doesn't warn if download in progress).
75.0 RC2 31.5 March 31, 2015 Fixed session tab order, search macro, wine transparency (?), shorter privacy bar. Flash seems to block some keyboard accelerators.
75.0 RC2 Update 1 31.5 April 3, 2015 Session fix.
75.0 RC2 Update 2 31.5 April 9, 2015 Bugfixes, fixed a crash when locale dll are incomplete or not loaded correctly, cfg macro.
75.0 RC2 Update 3 31.5 April 14, 2015 Fixed xul windows size, the last session problem, and the download dialog.
75.0 RC2 Update 4 31.5 April 16, 2015 Enabled plugin container for Flash by default.
75.0 RC2 Update 5 31.5 April 18, 2015 macros.dll, change for SetButtonImage so that changing cold image doesn't change the hot one.
75.0 RC3 31.5 May 6, 2015 Fixed adding bookmark, session plugin crashes, accelerators, xul windows sizing, status bar text for registercmd, setbuttonimage, reload command with "restore on demand" session, flash with plugin container.
75.0 RC3 Update 1 31.5 May 9, 2015 Fixed German and Spanish tooltips, loading title in tab.
75.0 RC3 Update 2 31.5 May 14, 2015 Bugfixes.
75.0 RC3 Update 3 31.5 May 19, 2015 The "plugin" macro function is fixed (kPrivacy_ClearAll is working now), titles were missing in tab tooltip after loading a session, disabled OOP for flash by default, and tweaked it a bit for OOP, Jsbridge registercmd, add experimental enabled and checked callback.
75.0 RC3 Update 4 31.5 June 16, 2015 Minor update of kmpref, and sessions (delete).
75.0 31.5 June 24, 2015 Release.
75.1 31.8 September 19, 2015 Release.
76 76.0 Beta 3 38.5 December 23, 2015 Beta release.
76RC 38.8 May 3, 2016 Release candidate.
76RC update 38.8 July 1, 2016 Removed SSE requirement.
76RC2 December 20, 2016 Release candidate 2.
76.G -- December 15, 2017 New branch switches from Gecko to Goanna. This allows K-Meleon to retain support for legacy systems.
76.2.G -- January 20, 2019 Goanna update.
76.3.G -- March 8, 2020 Goanna update.
76.4.1.G -- February 20, 2021 Update to Goanna 3.4.6.
76.4.6.G -- March 19, 2022 Latest release in active branch.

References: K-Meleon file releases,[90][91] release notes,[92] Wiki documentation,[1] and the Announcements forum.[93]

See also
  • Comparison of feed aggregators
  • Comparison of lightweight web browsers
  • Comparison of web browsers
  • List of feed aggregators
  • List of web browsers

References
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  2. "K-Meleon 76.4.6 on Goanna 3.5.0". September 9, 2022.
  3. "K-Meleon releases". Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  4. McCracken, Harry (March 2007), "For Browsers, the Best of Times is Now", PC World Communications, p. 15, Right now, more viable options are angling for your attention than at any time since the browser wars of the mid-1990s. (. . .) Tempted to leave IE? Firefox and Opera, the powerful browser from Norway, are far from your only options. These days, in fact, they’re part of the old guard. Newer alternatives abound: Flock, for instance, offers built-in blogging, and K-Meleon is snappy even on low-end hardware.
  5. DeVault, Drew (March 18, 2020). "The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers". drewdevault.com. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
  6. Evans, Peter. "Optimized for no one, but pretty much OK with . . ". Hoary Ape. Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  7. Simonds, Shari D. (November 23, 2001). "I'm feeling grateful for the wonderful Internet". The Victoria Advocate. Victoria, Texas. pp. 1–4D. I am therefore thankful for all the underdog browsers fighting the One Size Fits All theory and its inevitable conclusion. In particular I give thanks to the K-Meleon browser,
  8. "K-Meleon: Are the browser wars back?". Zdnet.com.au. October 13, 2000. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved November 8, 2011.
  9. Jark (August 22, 2000). "K-Meleon Owns Netscape's Gecko". Dimension Music. Archived from the original on January 8, 2001. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  10. Brown, Luke (2000). "K-Meleon". PC Monkey. Archived from the original on October 2, 2000. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  11. Paul, John (October 29, 2020). "A Look Back at the History of Firefox". It's FOSS, chmod777 Media Tech (OPC) Pvt Ltd. Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  12. Orlowski, Andrew (November 26, 2001). "Galeon zips while Mozilla slips". The Register. Retrieved September 9, 2022. It isn't the only browser to build on Gecko - there's the Linux-based Skipstone, which isn't updated as frequently - for Windows there's the K-Meleon project.
  13. Blanco, Elena (March 1, 2005). "Open source and the web browser". Oss-watch.ac.uk. Retrieved November 8, 2011.
  14. Compubug (December 15, 2001). "Mozilla: It doesn't try to eat Tokyo; it's a browser". Lodi News-Sentinel. Lodi, California. p. 36. K-Meleon . . . looks like a Netscape Navigator that took up jogging and a diet. Same overall feel as Netscape without some of the clutter.
  15. Foley, Mary Jo. "K-Meleon browser part Mozilla, part IE". ZDNet News. Archived from the original on November 8, 2001. Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  16. Ross, Blake, "README", Phoenix 0.1 Source Code, Mozilla, archived from the original on January 30, 2005, This project is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform.
  17. Olsen, Stephanie (September 25, 2002). "Mozilla browser gets some bite". CNET.com. CNET. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  18. Hyatt, Dave (July 2002). "It's Just the UI, Stupid". Archived from the original on August 26, 2003. Retrieved September 12, 2022. You don't see Galeon UI designers trying to co-develop their UI with the rest of the world, nor do you see that with Chimera, m/b, K-Meleon, or OEOne. [. . .] I began working on Chimera largely out of frustration with having to deal with all of the lousy work being done on the Navigator front end (both in UI design, marketing nonsense and lousy implementation). It wasn't so much that I wanted to learn Cocoa or anything; I just wanted to work with a small number of talented people instead of an uncontrollable mob.
  19. "Phoenix 0.1 (Pescadero) Release Notes and FAQ". Mozilla. September 23, 2002. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  20. Blasko, Larry (December 6, 2001). "K-Meleon: Lean, mean Web browser". USA Today. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
  21. Jesdanun, Anick (June 16, 2002). "Mozilla an adaptable browser". Spartanburg Herald-Journal. Spartanburg, South Carolina: Kevin Drake. pp. E1, E7. Andrew Mutch helps develop and uses a version called K-Meleon in the Waterford Township, Mich, public library, where he is systems technician. He says other browsers don't let him turn off features the way K-Meleon does, making them difficult to manage in multiple-user settings.
  22. Boswell, David. "Independent Status Reports". Mozillazine.org. Archived from the original on January 5, 2003. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  23. Goldoni, Emanuele. "K-Meleon: Toolbar Skins". Archived from the original on November 8, 2002. Retrieved September 10, 2022. K-Meleon 0.7 - Because this new release uses a new macro-based skinning system, skins and throbbers are now stored into the directory containing the used skin (C:\...\K-Meleon\skins\SKIN_NAME\).
  24. Jin, Xing; Wang, Lusha; Luo, Tongbo; Du, Wenliang (December 29, 2015). "Fine-Grained Access Control for HTML-5-Based Mobile Applications in Android". In Yvo Desmedt (ed.). Information Security. Germany: Springer International Publishing. p. 314. ISBN 9783319276595. In browsers it is often necessary to allow JavaScript to interact with browser plugins, such as Flash, PDF reader, Java Applet, etc. A de facto standard for such an interaction was initially developed for Netscape, but was subsequently implemented by many other browsers. It is called Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) which provides cross-platform plugin architecture for browsers.
  25. Erickson, Ulf; Holman; Mutch; Moses; Sachner; Zarneth. "K-Meleon User's Guide and Reference Manual". K-Meleon Documentation Project. Archived from the original on November 25, 2002.
  26. Erikson, Ulf (January 8, 2005). "K-Meleon: Dead or Alive?". kmeleon-dev@lists.sourceforge.net (Mailing list). Retrieved September 17, 2022. Andrew is right on an important point: That line was not meant as a: "Do as I want, or else..". It was a comment about my frustration. I *have* asked myself more than once the last months whether it wouldn"t be better to stop; Whether my offer to help build K-Meleon 0.9 had been a mistake. In case you didn"t knew I have never had any plans to continue after the release.
  27. Boissonnade, Dorian (January 16, 2006). "Future K-Meleon 1.0". kmeleon-dev@lists.sourceforge.net (Mailing list). Archived from the original on June 10, 2006. Retrieved September 17, 2022. I've uploaded a new build of what should become K-Meleon 1.0
  28. Jiang, Hao. "[Recommend] K-Meleon for Seamonkey 1.0". K-Meleon CCF Unofficial Version. Archived from the original on January 13, 2006. About localization of this build: The sources contain a kmeleonloc folder which permit to build a dll of ressources. Instead of "hacking" into the exe to localize k-meleon, you can translate the resources, build the dll, and put it in the k-meleon folder with the name k-meleonloc.dll. K-meleon will use it instead of its internal english resource. You can make a language.cfg file to translate menus, toolbars and macro (as long as they use the new _T() function).
  29. Malyarevsky, Alexander. "K-MELEON: БРОУЗЕР ДЛЯ НАСТОЯЩИХ МАНЬЯКОВ" [K-Meleon: a Browser for Real Maniacs]. Utro.ru (Morning Newspaper) (in Russian). Planet Internet. Archived from the original on April 3, 2001. Retrieved March 12, 2022. Но следует отметить, что в ходе тестирования ни разу (!) ни одна просматриваемая страница с кириллицей не отображалась в непонятных кодировках. [But it should be noted that during testing, not once (!) was a single page viewed with Cyrillic displayed in incomprehensible encodings.]
  30. Pogson, Jeff (December 28, 2004). "Computing in Welsh". Multilingual Computing & Technology. Vol. 16, no. 69. MultiLingual Media LLC. pp. 37–40. 'You can localize at no cost and without having to ask for permission.' (. . .) Volunteers have also localized Opera and K-Meleon.
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  32. Brinkman, Martin (April 29, 2008). "If you are looking for a fast browser... K-Meleon". Ghacks. Retrieved February 28, 2022.
  33. Kohler, Klaus (May 9, 2007). "What's new in K-Meleon 1.1?". K-Meleon 1.X Reference. K-Meleon Documentation Project. Archived from the original on October 12, 2009. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  34. Boissonnade, Dorian; Kohler, Klaus (May 2007). "K-Meleon 1.1 Release Notes". Retrieved August 29, 2022.
  35. Erickson, Ulf (July 29, 2002). "layers.dll". Archived from the original on October 4, 2002. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  36. Gralla, Preston (July 16, 2007). "K-Meleon". PCWorld.com. IDG Communications, Inc. Retrieved September 18, 2022.
  37. Geere, Duncan (March 1, 2010). "Wild Wild Web - the browser ballot's lesser-known options". Pocket-lint. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  38. Schofield, Jack (December 16, 2009). "EU drops Microsoft browser charges with agreement on 'ballot screen'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on December 19, 2009. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
  39. Cellan-Jones, Rory (March 1, 2010). "Microsoft offers browser choices to Europeans". BBC. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
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  41. Virki, Tarmo (March 3, 2010). "Opera says demand up as Microsoft opens EU market". Reuters. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  42. Ars Staff (March 5, 2010). "Horizontal scrollbar prompts EU gripe from 6 browser makers". Ars Technica. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
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  50. López, José María (March 10, 2022). "Navegadores web minimalistas y ligeros para ordenadores viejos" [Minimalist and Lightweight Web Browsers for Old Computers] (in Spanish). Retrieved August 29, 2022. Está basado en Mozilla Firefox. Pero en vez de usar su motor Gecko, utiliza un derivado o fork llamado Goanna. [It is based on Mozilla Firefox. But instead of using the Gecko engine, it uses a derivative or fork called Goanna.]
  51. Boissonnade, Dorian (December 10, 2017). "[TEST BUILD] K-Meleon 76 on Goanna 3.4.1". Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  52. Vodeiko, Rodion. "New Russian K-Meleon 75 for Real Pro". Weekly Geekly. In general, the most annoying things, which the author did not intend to fix, were corrected by ourselves. They added several prefixes, in the absence of which individual Settings were inactive (. . .) The second macro ( maxfix.kmm ) simply corrects the incorrect behavior of the maximized window WITHOUT the system header in Windows 7 (. . . ) The main thing is that in the 76th version there is no insidious bug leaked into the previous version, which crashes the browser on Cyrillic domains.
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  54. "Arctic Fox Web Browser". GitHub. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  55. Krause, Jörg (2021). "Shadow DOM". Developing Web Components with TypeScript. Apress, Berkeley, CA. pp. 43–51. ISBN 978-1-4842-6839-1. To recap some of the facts shown here, it's recommended to have the Chrome browser available. (...) Once again, it's a non-standard attribute. It's specific to browsers using the Chromium engine. (...) Note that this is currently implemented by Chrome.
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  57. Doctorow, Cory (April 3, 2019). "After years of insisting that DRM in HTML wouldn't block open source implementations, Google says it won't support open source implementations". Retrieved September 3, 2022.
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  59. García, Rocío (March 9, 2022). "Sin instalación y para llevar: Los mejores programas portables" (in Spanish). Retrieved September 3, 2022. K-Meleon es de código abierto, está disponible en muchos idiomas y además de su versión instalador, también podemos descargar K-Meleon portable desde este enlace. [K-Meleon is open-source, it is available in many languages, and in addition to its installer version, we can also download K-Meleon portable from this link: kmeleonbroswer.org.]
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  67. Nohe, Patrick (June 26, 2018). "Now would be a good time to update your browser". The SSL Store. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
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  76. Wayne, Richard (June 2004). "An Overview of Public Access Computer Software Management" (PDF). Computes in Libraries. pp. 28–29. Retrieved September 4, 2022. K-Meleon from kmeleon.org also allows you to control many browser functions. It is free, open source software.
  77. Lanxon, Nate (August 7, 2009). "Tested: Five Web browsers you've never heard of". CNET.com. Retrieved September 12, 2022. K-Meleon is the most popular browser for people to complain about us not testing when we write about other, more popular options. Having given K-Meleon a full test, we now know exactly who most of these people are: coders and hackers, and it's clear why they love this browser. [ . . . ] K-Meleon's is much more customisable than most others, but it requires some knowledge of computer code to get the most out of it.
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  79. Merkulov, Yurij. "Русский хамелеон" [Russian Chameleon] (in Russian). K-Meleon не поддерживает эту структуру, разработка расширений для него требует особых знаний и навыков, что отпугивает многих разработчиков. Как следствие, база модулей дополнения к хамелеону в несколько раз беднее, чем у той же лисички. [K-Meleon does not support this system, so development of extensions for it requires special knowledge and skills, which discourages many developers. As a result, the database of add-ons for the chameleon is several times poorer than that of the fox.]
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  86. Ehrlich, Heyward (Spring 2013). "Poe in Cyberspace: The Browser Wars Redux". The Edgar Allan Poe Review. Penn State University Press. 14 (1): 113–118. doi:10.5325/edgallpoerev.14.1.0113. S2CID 189609810. Retrieved September 4, 2022. (. . .) less well-known browsers (Avant Browser, Comodo Dragon, K-Meleon, Lunascape, Rockmelt, SRWare Iron, and SlimBrowser) (. . .) In conclusion, two important causes of the renewed browser wars are the uncertainties produced by (1) the shift of hardware usage from the fixed desktop computer to mobile handheld devices, and (2) the migration of data storage from local hard disks to the Internet cloud. Although the habits of causal users will not necessarily affect the activity of professional users, we seem to be entering a period of mixed use of old and new methods and devices.
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