K-Meleon

Christophe Thibault started the K-Meleon project in the early 2000s. During this time web sites were simpler and many smaller projects were creating new browsers.[7] 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 Phoenix or Firefox and was one of the first projects to separate the browser from other Mozilla Internet Suite applications.[8] K-Meleon also uses a unique macro language and the native win32 API.

K-Meleon uses the native Windows application programming interface (API) to create its user interface instead of Mozilla's cross-platform XML User Interface Language (XUL) layer.[9] As a result, is tightly integrated into the look and feel of the Windows desktop, and less resource-intensive than other browsers on Windows.[10] This approach is similar to that of Galeon and Epiphany (for the GNOME desktop), and Camino (for Mac OS X).

The first version, K-Meleon 0.1, was originally written by Christophe Thibault and released to the public on August 21, 2000.[11] A flurry of development happened until 2003 when some developers moved on to other projects.[1] Dorian Boissonnade eventually took over as the primary developer of the project.[12]

After many major release versions from 0.1 to 0.9.x, K-Meleon 1.0 introduced major modifications. The most notable change was the main K-Meleon code being updated to accommodate the Gecko 1.8.0.x rendering engine, as used in the latest releases of Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey. This update to the layout engine brought significant improvements to security and usability, including support for favicons and multi-user environments. Some themes and macros from version 0.9 were still compatible with 1.0, although the macro system was updated. K-Meleon also began including privacy-oriented features like direct support for web proxies and popup blockers. [13]

The macro system was updated further in K-Meleon 1.1,[14] which was based on the Gecko 1.8.1 rendering engine that was used in Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and SeaMonkey 1.1. All K-Meleon versions released since have retained compatibility for this macro language.

A true tabbed interface was introduced in version 1.5. Before this update, multiple web pages were only accessible within the same browser window using the included but optional "layers" plugin, which enabled a toolbar containing buttons representing each open page in a way that functionally mimicked tabbed browsing in every way other than appearance. These open pages were called "layers" instead of tabs.

In 2009, Microsoft struck a deal with the European Commission. Microsoft resolved accusations that it was abusing its market position to push Internet Explorer, by introducing a browser ballot. Beginning in 2010, Microsoft offered Microsoft Windows users in the European Economic Area a choice of web browsers including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, K-Meleon, and several others.[15]

As of 2012, the project was incorrectly reported[16] as being on indefinite hold, presumably due to the fact that Mozilla stopped providing an embeddable version of the Gecko engine.[17][18] This has since been clarified, as development continued.[19][20]

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.

K-Meleon 75 was released in mid-2015 with a Mozilla 31 backend, new skin and toolbar implementation, spellcheck, and form autocompletion.

Since 2019, stable builds of K-Meleon have been released using a fork of the Goanna engine.[21]

Since 2017, all active development on K-Meleon has taken place in the Goanna branch. Roytam forked the most recent version of K-Meleon in 2017 to run on the Goanna engine. This branch also includes tweaks and bug fixes for the K-Meleon shell from another community build.[22] 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 maintained for Pale Moon.[23]

Screenshot of K-Meleon 74 on Windows 2000

K-Meleon supports many legacy versions of Windows.[24] Windows XP and Vista are both actively supported. Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows XP in 2009 and Vista in 2012. They released their final update for the XP family of operating systems on April 9, 2019, and Vista on April 11, 2017. Google dropped Windows XP support from Google Chrome on April 15, 2016,[25] Mozilla dropped support in 2018,[26] and Microsoft has not made newer versions of Internet Explorer available for XP or Vista.

Even older versions of Windows receive some updates. Many older web browsers cannot access modern websites because they don't support the Transport Security Layer (TLS). An increasing number of websites are using HTTPS which encrypts communication for privacy and security using TLS. Older browsers released for Windows 9X operating systems do not include any support for TLS.[27] Older versions of K-Meleon have received patches that allow them to access the modern web. K-Meleon 74 can access secure websites on Windows 2000 using TLS 1.2.[28] 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.[29] However, there are no updates available for K-Meleon 1.5's web engine.

K-Meleon has a highly flexible interface design. All the menus and toolbar buttons can be customized using text-format configuration files. This feature is useful in environments where the browser must be customized for general public use, such as in a public library or Internet café.[30] Although individual toolbars can be repositioned, users must edit toolbar configuration files to make any changes to button layouts as there is no graphical user interface (GUI) to customize them.[31]

The use of the native Windows interface means that K-Meleon does not support Mozilla-formatted browser themes. Compatibility with Mozilla extensions is also limited, with only a few extensions that can be integrated. However, K-Meleon has its own plugins (called "kplugins")[32] and browser themes (using Lim Chee Aun's Phoenity by default),[33] which can extend the functionality and customize the appearance of the browser. There is also a macro plugin which allows users to extend the browser functionality without having to know the C programming language.[34]

References: K-Meleon file releases,[38][39] release notes,[40] Wiki documentation,[1] and Announcements forum.[41]

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