Browser Testing in Progress: K-Meleon 1.1.3

February 12, 2008

I’ve used this Gecko powered browser before. I read a review on it in PC Magazine and decided to give it a try. I don’t know what it is about browsers, but I really enjoying trying different ones out.

K-Meleon is a lot like Firefox, so of course I liked it right away. I did set it up so the loader starts when Windows does so the browser’s start is lightning fast. The loader pre-loads parts of the browser into memory so it launches really quickly. I know there are lots of programs that have loaders you can set to start up when your OS does so when you do need to use the program, it opens right up. In most cases, I bypass that feature since it does use resources but since a browser is something I use constantly during the day, I decided to let it run. So, let me get on with my review.

Things I like about K-Meleon:

• It’s very fast.
• It has tabbed browsing (which I neglected to mention about the other browsers I’ve tested)
• I can use the visual editor with WordPress to post entries
• The search function is cool. By that, I mean that I can type my search text into the address bar, then click on an icon directly to the left of the address bar to do a search. I know that I can type a search string into Firefox and Opera and get results when I hit the Enter key (not so with Safari), so it was hard for me to get used to clicking the search icon at first. When you type a search term or string into the address bar With Firefox and Opera, the browser first searches for a legitimate URL, then it opens Google (or whatever your default search engine is). With K-Meleon, the browser knows you’re searching from the address bar as soon as you click the search icon. Hey, it’s just me, but I like it!
• I can use the Flash based interface I need to maintain one of my client websites to actually edit pages. I couldn’t do that with Safari or Opera. I did discover a problem last week, though, but discovered it’s not related to K-Meleon. There are a couple of Flash buttons in the interface for ‘contact’ and ‘view website’ that simply didn’t work. There’s another Flash button for ‘Start Page’ that did work. After checking Firefox and seeing that I had the same problem there, I tried IE…no problem…but what I did notice was that the links were pop-ups. I went back and changed the pop-up blockers in FF and K-Meleon to accept pop-ups from the interface site and it solved the problem. Funny, but it didn’t used to be an issue in FF. Maybe an update changed the way FF handles pop-ups generated by Flash….I don’t know. All I know is that it works now.
• Gmail uses the enhanced interface without any problem. What can I say…I like the color-coded flags you can use to identify different labels…

What I don’t like:

• I can’t print a webpage. I get an error message that my printer doesn’t recognize the page size everytime I try to print one. I can print non-browser files (like .pdf) but I just can’t print webpages. The error message tells me it’s because I’m using a printer that’s not completely compliant with Vista. That doesn’t work for me because I can print webpages from other browsers without a problem. That’s a problem I’m still working on.

I have to say that among the browsers I’ve used (and I didn’t use IE, Firefox or Netscape), I like K-Meleon the best. I really couldn’t tell you exactly why, I just like it. All the browsers I tried had features I liked and features I didn’t. Why do I like ketchup on my hotdog? I don’t know…I just like it.

I do want to note here that I tested browsers that I wasn’t familiar with. I’ve always used a combination of Firefox and IE. I’d never used Safari and it had been several versions back when I’d tried Opera and K-Meleon. I didn’t try Netscape because….well, what’s the point? I also know that I haven’t provided a lot of detail here about the different browsers. I may have said something that motivated you to try one or more of them, but probably not. I do plan to incorporate my little experiment into the VFTC podcast. During the month of March, Kim and I are going to do shows about all the browsers I tried, and some I didn’t (like mobile browsers). I’ve already invited my friend and Mac Chik colleague, Allison of the NosillaCast, to join me and discuss Safari. She’ll be with us on Friday, March 14. I’m also hoping that Jamie Braly of Tech Tips for Parents will also be able to join us to talk some more about mobile browsing. I don’t do it. I’m one of those people who use my cellphone as as….well….a phone. If any of you are interested in joining Kim and me during March to talk about browsers, mobile and otherwise, let us know. We’d be more than happy to have you on Views from the Coop. You can e-mail us and we’ll get you scheduled at a time that’s convenient.

Well, that wraps it up for my browser testing blog entries. Yes, I missed a lot of features (remember, I only used the browsers for two weeks at a time) and I know there are folks out there who know a lot more about the browsers I chose to test. It was still fun. Next time, I may test different e-mail programs. Whattya think?

Posted in Browsers