K-Meleon 76 Pro - a new Russian browser assembly for oldfags and true connoisseurs

    Hello again!

    A great deal of time has passed since our last publication, dedicated to the revival of the Russian K-meleon Pro assembly. Of course, many will perceive our news with irony and inevitable grins.

    Alas, the development of K-Meleon'a stagnated for a number of objective reasons, the main of which is the dependence on a single developer. Our “father-developer” Dorian had several problems in a row, which affected the development in the most negative way, coupled with the turbulent revolutions in the code of the Mozilla engine, about which the community has long been bored and now continues to just howl quietly.

    Nevertheless, it cannot be said that the development has risen completely - our assembly is based on the code released in December 2016. True, this is still the release candidate of the 76th version, based on the Gecko 38 ESR, so the browser deliberately went into the category of old phage tools, relevant for owners of outdated and weak equipment.

    No, it still works great on modern equipment, but modern web design is rapidly dropping the jacks on us of new sites of popular sites (often written contrary to all web standards) that browser developers just have to support. For where they (even such as Google) butting with the same Facebook is more expensive for themselves. Please insert a crutch into the code.

    Nevertheless, the 76th version of our browser is quite a workhorse, overpowering the vast majority of sites. And here and there we are already substituting our crutches.

    But enough preludes: we present the new Russian Pro-assembly, and I will talk about its main features. As before, our assemblies are aimed at making K-Meleon the most friendly, functional and convenient product.

    Traditionally, they contain a lot of additional functionality that makes life easier for users.
    But first of all, we supported the tradition of supplying each new large version of our assemblies with a new face. This time it is a specially modified Pinstripe skin that looks something like this:

    image

    Here we see immediately the very new design theme, and the new start page, and several buttons hinting at some kind of additional functionality of the assembly.

    Let's go to him and move on.

    1) To place additional functions, we created a new menu item “Pro”, where the teams responsible for new functions will be placed. Something similar (and very clever) was in different builds of the old Opera (for example, Opera LE). Everything is modest with us so far, but it is this menu that will grow in the future. Also, the items in this menu can be duplicated in contextual menus relevant to a particular feature.

    2) We moved to this menu some features already available in the previous Pro-assembly - for example, opening a link in a new application (previously it was called “Open in another browser”, but since it can transfer the link to any program, capable of accepting links directly, we renamed it). In addition to browsers, it’s very convenient to add here, for example, media players for playing audio and video files.

    Even from the old one, the IE tab settings and the choice of the download manager (the good old oGet) now live on this menu.

    Also, quick access to about: pages is displayed here.

    3) Now actually new chips. Firstly, it is a tool to bypass UltraSurf locks . Performed through the integration of a third-party application of the same name.
    It is turned on by a button, and it is turned off by it. Also UltraSurf will be automatically closed upon exiting K-Meleon.

    It does not require any (!) Additional gestures and settings, it works in the background without showing eyes, but just in case it is equipped with help shown on the first start by the machine, and then on demand (via the menu or by hotkey).

    4) HTML5 media switch . This extension quickly deactivates the html5 player of media files, giving an opportunity to those who wish (we know that they are) to force a switch to a flash player. Oldfazh so oldfazh!

    5) There are also commands for quickly translating pages using Google and Yandex. This functionality is also duplicated in the context menus of the page, link and frame.

    6) Video Saver - a means of integrating video storage services hosted on various sites - from the classic YouTube to Rutube and Twitter (because on the twitter itself video is played only in the most mainstream browsers - such garbage).

    In general, the 76th branch, although it is formally a release candidate, has long been used in the community. And since the Pro assembly is very popular - by the standards of a niche little-known product - (the latest version 75.10 Pro has been downloaded more than 30,000 times), now Russian-speaking (and not only - we have the English Pro assembly ready) users have a great reason to upgrade. The main thing is that in the 76th version there is no mischievous bug that leaked into the previous version, which ruined the browser on Cyrillic domains.

    Now no left drops on the site President.rf! ;)

    In the following publications (again, if we are extended), we will talk more about the situation around the browser and its development, about the prospects, problems, and about our plans that would be good to come true.

    Because several tens of thousands of people are definitely interested in making this browser live.

    It is worth noting here that for such an unevenly developing product, we still have very good development dynamics: yes, while K-Meleon’s fame leaves much to be desired, we have already been noticed by the developers of some OSs, and encoders of individual problem sites, and even authors of some extensions for Firefox. Of course, this dynamics needs to be maintained and strengthened so that we can talk about a serious product, but this is what our thoughts are devoted to.

    And the news of the year was certainly what Yandex noticed us - and in this assembly we are conducting a joint experiment with the search engine to integrate their search into our browser.

    So far, this cooperation is purely research in nature. There is no monetization in this, but whether it is possible will show just the life cycle of our new assembly, K-Meleon 76 Pro.
    So far, it is published (as well as its official base) in the status of a release candidate. During the run-in, necessary corrections and additions will be introduced into it.

    Download build 76 Pro RC

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