New Russian K-Meleon 75 for real Pro

    How long it is for short, and yet we have come a long way from the desire to revive the famous Russian assembly K-Meleon Pro to its actual release.

    In fact, the Pro-assembly was released in August, but there was no time to write about it, and we flew the fleas over the past time. Today, the assembly was re-published with all the latest additions and fixes, and you can write an article about it with a clear conscience.

    Actually, the ideology of all the assemblies that I personally made is the same: maximum functionality, maximum convenient and productive settings, maximum useful developments of the community and maximum user friendliness.
    Those. take and combine the super-flexible, but techno-technical approach of the original CM with concern for those who take it into their hands.

    So I built my Twin based on the old KM 1.6 and 1.7. This seems to be the new Pro.

    I took exactly this name for the new assembly, since it included to the maximum the achievements of past Russian developers of KM, namely our people (personally Quicksilver Tears) first assembled K-Meleon Pro (then version 1.02) almost 10 years ago.

    Nothing was in vain. Until now, the Russian-language KM uses a locale, the main part of which was made back then, localized extensions (macros), as well as standardized skins by the Russian team. I updated something, corrected something, added something.

    The rest went to us from the new K-Meleon 75, or rather, from the assemblies following the final - 75.1.
    Here it’s worth clarifying that the latest Pro version is assembled in two versions at once:
    - based on KM 75.1beta + update5 - K-Meleon 75 Pro
    - based on the latest KM 75.1 RC + update1 - K-Meleon 75.1 Pro
    The first base is more studied and reliable, like like, but the second one adds something necessary and long-awaited. The choice is yours.

    It remains to consider in detail what is our PROSH good, how is it better (or just different from) the "official" browser from Dorian.

    Let's start with the external changes:



    1. Skins . The assembly uses not only default themes from Dorian (in Russia, many complain about them, calling them “the last century.” In Europe and the world, on the contrary, many users appreciate these low-key and non-modern skins. Something is characteristic of this). The bulk of the topics are from the collection of the Russian team, in some places I have, as necessary, been slightly corrected (there were minor errors there).
      But the default theme for the Russian assembly, I chose a completely new theme for most users, Green, originally assembled by Brazilian cameleoners (they also have their own assembly KM). But I didn’t just choose it, but seriously reworked it, collecting from it a practically new Green Pro theme, which is set up for the “chrome style”, so fashionable and in demand in our days of infinitely small monitors. ;-)
    2. In principle , the main purpose of including a whole set of skins in the kit was a demo. The fact is that the change of skins in KM has long been fun of the strong spirit of users: due to excessive openness, the collection was (and remains) highly non-standardized, which often leads to “scattering” of toolbars when changing themes. The work carried out by the Russian team in past years was precisely aimed at creating a collection of topics with standardized content (configuration and graphic files).
      And the new generation of KM - branch 74-75 - finally got a working opportunity to bind a variety of browser settings to changing the skin. To do this, in the folder of each theme there is a skin.js file in which the necessary parameters are written. First of all, this is the actual configuration of the toolbars (group of prefs of the kmeleon.toolband. * Branch), but no one forbids writing ANY parameters from about: config! And they will receive priority over default ones when restarting the browser, which is necessary for changing the skin.
      In other words, you can not rivet different profiles for different conditions and tasks, but simply configure skin.js so that when you set a specific topic, the browser receives the necessary operating modes.

      Actually, this is demonstrated by several skins in the set: Green Pro is configured, as I already said, in a “chrome style”, i.e. the browser has the system title bar turned off and the panels are placed in such a way as to simulate the location of the main elements of the GUI in Chrome K-Melezilla does roughly the same thing, but with a more old-school, classic layout of toolbars; most skins also prescribe the use of a background image for panels (if it is provided by the author of the skin) - before, you had to switch it separately, and this spoiled the impression of browser customization.
      But Camrod is a theme where, by default, another novelty of fresh Cameleons is used:
    3. The changing font size of the address bar. This feature was requested by those who use modern TVs as a screen and work with them from a long distance. What can be changed in Firefox through user interface styles in KM now changes with one prefix. It has not yet been added to the graphical settings interface, so I decided to include it in the skin settings. In our case, this is the Camrod skin (in itself - large, convenient just for working at a distance or for working with your fingers on the touchscreen).



      The font of the address bar in it is increased by 1.5 times. But you can put your multiplier as the value of the kmeleon.display.urlbar_fontsize parameter
    4. New settings in the GUI. The community is gradually expanding the Settings panel (F2), introducing new switch prefs. We collected several of these updates at once (and I did part of it myself - and they even gradually migrated to the official assembly!). These are minor and not everyone's noticeable changes, but they will really help someone to make life with the browser more convenient.


    5. Advanced search tools. In fact, they all exist for a long time - both the quick search panel ( SearchBarExt.dll ) and the search super menu with a dynamic button, search history, search on the page, highlighting, etc. But I put them in my builds by default instead of the default button, which has much less features. Try it all and choose what is convenient for you. Or leave it all together.

    6. "Lost options." It often happens that updates bring us not only something additionally useful, but also something disappears. Either the developer overlooked or simply made a mistake during the assembly, or he consciously removed a certain favorite function for his own reasons. <
      What is good with K-Meleon in this case? Yes, because almost everything is fashionable to fix here.

      In the new KM development branch there were “losses” of both types - somewhere Dorian simply forgot to register the necessary prefs in the configs, and he consciously remade something. Moreover, traces of the presence of the function remained, but it itself ...
      In general, the most annoying things that the author was not going to fix in any way, we corrected ourselves. Added several prefs, in the absence of which individual Settings were inactive(Well, the user has lost some convenient features).


      For example, to fully control the behavior of windows and tabs for such a useful function as displaying all links or images from the target web page as a separate page in the browser - KM without these prefs would open a mandatory new window for such a new page, and now you can do it in a new Tabe, if you do not like multi-windowed. The prefka was also lost, disabling the rendering of horizontal dividing lines between individual toolbars. Etc.
    7. Additional hotkeys. This part is quite usual for KM - each user can register their own keys in any quantity - for this there is an accel.cfg file in the folder of each profile. For my assemblies, I began to configure some keyboard shortcuts in the K-Meleon Twin assembly, and now I just added a few more hotkeys for existing and newly appeared functions.

      For instance:
      • Alt + F10 - open about: config (I can’t understand why anyone’s hands haven’t done this before: the first thing anyone who is interested in setting up Fox-like browsers teaches is the address of this service page. He has to manually type it tens of times);
      • Ctrl + left and right arrows - to navigate back and forward, respectively;
      • F12 - for fastening / detaching toolbars;
      • Shift + Alt + D - download manager ( about: downloads );
      • Shift + Alt + M - download manager ( about: memory );
      • Shift + Alt + A - FF add-on manager ( about: addons )
      • Shift + Alt + C - configuration again ( about: config )
      • (you would also need to make a macro and a key for the new settings page about: preferences and for about: permissions)
      • Alt + 1 - call the menu (especially useful, because it works when the menu is not displayed);
      • Alt + 2 - call the compact menu (appears at the cursor);
      • Alt + 3 - call the search menu (also at the cursor);
      …etc.

    8. Access to about: service pages is maximally facilitated: firstly, the mentioned hot keys; secondly, a new section of the menu “ Tools-> Advanced Features Management ”, from where you can open the most frequently used pages. And finally, in each new tab, we open the about: about page with a list of all service pages available to the KM user.
    9. Large bilingual spellchecker . Everything is simple here - our users often have to check mixed bilingual texts, so KM Pro out of the box received an extended bilingual dictionary found somewhere on the Web. Respect to his collector.
    10. Many handy native KM extensions. Let me remind you that the browser has its own extensibility toolkit - a macro language that can integrate the functionality of Firefox add-ons, JS-scripts and third-party programs available on your PC into the CM, and people write very interesting things in a clean macro language. Among the available in the Pro-assembly, it is worth noting such extensions as “Open the page in another browser”, “Quick restart KM”, “Link activity switch” (can temporarily “turn off” links on the page, turning them into inactive text and helping, for example , copy the text to which the link is “attached”), “Forced opening of the link in the current tab”, “Transfer of saved sessions”, “Switching varieties of the full-screen mode”, “Opening previously closed tabs”, “User agent switch”, oGet, GetFileSize and etc. etc.
      It's all better to try in work than to look for descriptions.
    11. Firefox Tools A fresh AdBlockPlus (suitable for the 31st engine) with an easy subscription is integrated into the Pro-assembly (and I learned how to thicken it with unsolicited subscriptions and the permission of “unobtrusive advertising”) and the “Page Information” module. Also updated the standard Newsfox module, available out of the box in any Cameleon.
    12. I would also like to mention macros of my own design : one of which ( pastegohack.kmm ) adds commands to the context menu for opening addresses from the clipboard in the current and new tabs - this was done as a crutch replacing the “Paste and go” command that was not in the context of the address bar by reference ”(many complained that it’s unusual and uncomfortable to go to the next Go-button for it, and that was a homespun truth!).

      True, in the latest version from Dorian there was an opportunity to customize the address bar menu as you like - but I did not begin to throw out my option, because it turned out to be even more convenient than I expected. Generally it is not necessary to aim the mouse in the address bar. Right from the page - once and done! But he did not ignore the opportunity granted by the official assembly:

      The second macro ( maxfix.kmm ) - simply corrects the incorrect behavior of the maximized window WITHOUT the system header in Windows 7 (and obviously, all newer ones). Unlike XP, where everything is fine, in Seven the “chromium-like” window opens when opened with a slight shift behind the screen. The macro fixes this automatically by “minimizing-maximizing”, so you will notice a slight one-time blinking of the window at the start. If the classic skin with the window title is selected, the macro does nothing, because it is not needed.
      I also added the user the ability to customize the search as they type (Find As You Type) - you will find an elongated menu at the address Edit -> Search on the page .
      These are not all my macros, but I did not include the old ones in this assembly. Some of them are irrelevant, some do not fall into the assembly concept, and some I just forgot to leave for the future ;-)
    13. And there will be no 13th point! Of course, I did not describe everything, perhaps, but for now, that's enough. We must take and try what is.


    For K-Meleon Pro is a good thing. Put, test, work. That's why he and Pro.

    PS Known problems: K-Meleon was among those rejected by Mega.nz (it only lets out fresh Foxes and Geckos, and indeed only new browsers). Today it is the only site where the problem cannot be solved by substituting a user agent, so if anyone knows the solution, I will be grateful.

    PPS Recent events in the world of Mozilla leave many questions for the future of both Fox itself and K-Meleon. Nevertheless, a fork of options is possible, with one of which this will only benefit us. For example, if Mozillovites finally bury XUL extensions, then Fox will have to fork, and it may be easier to create a layer of full compatibility with them for K-Meleon - who knows.

    In general, taking this opportunity, I invite all the developers of extensions for Fox to pay closer attention to K-Meleon. Come to our light. We will continue to create alternatives.

    PPPS On this, our first six months on Habré are ending, and I hope we will be renewed in the Startup mode (we still fulfill all conditions), so that we will meet here more than once and please you with something new and tasty

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