K-Meleon 75: current status, bugs, links, etc.

Well, after a rather long introduction and presentation of the browser, let's talk about the current state of affairs with it.

Today, K-Meleon is on the verge of release 75, built on the 31st ESR engine. Despite the rapid "forced obsolescence" of browsers, the 75th is fully relevant. The most important task of the developer, Dorian, perhaps, was the relatively large-scale changes in the original functionality of the CM, as well as further adaptation of the Mozilla engine, which is happy to set problems for everyone who dares to invade its territory.

Despite the long efforts, even the 2nd release candidate is not free from some unpleasant bugs, but many problems that have arisen are happily solved. At the same time, a pretty decent amount of significant functionality has been added to the browser.
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Potential development participants should be interested in:

• A new skinning system with full support for transparency of images (previously it was only partially supported, and the default icons used “snag” - the so-called magic pink (when transparent areas were painted on the magenta). It is clear that it was not always possible to achieve smoothed borders of icons ( more precisely, magic pink could be “underlay” under the gradient transparency of the actual icons on the buttons, but saving such smooth transitions into a browser-supported format was akin to witchcraft. I managed to do this sometimes I could use the combination of 2 programs for working with icons, but I could not clearly fix the algorithm. Probably there would be no secret for professional graphic designers, but for ordinary and even advanced users, creating anti-aliased icons was a trick to verge of alchemy ;-). Now all this torment is over.
  CM supports the work with both alpha-channel BMP-files and regular PNG, as well as other formats that support transparency.
• changes in the macro language, some of which are also aimed at expanding the ability to work with the buttons on the panel (controlling the behavior and state of the buttons, previously quite primitive), as well as adding other additional features for macro writers.
  
  For details (if it is really interesting for someone to create new macros for CM) I invite you to the official forum: all the latest information and discussion of new commands and functions is only there - in English.

From the point of view of users, the most important innovations are:

• the fundamental possibility of a simple installation of some Firefox extensions (more precisely, you can put any extension, but you can work in the CM only with those that are adapted).
  Here it is important to note that among the ready-to-use KMs there is an absolute leader in user preferences - AdBlockPlus. In addition, on the official website in the Extensions section you can find dozens of other "adapters".
  But not all extensions here can be adapted by “little blood” - the discussion in the comments with GreaseMonkey clearly confirms this. Also today, the full-fledged adaptation of NoScript is not possible, as well as the masses of other add-ons that are actively integrated into the Firefox GUI;
• the emergence of a full download manager;
• the appearance of the spell checker;
• the appearance of the quick restart function of the browser;
• Correction of a number of small, but annoying bugs that could not be shot before the release of release 74 (it’s better not to recall them).

To date, however, some problems remain in the browser uncorrected :

• Thus, when adding bookmarks using the Ctrl + D keyboard shortcut or the button on the panel, the link address is not entered in the corresponding field. This can be avoided by disabling the “Use dialog box when creating a new bookmark” function (then the bookmarks will be automatically saved to the root of the bookmark tree) or by adding a bookmark directly to the desired folder from the Bookmarks menu using the Add Bookmark here command.
  
  A more radical way to remedy the situation is to replace the bookmarks k-plugin itself (kplugins \ bookmarks.dll) with the same file from K-Meleon 1.6.
• the browser continues to experience some problems with focusing, which is why periodically (rather from assembly to assembly rather than from launch to launch) hot keys stop working or commands from the context menus do not work from the first click, or the cursor does not want to be placed in the text input box , or for scrolling do not grab; Other similar effects are theoretically possible, but they are all shot down gradually.
• it was reported that it was impossible to open a frame in a new window from the context menu, and I even somehow reproduced this bug, but now I was tired of looking for a page with frames to test. Most likely, the bug is alive, but 99% of users will never notice.

So, fresh builds (with installer and portable), laid out less than a day ago, can be downloaded from the official site .
You can discuss and report on them there, on the Russian K-Meleon forum and on the board.

Something useful for yourself about K-Meleon and the intricacies of working with it can be found (although much is outdated):

• on Kmeleon.ru ;
• on The K-Meleon Place website in the Russian Blog section;
• in the blog of the recent Russian leader Alex Tarantul (here you definitely should not take the last one into account - it will open first - the article: it was in that question that everything went a long way ahead);
• again on the board , on the Russian forum and on the Russian branch of the official international forum ;
• actually on the official site of the CM (it is partially localized into Russian).

You can also join the browser's Facebook community , but I personally would be pleased if you add to your twitter contacts a nice K-MeleonTwin

PS I am preparing to release the first after the resumption of development of the "official Russian" assembly, in which something will be added, something fixed, something tuned, etc. However, this will also be more likely a candidate for releases, since from the first time it is rarely possible to do without jambs. Follow the news! ;-)

Russian team K-Meleon