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Portable K-Meleon revisited

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robcam
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Portable K-Meleon revisited

Any interest?

Quote from pocket km developer.

"Note from Douglas on 1 May 2007: Most of my development effort is now spent on Linux, rather than Windows, systems. Recent Linux desktop systems, including SimplyMEPIS my distribution of choice, have improved to the point where the excesses of Windows Vista hold little attraction for the future. Consequently, my work on K-Meleon is very much reduced, and though this website will continue, it may not be updated often and new versions of programs are unlikely."

Quote from K-Meleon forum.

Posted by: Douglas (IP Logged)
Date: June 04, 2007 11:22PM
"I've added a note to my website at [kmeleon.uk.to] regarding my effort going mostly towards Linux at this time. Also, as I don't intend to dabble in Vista, it would be difficult to properly test a new portable K-Meleon 1.1. So, maybe another volunteer can step into the breech? "

I enjoy PFF very much but would welcome the chance to see how Portable k-Meleon would compare.

Regards,
Rob

Patrick Patience
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Yea.

I heard John say a while back, and he was even talking to Doug in a thread, that he was working on K-Meleon Portable, I would totally love to have K-Meleon Portable, like I was telling Pkeffect last night how awesome it would be, John, if you have already put most work into it, please consider posting a test.

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John T. Haller
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Test

If more than just a few people want to see the test release, I can post it...

Redirecting the profile directory is trivial. I have the current version UPX compressed and ready with the proper file layouts. I think I'd partially ported Firefox Portable's mimetype handler as well. Can't remember if it needed anything else or not.

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millarrp
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I wouldn't mind testing it

Even if K-Meleon doesn't get fully released, it would be interesting to compare a portable version of K-Meleon to Firefox Portable. If nothing else to see how they perform against each other.

John T. Haller
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Actually, I lied

I realized part way through working on it that it required actually recompiling K-Meleon to work right, which is why it was scrapped. There's no way we're gonna maintain a niche app that needs to be recompiled to be portable for each new release.

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John T. Haller
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Is it worth it?

Is it worth it? K-Meleon only gets about 30,000 or so downloads a month total (for the regular version) so there aren't many users out there at all. Since the portable version would have far less... it seems like a lot of work for very few users.

I scrapped my work back when there were multiple builds of K-Meleon floating around with users doing all sorts of different customizations. It just seemed too fractured to be able to create a package that people would be happy with.

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Patrick Patience
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Totally!

There aren't many other good open source browsers out there, and K-Meleon is also lightweight, and pretty awesome I think. Sure Firefox is better, but K-Meleon is still a great broswer. I love it, and would love a portable version.

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John T. Haller
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I'm gonna pass

Well, I'm passing on it. There are only a certain number of hours in the day. If there were more users and there was more interest in it, I'd reconsider. But I think my limited time is better spent on other things.

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Patrick Patience
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Awe...

Alrighty then.

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ZachHudock
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Ya know Patrick, that means

Ya know Patrick, that means its up for grabs...You could do it, or since today is my last day of work before school, i may look at making a few portable apps.
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Patrick Patience
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True.

I guess I could take a shot at it sometime.

John, once I get WinWGet into beta, and maybe type faster and QTetris with splashes, I've been working on your new registry techniques with HTTrack, and then I might look at K-Meleon, would you mind sending me any code you do have for the K-Meleon launcher? Or is it to outdated?
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Patrick Patience
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And now that I think about it...

You're telling lamer about how it's great that we can expose great software to SO many people, and then they get tons of downloads, and you said how you only expected a few geeks to download the Command Prompt Portable launcher, and it's now at THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND downloads in just over a month and a week, and that's a launcher for the Command Prompt, how many people do you think are going to download a lightweight, customizable, easy-to-use browser in a month. Smile A LOT.

Checking it out...
Submitted by John T. Haller on December 28, 2005 - 12:49am.

I've been checking KMeleon out to figure out what would need to be done. It's a pretty solid browser and has a decent fan base.

How 'bout that fan base. Smile Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Biggrin

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John T. Haller
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Nope

For starters, that fan base never grew beyond that core group, which is why downloads are flat.

Secondly, as I just posted above, K-Meleon requires a recompile to be portable. Which makes it a definite no.

It doesn't really offer anything we don't already have from Firefox. And anybody that wants to try it out portably can try Pocket K-Meleon.

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Patrick Patience
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Oh, okay.

Like always. Blum

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John T. Haller
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Work on it

If you really want it, do something about it, don't just say "Pleeeease" to me. Do some code. Some analysis. See if you can convince the K-Meleon developers to get rid of that silly registry.dat binary file that keeps all the profile information (a hold-over from the Mozilla Suite... same reason it's not portable) or support a -profile switch like Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird. Then we could get it working without a recompile. I can't magically fix that no matter how much you want me to make it portable.

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Patrick Patience
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Okay.

And and my above reply did say "You win, like always :P" but apparently I forgot to type part of it, sorry. Blum

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On that topic

Miro is stupid. They have a -profile switch, but it doesn't redirect their SQLite database or the VLC cache folder. Pfft.
And on that topic, I need some help with it John, if you have some time.
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robcam
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Dang

"...it seems like a lot of work for very few users."

Oh, I thought you just sat on the couch eating chocolates watchin Oprah and spit these things out during commercial breaks.

Shame about the user #'s as well. I have no doubt that their site would see an increase if a portableapps version was posted (I have learned about a number of open source projects from your whats new section) but I'm not sure if that would be enough to make it worthwhile.

Thanks for your consideration and for all your fine apps.
Regards
Rob

Patrick Patience
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Haha.

You're funny. Blum Lmao.

Edit: I think you're right about the increase with the Portable version.
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John T. Haller
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Gave em the icon

I gave the K-Meleon folks the new icon I made on the off chance they feel like using it:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?1,73852

But I'm dropping K-Meleon until the issues with the profile path are fixed. There's no way I'm going to recompile it to be a portable app.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

Zappa
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Why reinvent the wheel?

I know, Douglas stopped his work on Pocket K-Meleon, but there are portable versions of KM 1.1.2 available in five languages.

Guckst Du hier: http://perso.orange.fr/jujuland/kmeleon/index.html#Pocket

I tried the German version, works fine so far.

Another lightweight MOZ based browser is K-Ninja. There is a portable version too.

Guckst Du hier: http://www.geocities.com/grenleef/

ZAP

John T. Haller
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Yeah, but

Those 5 versions are Douglas' versions. He won't be making more of them. And Pocket K-Meleon doesn't conform to PortableApps.com Format, so it doesn't work with the integrated backup and other features of the PortableApps.com Platform. I don't know that anyone else will feel the need to recompile K-Meleon to be portable with every release.

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Zappa
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You're right

Those ten people (me included) who prefer Pocket K-Meleon over PFF should (and can) live with the limitations of not being PAPs conform.
I only wanted to show, that there are up to date versions of PKM and that they are maintained (the 1.1.2 update is just a few days ago). And I wanted to show that there is an alternative, K-Ninja,
which works fine too.
ZAP

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