We have seen, in this blog, how many browsers there are to surf the internet in addition to the 5 most popular (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari), intended for different styles of use. Although less known, they have a niche market for those who want certain functions and, above all, for those who want to have a lighter browser, freer from multinationals and faster, without all those options and settings that browsers are now full of modern.
K-Meleon is one of these, already mentioned in the list of portable browsers and without installation, already mentioned among the alternatives to Firefox, which was recently renewed after a long stop in its development.
The K-Meleon project, started in 2006 which seemed to have stopped and deceased since 2010, has been taken over by its developers who have released a really good new version, which I would recommend trying to everyone.
K-Meleon is a browser based on Gecko, the rendering engine of Mozilla Firefox, light, fast, with all the functions that a browser needs immediately accessible and very customizable, with a minimalist interface that leaves all the space to the site visited.
The appearance of K-Meleon is radically different from Firefox, more essential, with a very narrow address bar and buttons at the top.
K-Meleon puts the most important buttons all stuck which can be not very modern or nice to look at.
Since it is an elastic and customizable browser, the user interface can be heavily modified by dragging the buttons to different positions.
Using the mouse, you can click and hold on the separator bars of the various buttons to drag them down or up or to resize the various bars that group them.
By moving a position lower one of the bars in the upper right, you can right-click on the empty space to add other toolbars and additional buttons.
By default, there are buttons for favorites, for history, for going up a level on a domain and for going to the page whose address is written in the URLbar.
You can also add buttons to save the web page, to access the email, to the main menu, to zoom and to the privacy menu which allows you to disable the loading of some elements and scripts on websites and also to change user agents and simulate mobile browsing.
If you don't like the slightly old-fashioned graphic style, you can change the theme in the GUI options (by clicking on the button with the wheel you access the settings) and choose to have larger buttons or the Klassik theme that remembers the old versions of the Internet Explorer.
K-Meleon is an extra-complete browser with all those features that in other browsers must be activated or added with extensions.
You can then select a word or phrase, press the right button and search for it on Google (the default search engine is DuckDuckGo but you can set Google from the settings menu) or you can translate that phrase into another language.
You can search for a word by writing it directly in the address bar, you can block pop-ups, flash content and advertisements and you can, by clicking on the gear button, go to View and see all links and images on the page visited .
Always from the menu with the gear it is possible to manage the navigation sessions to save a set of open tabs and be able to reopen them later.
This function, with other browsers, is only possible by installing specific extensions.
The main preferences menu, which appears by pressing the F2 key, is really full of options to customize web browsing with K-Meleon, even if they are all in English.
This is currently the only flaw of this wonderful web browser, which has not yet been translated into Italian (but I think it will be soon).
Another possible flaw is that, although it has a huge number of features inside it, despite being based on Firefox, Firefox extensions don't work in K-Meleon.
K-Meleon is however a great browser, very fast to load every website, very light in memory and therefore very suitable for older computers, which includes all the functions, even advanced, of the other browsers, without having gaps and fully functional also to be the main browser.
From the official website, you can download K-Meleon for Windows PC by choosing the portable version or the version with installation, which does not hide any trap or sponsor inside.
