Super light browser: K-Meleon

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I was looking for a very light browser on last weekend to run some experiments. Light meaning it will not hog the system memory, so FireFox (3.xx.xx and 4) and Chrome are out of the picture since they suck up system memory. I tried Safari, but it uses the system CPU power too much, and my system is not so updated [ring a bell? ;) ], after a while, the whole system slow down because of Safari. My rockmelt and other browsers just cannot meet the requirement and I hate IE......
So time for google......


K-Meleon show up in top 10 search from google. And since it got portable version (no installation!), I quickly download it and give it a try.

From the developer:
"K-Meleon is an extremely fast, customizable, lightweight web browser based on the Gecko layout engine developed by Mozilla which is also used by Firefox. K-Meleon is Free, Open Source software released under the GNU General Public License and is designed specifically for Microsoft Windows (Win32) operating systems. "

Okay, K-Meleon is like brother/sister of FireFox, but after some testings and serious reloading, the memory never go more than 300M. And my system did not slow down. NICE!

K-Meleon support tab browsing and also come with mouse gesture which we have to install addon for FireFox to enable that. It can also enable reloading on specific tab for a period of time [that is the main reason I was looking for this kind of browser]. To do that:
Open the webpage -> View -> Reloading -> Continuous Reload...
A windows will pop up asking for how long it wait to reload in seconds. Put 120 for 2 mins or 180 for 3 mins, do not put too short like 60 seconds.

The only drawback of K-Meleon is the update is very slow (3 update only on 2010), which can be an advantage because less update needed. :)
Another drawback (depends on individuals) is the interface looks very outdated, unlike FireFox 4, IE10, Safari, and Opera which have most updated looks.

Here is the link to K-Meleon:
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/


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Source: me
K-Meleon logo source: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net