K-Meleon 74 Beta 3 Web Browser is one of the fastest and highly customization tabbed free web browsers I ever used in Windows 8.1 on an older computer . It is also opensource like other popular web browsers like Chromium, and Firefox where the source code is available for the public for free.
Many times, I tried to change the settings in mainstream web browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for Windows to try to make it use less RAM, crash less, and work better on older computers. But, Most of the setting changes, browser tweaks, and performance add-ons I find online on blogs and forums don’t work very well where the browser use slightly less or the same amount of RAM, and CPU resources as before the changes, but the browser still feels slow. Plus, it sometimes take a lot of time to look for tweaks online, use the tweaks to change settings, and test to see if they work, or not.
Switching to a faster web browser like K-Meleon is a better use of my time, and it actually uses less RAM, and CPU resources where the browser feels fast compared to other Windows web browsers which are not as fast on older Windows computers. I still keep my other web browsers like Chrome, and Firefox installed to use exclusive add-ons like video and music downloaders which are not available on K-Meleon.
K-Meleon is based on Mozilla Firefox’s Gecko web browser tech. K-Meleon is built with the native Windows application programming interface for the user interface so, it uses Windows user interface. This also means that it would use less RAM, and CPU resources while running. According to Windows Task Manager in Windows 8.1, K-Meleon 74 Beta 3 is only using 24MB of RAM and 0% CPU when I open it from its desktop shortcut on the Windows desktop.
Installing K-Meleon is simple. I just need to open the installer file in the download’s folder, agree to install it, and follow the step by step instructions which is similar to installing Firefox, and other Windows programs downloaded from websites.
The user interface for K-Meleon 74 is easy to use, and does not use a lot of screen space. K-Meleon low screen space usage makes it a good web browser for smaller low resolution monitors on netbooks, older computers, and tablets for viewing desktop sites. There is a address bar, navigational buttons like back, forward, stop, refresh, home, and History. It also has bookmarking like other web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer. The familiar user interface of K-Meleon makes it easy to use for people who use Firefox, and Internet Explorer. I can also very easily change the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, Bing, or Google in K-Meleon’s search settings. There is a fullscreen mode which shows a website with your entire screen space, and hide the status bar, and navigational toolbar when I press F11 on the keyboard.
It is also a very stable web browser because K-Meleon rarely crashes, and freezes in my experience even when I browse very big sites with a lot of pictures, and animations.
K-Meleon web browser loads websites pretty fast, and rarely freezes like bigger more heavy web browsers like Internet Explorer being used on a computer with 1GB of RAM, or less. I use K-Meleon 74 on a Windows 8.1 computer with only 1 GB of RAM, and a 1.8 GHz Dualcore CPU, and this web browser runs great. Opening K-Meleon takes only a few seconds to launch after clicking on the shortcut in the Startmenu, desktop, or taskbar in Windows. Scrolling up and down websites, and playing flash videos on Websites like YouTube, and Vimeo with K-Meleon also is pretty fast. K-Meleon also does not slow down when many tabs are open in my experience. Switching between tabs is also pretty fast. It also minimizes, and restores quickly when I minimize and restore K-Meleon.
There are also a lot of settings like homepage, tabs, plug-in, page loading, etc which a user can change if they need to change it, or want to customize K-Meleon to their personal needs. Unfortunately, there are not many compatible extensions, themes, and plug-ins for K-Meleon like other web browsers like Chrome, and Firefox, but plug-ins like Adobe Flash Player, Silverlight, and Java should work with K-Meleon. K-Meleon also comes with a pop-up blocker, script blockers, keyboard shortcuts, macros, themes & Skins,simple web search, mouse gestures for doing different tasks like back, and forward a website by moving your mouse a certain way, and other built-in tools, so users should be fine with the default setup and settings of K-Meleon. Having a lot of features, and add-ons built-into K-Meleon also helps with keeping K-Meleon running smoothly because all the features are optimize to run quickly within K-Meleon compared to using third-party add-ons made by third party add-on makers where they don’t optimize their add-ons to use less RAM, and CPU cycles like K-Meleon web browser.
If you need more extensions for K-Meleon to do more tasks, you can download them from http://kmext.sourceforge.net/
K-Meleon 74 Beta 3 is a lightweight, fast, stable, and easy to use web browser which is a great web browser for slower computers with less RAM, and a slower single to dual core CPU. It is also great for power users who want an open source web browser which is the fastest, lightest, and highly customizable web browser for Windows operating system.
You can download K-Meleon 74 Beta 3 from the download link at its forum at http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?8,127127 . The download size for its installer file is also under 17MB in size, so it will download fast even on a slow internet connection.
I have installed K-meleon 74 on my P4 CPU equiped laptop and XP SP3 and it is using 69.6 Mb of RAM and 99% of CPU time. I wonder if it has been tested on XP.
Strange, 99% CPU time seems high for a web browser. I use it on a Dual-Core CPU, and it works pretty fast. Maybe, Palemoon would be better. K-Meleon is still in beta, so it could be a bug which needs to be fixed in the final release.
The Final Release of it (barring any quick fixes) has been packaged onto its server. You can get it by going to http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/files/K-Meleon74.exe. The changes are that the issues of it loading the wrong page when going back via the menu and K-Meleon giving the wrong locale to a website have been fixed.
Cool, thanks for the link, Zero3K. It is good to see that K-Meleon is finally released.