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Hangin’ with the Man — Bloodchen Chats on Weekend

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Jeff Chen, the person who gave us Maxthon, will participate in a two-hour online chat this Sunday.

Users of the browser Maxthon will have the chance to chat directly to Chen–also known as Bloodchen–the software innovator in charge of the future of their favorite browser. They’ll be able to say what they like, what they don’t, and what they’d like to see in the future.

There may also be some leaked intel on Max 3, the next major version of the broswer, due out this year.

There are indications that Jeff would like to make this a regular meeting.

When?
Sunday – February 8, noon (UTC) in Beijing and 6 a.m. CST in the United States.

Where?
The Maxthon IRC channel (http://maxthon.com/irc.htm)

Tags: Jeff Chen
Posted in Development, Maxthon Features | 6 Comments »

A Farewell to Freeze Headaches

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

For two and a half years, the creation of the Isolator technology just announced by Maxthon has been a continuing drama in the development team’s logs. Here are some impressions by Maxthon’s Jin Jiang, who worked with the developers.

For a long time the way that a tab in Maxthon froze and iced down every other tab with it—that was the elephant in the room that no one at Maxthon’s development group talked about. Program freezes, caused by things as simple as one slow site or a faulty script, was Maxthon’s biggest headache. It was also a headache in Firefox, Opera and other browsers, but Maxthon’s team of developers was the first to do anything about it.

Maxthon’s new Isolator technology, available in the 2.5.1 update of Max forces each Web site tab to run separately from all the other tabs. Before Isolator technology, when one Web tab froze, it would draw down so much memory and so many processing resources that the other tabs were too starved to function. Usually the only solution was to close and relaunch the browser.

With The Isolator, if one tab freezes, Max users still can view other pages and even reopen the stuck page in a new tab.

You can use several Web pages designed to freeze a tab at http://maxthon.com/test/ to test The new technology and how other browsers without The Isolator–which would be, let’s see…. All of them.–can’t protect their tabs the way Max does.

It’s been inspiration to watch the development team work on the problem for the last two years. They would discuss their common headache and how to get rid of it. The Isolator was suggested by some of the developers in 2007. But it’s taken until now to make it a reality.

The developers said that to their knowledge no other browser has the equivalent of The Isolator. It’s a great achievement, but the Max dev team acts modest and low-key as they always do. The team thanks all Maxthon users for their support, which made this dream come true and a headache go away.

Maxthon 2.5.1 is available for a free download at http://dl.maxthon.cn/mx2/mx_2.5.1.4751.exe .

Posted in Development, Maxthon Features | 1 Comment »

That Was the Week That Was Maxthon

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Maxthon 2.0 received three honors in the same week along with a couple of reviews so glowing you could read them in the dark.

First, the World of Technocrazy included Maxthon in its list of the Best Free Software. (Something PC Magazine did early in the year.)

Then The Free Download Center put Maxthon smack dab in the middle of its list of 22 programs the Center dubbed the Best Freeware of 2008.

Keeping company with Maxthon are AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0.173, Ad-Aware 2008 7.1.08, Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0.25.378, Mozilla Firefox 3.03, Opera 9.6, Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.17, Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, Download Accelerator Plus 8.7.0.5, eMule 0.49b, Advance Windows Care Personal 2.9, CCleaner 2.10.618, CPU-Z 1.48, Irfan View 4.2, PhotoScape 3.2, OpenOffice.org 3.0, Foxit Reader 2.3 Bulid 3309,7-Zip 4.57, DeepBurner 1.9.0.228, Nero CD-DVD Speed 4.7.7.16, Winamp 5.541, and MediaMonkey Standard 3.0.5.1187.
Not shabby company at all.

Then, while there were still a few days in the week, ReadWriteweb named Maxthon as one of the top 10 international products of 2008.

The Web site’s writer Lidija Davis said of Maxthon: “… There’s another browser making waves. Maxthon, according to European web metrics company Xiti, is creating problems for its main competitor Firefox.

“Maxthon has over 1,400 add-ons, proxy switching capability, aggressive ad blocking, split-screen browsing to name a few of its innovative features. We said it two years ago, and we’ll say it again: this is one to keep your eye on.”

Over at CNET’s download.com, in Browse to the max, 2. reviewer Seth Rosenblatt describes Maxthon this way: “It renders pages fast and comes loaded with features, as if Firefox came with 90 percent of its most popular plug-ins. Maxthon 2 features loads more customization ability…. Its design is stylish compared to the old version, and its new approach to accessing functions makes this free browser more competitive.

“Maxthon is fast, small, flexible, and easy to use, and the extra features make it a browser we highly recommend for those looking for a change of pace, “ Rosenblatt writes.

And then, just when you’re telling yourself that this week couldn’t get any better along comeS boffo reviews from prolific and esteemed computer writer Preston Gralla. Writing in CIO.com, it.world, ComputerWorld, PC Advisor in England, and Itbusiness.ca in Canada – Did I mention Preston is prolific? –he praises Maxthon for its wealth of ready-rolled features although he does think that at times, Max’s interface can be confusing. Well, of course. But we’re working on that.
“It’s got just about every feature built into competing browsers,” Gralla writes, “and many that you won’t find anywhere else — such as a ‘file sniffer’ that makes it easy to download YouTube videos and a pop-up notepad for pasting or dragging text you want to save. Power users will love it.”

He provides an extensive description of the many features he found exciting and concludes, “There’s far more than all this, and there are plug-ins available as well . You simply won’t find a browser with more features.”

MAXTHON – SEIZE THE WEB!

Posted in Awards, Maxthon Features, Maxthon Popularity, Web/Tech | No Comments »

The Ayes Have It (Maxthon, that Is)

Friday, November 14th, 2008

It the nearly a year that I’ve been contributing to this blog, I’ve used a Google alert to tell me whenever anyone on the Net writes about Maxthon. Now the truth is that a couple of times, someone wrote how he had left Max for Firefox or Opera. But there have been dozens of instances like this one from Norm’s Hideaway.

“I use Maxthon2 Browser along with a few other people I know. We are part of the 150 million or more users of the browser. First let me set the record straight, I used Firefox for over two years, Opera for about three months running it alongside IE and Firefox. I have use K-Meleon, Safari and a few others, but settled on Maxthon over a year ago. …

“I am not a representative of Maxthon, have nothing to do with the organization other than being a completely delighted user of their browser. It does things the others don’t…. I have tried the others, so I speak from experience….”

For a complete run-down of the features in Maxthon that so delight Norm, check out his blog.

Posted in Internet, Maxthon Features, Maxthon Popularity, Weblogs | 3 Comments »

The Sweet Labors of a Maxthon Advocate

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Part of my job as an official Maxthon advocate is to check out what others are writing about Maxthon (and about Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and other pretenders to the browser throne).

At times that can be a pleasure, as when I encounter a blog such as that by Inman at LiveJournal. Inman not only has a proper appreciation for Maxthon, but he reminds me of some of Maxthon’s features I’d forgotten are so clever and helpful.

This particular blog by Inman comes after experimenting with Firefox to see if Firefox 3 has what it takes to drag him away from Maxthon..

“…at this point i am already more than convinced that this firefox 3 hype is just really what it is… a hype. but let me just go on and list just a few more of the things i enjoy with maxthon that i find sorely lacking in firefox 3.” Those include Maxthon’s superior set of tab controls, versatile sidebar, automatic scrolling pages, and hot keys assigned to display specific Web pages.

The more dreary part of being a Maxthon advocate is correcting the same mistakes and misconceptions other writers make about Max.— such as zachdude at my ipc. Zachdude does say, “some of the really nice features of Maxthon is it’s look, it looks really nice, and thanks to a built in Screen Capture program I’m going to take a picture of Maxthon so you can see it.” He praises Maxthon’s split screen, the Max:last opening screen that displays a list of the pages that were open the last time you shut down Maxthon.

But Zachdude makes one mistake, and, alas, it is my sworn duty to correct him. He writes: “Now what really gets me frustrated is when the editors don’t do their research, for instance, they make a big deal of the “Super” Drag&Drop feature in Maxthon, saying that it would be one of the features that would make me want to switch. Now before I go into a rant, they are talking about a feature that lets you highlight text then click and drag it into a search box. Now guess what … FIREFOX AND CHROME HAVE THAT FEATURE TOO, SO STOP MAKING A BIG DEAL OUT OF IT! [Maxthon] does its “Super” Drag&Drop feature thing the same way Firefox and Chrome do.”

Not really. The difference is one of those small things that show someone was really thinking when the feature was created. With Maxthon, you don’t have to drag whatever’s highlight to the search bar. Why should you have to? You can just move it anywhere, as little as just a quarter inch away, and release the mouse button to launch a new search. It’s a very clever way to break out of the box.

Posted in How to, Maxthon Features | 4 Comments »

Archive for the ‘Maxthon Features’ Category

Hangin’ with the Man — Bloodchen Chats on Weekend

A Farewell to Freeze Headaches

That Was the Week That Was Maxthon

The Ayes Have It (Maxthon, that Is)

The Sweet Labors of a Maxthon Advocate

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