Many Maxthon users had asked if Maxthon supports Greasemonkey. Allowing users to run userscripts in specific websites to customize web page content, Greasemonkey has quickly become one of the most popular Firefox extensions. The answer is both Yes and No.

Maxthon supports several types of plugin. Script-type plugins are ordinary javascript, or vbscript, with optional enhancements through Maxthon’s script plugin commands. Script-type plugins can be set to run automatically and the script can be written to effect only in specific websites. So yes, Maxthon supports the function of Greasemonkey. There are also Maxthon plugins, such as the JS-Plugin, which enable the use of userscripts directly without creating script-type plugins.

Yet, Greasemonkey userscripts may not be used in Maxthon directly without modification. There are differences in the javascript language between the rendering engines, Gecko for Firefox and Trident for Maxthon. Greasemonkey’s XUL derived API and Maxthon’s plugin commands are also not compatible with each other.

In the coming version of Maxthon 2.0, script-type plugins will be further empowered. In addition to a large set of new plugin commands, plugin authors can also specify in the plugin.ini where the plugin would run automatically without the need for extra scripting. This will enable easier creation of website specific script-type plugins, and improve the overall speed and resources usage by not loading inapplicable plugins in the first place. Plugins can also be set to show no plugin button by default, so even more userscripts like plugins can be supported.

Categories: Development, Plugins | Author: Dev Team @ 2007-10-29 03:04:46