Technology

Maxthon Web Browser Review

The Basics

Previously known as MyIE2, Maxthon is a IE based browser with a tabbed interface and tons of extras. I have been using it at home and work for months and I'm loving it. The newest release is very stable and if something causes Maxthon to crash it has the ability to open all the web sites you were viewing before the crash. Maxthon also has a big community that does themes and plug-ins for the browser. Flash Save is one of the cool plug-ins included with the basic installation of Maxthon that allows you to save your favorite flash animations/moves to your computer.

Maxthon also has pop-up and ad blockers. Now you're probably familier with pop-up blockers so I wont go into that, but the ad blocker is a great feature that many browsers dont have. It allows you to remove advertisements directly from within web sites, so you are presented with is the website content. Personally I leave this feature off because I like to see ads on technology websites, but you can also customize the feature to only block specific advertisments.

Below I will go over some of the main features of Maxthon and their placing on the browser window.

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1. Tabbed Browsing / Search Bar

Tabbed browsing is great and I think Maxthon has done it the best. Double click the tab bar to make a new tab or you can double click on an open tab to close it. You can also customize how tabs look, work and launch. Some examples of this are tab size, arangment, passwording/locking and activation. You'll have to give Maxthon a try to see everything that is customizable because there are so many cool options.

General Options

Tab Options

Ad Options

Maxthon has a quick search bar built right into the browser interface (similar to firefox) but it also allows you to do searches on all kinds of engines. You can use the usual engines (Yahoo, Google, MSN) or you can set searches for IMDB, eBay, etc. If you're looking for a specific engine the Maxthon forums have a huge list of search engines you can add.

2. Side Bar

Maxthon's side bar has some cool options and services. The bar itself can be minimized and maximized so that you can have it open just when you need it.

One of the new features to the side bar is the RSS Feeds reader. The RSS reader is great for those who use RSS/XML feeds to view the latest headlines from their favorite web sites. There is also a feature made just for Maxthon users called M2Bookmark. What you do is log into the service and store bookmarks to your favorite web sites. Now you can go to any computer that has Maxthon on it and, login, and all of your bookmarks come up. So no matter where you are you can always have your favorites list.

Also featured in the side bar is a search engine launcher that searches on multiple engines, Browser history, Favorites, File Explorer and a resource list which gives some quick links to helpful information (exchange rates, time zones, online virus scan, etc).

3. Maxthon quick menu and information

Down at the bottom of the browser window is where you will find the status bar, but this is no ordinary status bar. Here you can view the progress bar, Ad Hunter Status, Tools (quick way to enable disable options such as pop-up blocker, activate newly open windows), Security, RSS feeds (Comes up when there is a RSS feed detected on a web site), IP address, Network Speed, Free Memory and the number of tabs that are open.

Other Features

Maxthon also supports Mouse Guestures, Drag & Drop, Privacy Protection, Page Zooming and has Download Manager support. For more information on all of these features click here.