What is Maxthon
From Maxthon Wiki
Maxthon (formerly known as MyIE2) is a China-based freeware (more specifically donateware) web browser for Microsoft Windows. Maxthon seeks to provide many rich features and a highly customizable Graphical user interface, without losing any of the compatibility of Internet Explorer. From its early MyIE2 roots, Maxthon has developed a growing user base, especially in China. Maxthon is reported to be the second most popular browser in China today, and it has been downloaded more than 210 million times worldwide.
Maxthon2 uses the Trident layout engine, like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, while Classic Maxthon (Maxthon 1.x) continues to support both Trident and the Gecko engine used in Mozilla Firefox .
In January 2006, Maxthon developers partnered with Microsoft in its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Maxthon has been named Webware 100 winner in 2008 and 2009.
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[edit] History
Maxthon started life as MyIE, originally created by Changyou, a Chinese programmer, who wanted to customize his Internet Explorer browser. Changyou left the project in 2000. Jeff Chen continued development and released a new version, called MyIE2. MyIE2 grew quickly, with contributions from users around the world in areas including plugins, skins and debugging.
MyIE2 was renamed Maxthon in 2004. It expanding the concept of what a browser can do in ways that haven't been seen before.
From 2005, Maxthon user community enter a huge growing period, and Maxthon harvested the first of many awards (Red Herrning Asia 100 Award). In 2007, Microsoft partnered with Maxthon for 2006 Consumer Electronics.
Maxthon 2.0 has been released with major features you can see now.
[edit] Features
- Tabbed document interface
- Saves open tabs in case of program shutdown or system crash
- Undo for any tabs accidentally closed
- AD Hunter - an advert-blocking utility that blocks pop-ups, banners, and floating ads in webpages
- Flash, Java applet and ActiveX blocker
- Skinnable
- Customizable tabs and interface
- Programmable mouse gestures
- External utility bar - toolbar that allows you to open third-party programs
- RSS reader
- Supports many Internet Explorer plugins as well as plugins of its own
- Partial Gecko engine support with the use of a third-party program
- A search toolbar with 8 different search engines (user extendable)
- Automatic updating service
- Groups - the ability to bookmark & open multiple pages simultaneously
- URL aliases - open URLs by just typing a word in the address bar
- Simple collector - a small notepad-like utility, used to collect any text from webpages. You can write scripts in it and run them in the current webpage
- Integrated web services - user extendable, but by default includes translators, Google's cached version of pages, Whois and anonymous web proxies
[edit] Latest Version 2.5.1
The release version of Maxthon 2.5.1 is currently available for download on the official website. New features in latest versions include here:
- Extremely Customizable
- Improved Ad Hunter
- Built-in Online Favorites Service
- Improved Feed Reader
- Magic Form Filler
- Smart Acceleration
- Splendid Skins
- Improved History
- Super Proxy
- Separated User Account
- File Sniffer
- Maxthon Security Updates
- Multi-user support
- Plugin installer
- Plugin + Skin updater
- Tab manager
- Frameless mode
- New Configuration Interface
- Anti-Freeze
[edit] Future Versions
Maxthon's upcoming major version, 3.0, is being developed, as announced by the company, the new version will support two engines, Trident and Webkit, which shows the browser will be able to quickly switch between several browsing modes, offering greater speed or standard compliance.
