Maxthon 3 - What do you guys think?

[Fluxii Media]

does it have groups like maxthon 1? the ability to save a group of tabs e.g. 80 under a name eg. group1

open up a new set of tabs eg. 30, save them as a group eg. group 2

and then reopen group1?

like maxthon 1?

i tried maxthon 3 but couldnt find any sign of groups and promptly went back to maxthon 1

hwoever maxthon 1 crashes OFTEN and im getting fed up with it

so,

does maxthon 3 have groups function?

I don't believe it has that feature yet, I know the developers are working to get all previous features in Mx3. :)

[Guyro]

I don't believe it has that feature yet, I know the developers are working to get all previous features in Mx3. :)

awesome, cheers, i'll keep an eye out for when an update brings them back

[leedogg]

I too would love to have those groups again...was my favorite feature in maxthon 1 and is STILL one of the reasons i load it up periodically. I also liked the way it prompted if I wanted to save tabs or resume tabs when closing the browser. The speed of M3 is just awesome... I think i might be switching over from Opera...

[Arrow]

The current update is beginning to improve things for me. At last they have reintroduced Url shorcut keys and Url alias!

3.0.22.2000[2011-04-15]

+ added customize UI

+ added Navigation (URL Short Key & URL Alias)

+ added IE9 standard render mode in Retro Mode (available after install IE9)

+ enhanced Resource Sniffer, can download images and medias on webpage

+ enhanced Data Import/Export, can import Maxthon 3 Guest Data and export Favorite to IE

+ added Compact Mode for Favorite Bar

+ added Option for Multi-column Display Mode

+ added Maxthon 2 skin

+ added IE6 skin

+ added support for 3rd party downloaders

I avoided Maxthon 2 because I preferred K-Meleon and TheWorld Browser 2 & 3 versions, but despite myself I'm finding I like this one.

It works well on win 7 64-bit

pros:

Speed is very good.

Resource sniffer for embedded videos is terrific -(hover mouse over video whilst it is playing and "save" or "play in window" dialog appears.)

Url shortcut keys - launch stored site urls using F1 - F12 keys - A must for any browser I use.

(I much prefer this to a fav bar taking up screen real estate any day - even if it can be toggled on and off.)

Page mute on status bar is very handy

Not too cluttered but not too minimal

Super drag & drop

MX standard skin has tabs below the other toolbars which I prefer - it is inefficient to have mouse travel to top of screen to click tabs

Webkit & Trident engines - because some sites do not open properly with webkit

Cons:

Lack of extensions

GUI customisation is very inflexible - but you can find some tweaks on home forum.

Links only open in background when dragged, I prefer foreground.

[BryanChung]

But does Maxthon has the kind of extensions that Chrome provides? :o

[cork1958]

If I wanted to use a skin for a browser, then I guess I'd try this again, but may as well just stick with the defacto browser!!

Must admit though that the main navigation panel doesn't look quite as cluttered as it used to.

Cripe! There must be at least 2 posts per page about people having browsers crash on their system. Are you people still running Windows Me or what? :laugh:

I can't even begin to remember the last time I had ANY type of crash of any program, at least not since W2k/NTFS days.

[Tech Star]

After some more editing, here is the new Menu button! :)

The status bar is now transparent.

What is the theme that you are using in Windows?

[SharpGreen]

I've not used Maxthon (or rather MyIE2 as it was called when I still used it) regularly in quite a while. At least not since I discovered Firebird...whoops..I mean Firefox. Now I don't like its UI, and have Chrome, which is better IMO.

[Samurizer]

If I wanted to use a skin for a browser, then I guess I'd try this again, but may as well just stick with the defacto browser!!

Using the same layout engine doesn't mean it's a skin for another browser. It's as much a skin for IE as Chrome/Epiphany/rekonq/Midori/Arora/Rockmelt/etc is for Safari.

[redvamp128]

I am actually using the portable version right now -- and I can say that it is much faster than it used to be -- though I don't think I will make it my day to day browser on my Win7 machine == but I probably will test the portable version on my XP laptop

[Arrow]

But does Maxthon has the kind of extensions that Chrome provides? :o

No - I listed that under cons in my post.

However it does have enough inbuilt features to get along without the need for many.

They say that more features - as in M2 - are in the pipeline, and as they are gradually adding them Id guess this is so

As for chrome browsers- I prefer TheWorldchrome, it has more integrated features than chrome and can also use chrome extensions.

Mx3 t is not an IE skin browser as Maxthon used to be. It uses webkit and secondly Trident only for sites that require it. Some do!

I think we need to remember that Google chrome did not invent Webkit, it is open source.

WebKit was originally derived by Apple Inc. from the Konqueror browser's KHTML software library for use as the engine of Safari web browser and has now been further developed by individuals from the KDE project, Apple Inc., Nokia, Google, Bitstream, Torch Mobile, Samsung and others.

MX3 uses a totally different interface to Chrome, one that they developed from scratch - for me it is a shame they try to ape the chrome gui with their out of the box skin.

I don't like the Chrome standard GUI look or ergonomics so I use a different skin.

Underneath the surface appearance MX3 interface has more in common with K-meleon than Chrome and it can be user edited using css tweaks

[Oz.]

It will end like Flock? :whistle:

[grayscale]

MX3 is not a social browser, and it's been there way before flock iirc.

[Arrow]

We have the tail attempting to wag the dog with some critics in this thread.

History

Maxthon was based on MyIE, originally created by Changyou, a Chinese programmer, who wanted to customize his Internet Explorer browser. Changyou posted most of the code onto his BBS, before leaving 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 to Maxthon in 2004

I started with Myie2 in around 2002 because it had far more features/plugins then most, Crazy browser and Avant were around but not

as good I thought. Netscape was pants by comparison and I found the Opera gui and rendering of pages was incredibly clutzy and limited by comparison.

MyIE2 became Maxthon before Firefox was released - everyone began drooling over the FF addons but it was old hat to MyIE2 Maxthon users

This is why many of us find it strange that MX3 hasn't plugged into it's own extensive plugin/extension heritage?

[leedogg]

quick little neat tip in M3 - if you press F10 in the window, it opens up a split screen where you can view 2 pages side by side. :cool:

[Arrow]

And.......if like me F10 is already in use as an url shortcut, F10 can be changed to another key combo in Options/shortcut keys . :yes:

New beta version with groups and "save as web app" released a week ago.

[Fluxii Media]

the new beta for Mx3 is amazing, web apps to me are done better than Internet Explorer, they completely remove everything but leaving you the border, there is a back button in the widow border itself, as well as a settings option. Its pretty and keeps all the focus on your "web app"

Definitely worth the look.

[iwod]

So basically Maxthon IS Chrome plus added features and able to use IE 6 engine.

[Jan Veteran]

the new beta for Mx3 is amazing, web apps to me are done better than Internet Explorer, they completely remove everything but leaving you the border, there is a back button in the widow border itself, as well as a settings option. Its pretty and keeps all the focus on your "web app"

Definitely worth the look.

Screenshots?

[iwod]

Right i just tested it out and it started to make me puke after 10 min....... You cant customize anything! At least not easily.

Search Bar Width

Get rid of bottom bar.

Properly Search Engine without their Ads placed all around it.

No Tab overflow, which means it is like Chrome, unuseable with 30 Tabs.

There are lots of other good things, but those things above just make me jump back to Firefox / Aurora...

[Arrow]

I agree Ui tweaks are poor at the moment, however there is an MX3 UI tweaking tool to make customisations easy, but it is on hold until the format and file layout of MX3 is finalised. It doesn't work with later versions. In the meantime there are tips on the forum if someone wants to spend a little time editing for themselves.

I don't get any search ads, you can customise your own search engine urls

Menu/options/search engines. click add, enter url, name & alias, then set as default

Regarding tabs and other new features come back to MX3 in a while, previous versions had a better tab system,

I'm sure they will get round to it.......along with other things.

The beta version features mentioned above are now incorporated into MX 3's latest official release 3.0.23.1000

right click tab to Save as Quick App & also Save as a Group (Add all tabs to Favorites) or Ctrl+Shift+D

There is also a new beta version - check forum.

[Mamoun]

Don't worry about the customization features, they are definitely coming. Maxthon 2 was extremely customizable and the 3 version UI is no less; it just lacks any UI to customize it yet (the UI depends on html & CSS).

And what's with the "Maxthon is a skin over chrome" thingy? I understand If this was told for the earlier IE-based releases. But to say this for M3 is just plain weird: How do you define a full browser then? it uses its freaking version of webkit, it's not based on chrome source code and it's completely independent on any other browsers.

[Samurizer]

Is it possible to apply an adblocking list in Maxthon instead of having to block everything manually yourself? Thanks.

[Arrow]

The latest beta release has a new adblock feature

[AdHunter]

+ Auto subscribe ad blocking rules for common use websites and global rules.

I guess it provides for global and user defined rules but I haven't tried it yet. Perhaps someone else can elaborate?

You can check on the maxthon forum for adfilter lists, there is a filter section in the maxthon 3 zone.

[PreKe]

Using the same layout engine doesn't mean it's a skin for another browser. It's as much a skin for IE as Chrome/Epiphany/rekonq/Midori/Arora/Rockmelt/etc is for Safari.

Chrome actually has its own engine. It doesn't just use the same engine as Safari. Both are WebKit, but definitely not identical.

Does Maxthon use its own customized WebKit engine like Chrome does, or does it just slap in a standard engine from somewhere else?