Download from https://maxthon.com
(Yes yes its free download only and full version. Would I suggest a shareware, knowing that 90% of us use pirated software including the OS?)
The ‘Axe’ spray has some magic to attract women (or at least that’s how the company boasts). I have seen a couple of guys who started using it, enjoyed more space that anyone else around! Attraction or repulsion, the axe has some effect. But Maxthon is just a super magnet that will keep you glued to the Internet, at least to enjoy this browser!
For years together, Internet explorer is the only browser I have used. Then I came across a browser called Avant (https://mouthshut.com/review/Avant_Browser-97693-1.html), which made my life a lot easier (let me stress A LOT EASIER). But it used to hang a lot frequently, that I had to look out for a better performing browser. Now I am settling into this Maxthon … and wow, What a browser !!
My office PC is where I install all the browsers and test them. The one that I like the most gets into my laptop (Hope someone from system maintenance team in my office is not reading this). Maxthon won the race against, quite a few – Netscape, Avant, opera and the usual useless dumbo Internet explorer. Each one of these except IE has got some good featues. Netscape uses both IE and mozilla and is damn good at speed. But it behaves differently. I open google mail and the chat window does not appear in this browser. I do not want eccentrics. Avant as I said earlier has a wheezing problem and gets stuck somewhere gasping for processor. Opera has this habit of making this entire lovely looking sites like Orkut ugly.
These web developers do not consider all browsers while creating web pages. It’s just the IE that they take as the testing platform and the site appears and behaves differently on most other browsers. So using IE is inevitable, and Maxthon to its advantage uses IE and builds more features on top of it (exactly similar to the Avant, but has got more features). I am just listing out few of the cool features that are not in Avant:
Has ability to save form data (i.e. your user id and password stuff). You need not type it each time you enter the site. I used a utility called Roboform along with Avant and it is extensive. But it used up a lot of my system speed. Maxthon’s form ability is just like Dravid’s sixer hitting ability. But Dravid can hit sixers .. and Maxthon can save forms. You can use roboform along with Maxthon too
This one doesn’t hang like Avant, very reliable
A small utility called collector that works like a scrap pad. You can take notes as and when you are browsing. If you say, ‘What big deal I can use notepad’, just check this … you can maintain tabs just as how you maintain for the web sites and you cannot be opening notepads every time you browse. You can store notes that you tend to forget on your browser itself.
Beautiful integration with the search engines like yahoo and google. Also picks up all utilities like Google toolbar and search when you install this.
There is one feature called groups. You can group all your websites together and classify them; open them all at once; close them all at once! I am not sure if this is present in Avant, but it is present here for sure.
Has some super cool plugins that detect and lets you save flash animations!! You can now save your GF yahoo cards easily. (Don’t say that you don’t know what GF stands for)
You can control your downloads (i.e. you can stop images download that your web page gets loaded faster) … some pages take aeons to download, sometimes even slower than the M2Ms …! You can use this feature there
But I miss the inbuilt download manager as in Opera and Netscape. Though Maxthon has ‘skin’ options, I doesn’t look as cool as Avant. People say IE is not secure and I agree Maxthon could be insecure because it uses the IE. I am not much bothered about that coz I am not exactly sure what people mean by security. If it was viruses, they enter through almost all browsers. If it was literal security like bank account transaction, then too I am not bothered because my bank account doesn’t have a million dollars to be stolen of ‘wire-transfer’ (Too high-fi term for the paltry balance that I maintain!)
But overall features and stability is best in Maxthon. On top of everything is this feature of Maxthon – press Alt + ` it vanishes off somewhere and press the same key combination it appears again. I somehow love this feature.
Now, repeat after me … Maxthon .. .Maxthon … Maxthon ….
-Vinayak
(Please do RRC)