Watch out Firefox – Here Comes Maxthon! 11 January, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in apple, firefox, maxthon, Web 2.0, windows.trackback
In the most recent count by the respected W3Counter Global Web Stats, Firefox in all its versions and flavors, has hit a very respectable 25% market share in just two short years since the version 1.0 release. This rapid rise has been on the back of the history of a ubiquitous Microsoft Internet Explorer stumbling through a series of major security breaches, ignorance of World Wide Web Consortium standards and a lack of upgrades. Firefox has also benefitted from a grass roots, sometimes almost militant campaign against IE to “Take Back the Web”, driven by developers and the blogosphere.
Meanwhile, pre-dating Firefox by a few years, a solo university student in Beijing, China who called himself “Changyou“, decided he wanted to make Internet Explorer better. His development was called MyIE. Following in the footsteps of NetCaptor, released a year earlier, the first version of MyIE included tabbed-browsing. But on top of this great innovation he implemented many of the now-common browser “plug-ins” inside his IE-engined revolution.
In 2000, Changyou posted most of the source code to MyIE on his bulletin board system and walked away for personal reasons. It was then taken up by another student from another Beijing university, Jeff Chen – “Bloodchen“, who had admired the software so much that he decided to further develop it. In 2002, MyIE2 was released and in 2003 it became Maxthon. In 2005 it was named one of the best 100 products by PC World Magazine, was publicly endorsed by Microsoft and leading Wall Street Internet Analysts and to date has had well over 70 million downloads.
In China, Maxthon is the second-most popular browser with 30% market share – well ahead of Firefox. As for the rest of the world, the only thing that has driven its spread has been the power of “word of mouth”. I’ve been using Maxthon as my default browser since 2002 when it was still MyIE2. When Firefox first came out, I installed it and tried it for a week but went straight back to Maxthon. When Firefox 1.5 was released, the same thing happened and again with v2.0. Why?
The biggest problems I’ve found with Firefox are that it’s clunky, it doesn’t do Tabs anwhere near as good as Maxthon, it’s prone to crashes (whereby you lose the tabs you had open – Maxthon recovers these for you in the event of a crash), it’s slower than Maxthon and it’s very memory hungry. The other big problem I’ve found is sure, you can get plugins for Firefox that do many of the things Maxthon does out of the box, but everytime they upgrade Firefox, it breaks all those plugins and you’re back on the merry go round.
But aside from that, Firefox is standards-compliant, which means it doesn’t work with half of the sites on the internet. 😉 [a little joke]
Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released, there’s better support for CSS and web 2.0 sites, so the old argument about the IE engine being rubbish is now just silly. Personally, I don’t really like IE7’s look and feel, but Maxthon makes it so much more useable, and that’s what a browser is meant to be. The built-in RSS feed reader is great. The ability to start Maxthon with my 6 always used tabs (websites) open and displayed right away is a huge time saver – as is the Super Drag & Drop functionality. It blocks pop-ups, ActiveX, javascript and has its own user-set filtering and security levels. A built-in multi-tabbed notepad for cutting and pasting from websites is extra convenient and you can launch any number of Windows utilities directly from the browser. There are so many more useful features, but you’ll need to check them out for yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, I do have Firefox on my PC because there are some sites that are “Firefox-only” (they’re playing the old Microsoft game – good luck to them). But my default browser is Maxthon 1.5.9. I’ve also been playing with the beta 2.0 for about a week. I’m very impressed, but it’s still a beta. This article was written and posted using Maxthon 2.0 beta on IE7 without any problems – all with 18 other tabs open at the same time on an old Pentium 4 1.6.
Now for the good news on Maxthon. With backing from US-based Charles River Ventures, this little China-based business is heading for a global push for the first time when version 2.0 is released in the northern Spring. As IE7 fights to regain lost ground, Maxthon 2.0 won’t really mind who leads the race in 2007 – it will work with either the IE or the Gecko (Firefox’s) engine. WordPress’s own Robert Scoble recently spoke to Maxthon’s SVP and put together a great video interview and demonstration of Maxthon 2.0. Take a look. Even Linux World has called Maxthon the “Real Firefox-Killer”
The browser wars are a good thing. They are driving innovation that can only benefit the user at the end of the day. You may prefer one browser over another – but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least try something different. By the way, on my Mac, I prefer Opera 9. What do you like, and why?
As for Brad & Phil, they’ve got more serious things to worry about…
Parallel Divergence 
Well I will have to check out this Maxthon. Firefox has always been good with me but I like seeing new things. Thanks for the tip.
Hi Stu. I remember taking your advice regarding MyIE way back then and have also stuck with it as the ‘main’ browser ever since. I like the screen capture tool and the RSS Feed Reader functionality. The NotePad sounds good too so must check it out. I see that the blog is working really well ! Great stuff!
I used Mie2 and then maxthon, but I went off it as the versions changed.Seemed to get a bit more sluggish and buggy.
I have kept trying firefox but I found that it took about 9 extensions to obtain the functionality I wanted from it and even then there were a couple of things it would not do as I liked
So I decided to use k-meleon instead as my gecko browser as it provides much scope for layman tinkering and customising – it won’t do as much as firefox but it is
much faster on my system and I just simply prefer it
My main browser however is theWorldbrowser
It is another chinese browser on the internet explorer shell whch can utilise plugins like maxthon does.
http://www.ioage.com/
TheWorld has a 1x series and also a 2.0 series still in beta developement
I still prefer the latest 1x version which is 1.36
http://www.ioage.com/cn/download.htm
At first glance there are many similarities to maxthon and I guess a lot comes down to personal preference, I simply find theworld a bit snappier with a surprising number of features to discover which are not immediately obvious
A major one for me on the 1x versions is the ability to open urls from an incredible number of shortcut key combinations – i have about 33 urls set up on different keys at present plus several groups of urls chained to launch from other individual keys.
Happy surfing whatever you use.
i tried maxthon some years ago but then found opera…its simply the best!!! for me atleast…tried firefox too but switched right back…all i can say is to each his own and its opera for me…
I’ll admit I’ve never used Maxthon before, but just thought I’d point out that Firefox 1.x had the ability to recover tabs from a crash if the SessionSaver extension was installed, and Firefox 2.0 has this functionality inbuilt.
The issue with extensions when updating Firefox hasn’t really affected me either – the inbuilt update checking wizard usually finds out the new versions, and extension makers usually check compatibility with new versions fairly quickly. Its not perfect though, and sometimes it has to disable them. Firefox is a bit resource hungry at times as well.
I’ll be giving Maxthon a shot soon.
I’d have a try, but unlike Firefox, it doesn’t run on Linux. I can’t see it will have British spelling built in (and every other language you want), hundreds on add-ons or rapid bug fixing. I’ll stay with Firefox as I want security as well as features.
Maxthon is based on IE and therefore is shit. It’s also closed and very restrictively licensed. Avoid it like the plague.
Rufus, I believe from your post that you have no clue about Maxthon whatsoever. I’m guessing you’re a Firefox man through and through. Have a careful read of this site: http://www.firefoxmyths.com
John, there’s no harm in trying something different. Opera 9 runs on Windows, OSX and Linux. The above link will also show you that it’s better than FF. Even Sriram agrees with me! 🙂
Thanks for the tips Sam!
William, I took a look at WorldBrowser (thanks!) – a bit worried about the “Engrish” on their website though. 😉 I’ll give it a try.
Much better than my chinese tho’ !
“Engrish” “scrip catched” Adds to the charm lol
There was an english forum once but they aren’t really concentrating on western domination.
You can use some maxthon plugins and skins – its trial and error !
or visit the chinese forum for others.
I am using Maxthon since it was myie2. It is very very good
Been using Maxthon for about 2 years now. I’ve tried others, but this is easily the best for me. I’ve even switched to the 2.0 beta now. I really can’t understand why Firefox gets so bigged up – it’s slow to start, needs re-starting to re-skin and isn’t very customisable. It does, however, have good third party toolbar support, but I can live without that by using Maxthon plugins.
I have tried IE 7 (wiped out my Java from Sun without asking me), Firefox (needs a hundred plug-ins, and half of them stop working properly whenever there is an upgrade), Opera (gets more and more impressive according to me), but Maxthon is head and shoulders above the rest.
The sheer cleverness of the program, and understanding of the users’ needs, is stunning. They have out-guessed your problems and the way you work down to the last, smallest details. I have yet to discover all its features.
However, I have a big reservation. I am among the minority of users affected by the 100% CPU usage bug, which is well documented in their forum, and this is really, really exasperating. After a while, Maxthon eats up half or most of my processor’s power, doing nothing. So I keep closing and re-starting it all the time.
Maxthon power users have suggested different workarounds on the official forum, and none of these seems to work all the time, for everybody. To the best of my knowledge, this major bug is still unresolved. And Maxthon 2, currently in beta, seems to be affected as well.
So if you guys have any influence at all, could you please keep banging on the heads of the Maxthon people — or sending them free pizza, whichever works best — so that the world at large (and myself in particular) may fully benefit from that potentially awesome piece of software.
Thank you.
Hi Robert,
As you said, there is a *minority* of users that are having a performance issue. It leads one to wonder whether something else installed on their PCs is contributing to the problem? I’ve never experienced it in over four years and countless PCs that I’ve installed it on.
Hello Parallel,
This is not personal, but some power users on the Maxthon forum go one step further: you’re experiencing a CPU usage problem with this wonderful piece of software? Well, most people don’t, so obviously your PC stinks, you must have installed something clunky, so please stop ranting and go away.
I find this line of argument offensive.
I can promise I did not put any polonium or anything else illegal on my PC. However, may I respectfully suggest that a PC is, by definition, supposed to run several pieces of software, and that it is the responsibility of each software publisher to ensure that his product works with all hardware and software out there?
Blaming the customer for that is disingenuous at best. Who are the Maxthon people, or Maxthon fans (whoever are the guys on the forum singing that song), to suggest: of course our product is perfect, and it’s the other software on your machine which is crappy?
The minority argument doesn’t stick. Bugs, crashes or incompatibilites are, by nature, minority problems. That’s what makes them frustrating.
Now we all know about the open nature of the PC world, the compatibility problems it brings up, etc. So we can all expect some degree of bugs. But not bugs with an attitude.
How come everybody blames Microsoft when Windows, Internet Explorer, et al., are buggy or crash, and nobody — not even Microsoft — dare say: oh, I’m sure you’ve installed something you shouldn’t have, that’s no concern of ours?
It’s clear, from the number of people affected and the persistence of the problem throughout numerous releases, that there is something deeply wrong with Maxthon there.
The problem is, they can’t even tell us: Maxthon won’t be stable in such-and-such situation, sorry guys, that’s it. At least we could try and avoid said situation. But no: nobody seems to have a clue.
And some people on the forum seem to hold the view that, hey, it’s up to you, the user, to find out what is wrong and tell us. Sorry, I am no software engineer, and I can’t be expected to debug all by myself something that the whole Maxthon team has not yet been able to work out.
OK, they are not Redmond-sized, so I’m willing to accept some slack, but it’s their responsibility to make their software stable, not mine.
And OK, it’s free (although I have donated), but then so are IE, Firefox, Opera, Google, etc.
Your experience of many succesful installations on different PCs matches other peoples’ testimony on the forum, so it’s all the more frustrating that this known issue hasn’t been worked out for so long.
Hi Robert,
Please don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to fob you off with my answer, I just explained my experience because I haven’t had yours. I don’t participate on the Maxthon forums, so I don’t know what’s being said there. My response was just based on logic.
Have the Maxthon people themselves been able to replicate the problem? If they haven’t that would explain the perceived lack of action on their part. I am sure if there is a specific problem that can be replicated on other computers, they would like to rectify it.
Have you tried it on more than one PC and have you always had the same experience? Have you ever run it on a PC that’s never had the problem? If you answered ‘yes’ to the last question, what does that tell you?
Unfortunately, unlike Apple Macs, one PC running Windows is probably not the same as anther PC running Windows. There are hundreds of different video cards, LAN cards, motherboards, sound cards hard disk controllers and so on. All require their own drivers for Windows. The permutations are enormous. Add to that the various applications and memory-resident services that users can add to their Windows and it’s a quagmire to troubleshoot.
Is your Windows installation up to date with all patches? Do you have all the latest drvers for every hardware component in the PC? Are the drivers Microsoft certified? What Windows services are you running? What applications are you running? When the Maxthon problem occurs, do you know what causes it and can you replicate it, or is it completely intermittent?
Finally, did you have a read through this thread? – seems some people had success:
http://forum.maxthon.com/lofiversion/index.php?t41526.html
Hello Stu,
Thank you for your response, and be assured that my remarks were not directed at you. As for your questions:
– Have you tried it on more than one PC and have you always had the same experience? Have you ever run it on a PC that’s never had the problem? Only on one PC. It did not happen right from the start, I think. At some point there seemed to be quite a number of malware on it, completely undetected by anti-virus and anti-spyware scans, but only visible in the startup list of Spybot Search & Destroy. It was re-booting all the time by itself. I formatted the disk and re-installed everything from Windows up. (Or so I think. Anyway, it wiped up my data.)
– Is your Windows installation up to date with all patches? Yes (XP SP2).
– Do you have all the latest drivers for every hardware component in the PC? No, and what is a hardware component anyway? I can tell my printer is one (I’m running it with the original CD-supplied driver), I’m quite sure my CD unit is one (the guy who mounted it in the shop must have installed a driver out of somewhere), but what other parts of the PC are a hardware-component-with-a-driver-needing-updating? I do not even dare to mention that of course I have never updated my BIOS, since I have heard that this can zap your PC for good if you don’t do it properly. And this is an old Celeron PC.
– Are the drivers Microsoft certified? I have not the slightest idea. I would not even know how to check.
– What Windows services are you running? What is a service? Would that be that thing in the task manager which is not an application? Would a list help?
– What applications are you running? Background: Zone Alarm, CA EZ Antivirus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Spyware Blaster, Ewido (anti-malware), Copernic Desktop Search. Maintenance: regular sweeps with C-Cleaner. Foreground: Microsoft Office and Maxthon 1.5.9 build 30 Unicode most of the time, and, occasionally: Twiddlebit Plan for Windows (very nice, cheap and clever British project manager, I recommend it), Microsoft Money, Windows Media, Real Player, Nero Express, plus I often evaluate different utilities and productivity software. I usually stream Naxos radio all day (great value if you like classical music or jazz). No games.
– When the Maxthon problem occurs, do you know what causes it and can you replicate it, or is it completely intermittent? Unpredictable and cannot be replicated. I have both a memory occupation problem (50-100 Mo with 6 to 12 tabs) and a high CPU usage problem (40% to 80% when the problem occurs; when it’s idle and trouble-free, Maxthon takes up between 0% and 4% of CPU-time).
I have un-checked the “free memory regularly” option, this being recommended by some users on the forum as a possible remedy.
Some users boast of having 100 tabs open, I have never been close to that. Seems that increasing the number of tabs and the number of hours used increases the likeliness of the problem to appear, but this is really just a feeling.
I have some other processes, apart from Maxthon, going wild occasionally. This seems to be an unrelated problem, as I have researched these processes, and found different groups of non-Maxthon users experiencing the same thing. One is a Zone Alarm process. Others are Windows processes, and it seems a known fact that they fire up at some point without any real justification. People out there say it’s a Windows bug, sort of. Some can be killed safely, some not. I have a dreaded svchost which zaps my Internet connection if I attempt to kill it. When Maxthon goes wild, I have to close it, then check it’s actually closed in the task manager. Often it’s not, and only killing the process will close the application.
Sorry for this long post. I don’t know if it’s relevant. Thank you for the forum thread: I have read it, and others. Actually, it’s the end of the first post on that thread which had me jumping up and down, when the poster unaffected by the CPU problem wrote “this has been going on for too long”… you can understand why.
I have tried all the suggested workarounds I could find in the forum. I have not attempted those who look too tricky for my technical level, and frankly there are some where I did not even understand what the guy was talking about.
By the way, what part of the world are you blogging from? I got here from the Maxthon blog linking to your post, but I haven’t found a single geographical clue…
Thank you for your patience.
…am discussing with Robert separately. If others have suggestions, feel free to post them.
There were releases of Maxthon that had indeed CPU usage problems, but they have been fixed shortly after they were released.
Perhaps Robert is using one of the releases that had the CPU issue?
The latest stable release is Maxthon 1.5.9 build 30, which shouldn’t cause any high CPU usage.
I myself am running Maxthon 2 Beta 3 without any hassles and that on an old laptop with win98SE installed.
Sure there are still some minor issues with Max2 Beta 3, but it isn’t called Beta for nothing. It’s a good and stable browser, much more advanced than any of it’s competitors. The only downside of Maxt2 beta 3 is the magic fill, the one in 1.5.9 build 30 works alot better. But I’ve heard that they’re working on improving it.
Overall I’d give Maxthon the big thumbs up and I have even got rid of Firefox alltogether!
Rugged Shark: Maxthon 1.5.9 build 30 is, indeed, the release I use. Meanwhile, I will try some PC maintenance operations kindly suggested by Parallel.
I use moved back to Firefox after a brief spell with Maxthon because
1) I trust it
2) It doesn’t use the IE engine, which as a web developer I’ve come to loathe with a passion
3) it has plugins like the web developer toolbar or Aardvark, which are really invaluable.
Also re :”The ability to start Maxthon with my 6 always used tabs (websites) open and displayed right away is a huge time saver” – you can do that with Firefox. I imagine if they’re both being developed by smart people that a lot of the functionality would be mirrored like that.
My only reservation with it would be that Firefox is clearly a memory hog, but I can deal with that.
Funny thing you call old to a Pentium 4, obviously you and me probably belong to different worlds. :S
In my entire life I only have seen one guy using Maxthon, and that’s all. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying it is not good, but obviously is not popular in general terms (I mean, across the entire globe) as Firefox is. And maybe I’m wrong, but I suppose that if Maxthon is based in IE, in fact it’s just an IE wrapper with extra functions, then it’s prone to the same vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer.
Finally, I haven’t seen Firefox-only sites. If you can’t see a site properly in Maxthon then that’s because of IE, and IE never has been a very avid standard follower.
“The biggest problems I’ve found with Firefox are that it’s clunky, it doesn’t do Tabs anwhere near as good as Maxthon, it’s prone to crashes (whereby you lose the tabs you had open – Maxthon recovers these for you in the event of a crash),”
um, since ff2 it recovers tabs after a crash. it called session restore … http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releasenotes/
just look at the m2 page it also seem that maxthon has issues with plugins when changing version numbers. http://forum.maxthon.com/index.php?showtopic=62166
Hi Matt,
Sure, plugins can be an issue with major revisions of Maxthon, but my point is, you don’t need any plugins with Maxthon to get the user experience that otherwise requires a dozen plugins and the plugin merry-go-round of Firefox…
[…] Watch out Firefox – Here Comes Maxthon! « Parallel Divergence […]
Maxthon is indeed a big improvement over IE, but FF, after installing the extensions, is by far my favorite. Maxthon’s tabs are more like K-Meleon’s, where each tab is really a separate browser window enclosed in the same interface. Memory use rises linearly with the number of tabs opened. Opera, which was the first tabbed browser I used, still does tabs better than anyone else.
I don’t see Maxthon doing much growth in the US, because it doesn’t really offer that much more than IE7.
I don’t think you’re at all right about the memory usage of Maxthon. I believe Firefox is more of a memory hog than Maxthon. Did you have a read here: http://www.firefoxmyths.com ?
Maxthon certainly does have memory issues [as does firefox]
I’ve used Maxthon from its first release and when I last experienced problems in the autumn I tested it on two different pc’s with different o/s’s with the same effect.
Its well documented on their forum and Tara who moderates there and as made many plugins freely acknowledges that maxthon 1x has tended to sacrifice resolving longstanding bugs in favour off constantly adding more minor features
Maxthon 2.0 is a new start but it too has struggled with bugs.
Hey – I’ve been using firefox and like it a lot – I liked opera before this. I will have a look at this maxthon because recently there was discovered a SERIOUS security hole when users are running both internet explorer and firefox together – which I OFTEN do, due to having many logins at different blog hosts. I’ll have a look. Peace brutha… Jerry
Hey Jerry,
Give it a good go. It’s a really nice piece of software. Ignore what the Firefox fanboys say. Try it out and make up your own mind.
Oh this will be good for me…i just got a virus from a client’s server. They are not too anti IE and every time i use firefox or opera, the browser shuts down and a voice over laughs eerily and a message pops up saying ‘I dont hate Mozilla, but use IE or else…’
Thanks a lot. Maxthon, here I come…
I’m sure you’ll love it Lavanya!
[…] Watch out Firefox here comes Maxthon […]
shuts down all by itself. Garbage.
I haven’t had any real trouble with Firefox but I’ve recently started using ‘Flock’ whilst doing the 30 Day Challenge. It can’t be too bad although I understand it was developed in the land of Oz!
It’s a bit like Firefox with wings!
It’s in Beta at the moment and does shut down once in a while but I like it.
Been using Maxthon since first release of MyIE. Tried all the other browser but never kept them more than a couple of days. They can’t touch the cleaness and efficiency of Maxthon. This browser rocks.
Take it from an 8 year user of Maxthon,
DON’T EVEN GO CLOSE TO MAXTHON!
Why 8 years then, you might wonder?
Well, its true that Maxthon in its 2nd version (its now 3)
had a lot of neat features that it came with by default
and I honestly didn’t think were available on other browsers.
It was those features that kept me to this browser,
even though the others were faster and more reliable.
Oh yeah,
I forgot to mention…
IT CRASHES LIKE 1930’s TEST PLANE!
If it wasn’t for its crashed tabs recovery list, every time you reopened it after a crash, I would have been completely un-usable.
Well it was a bit difficult,
but after 32(!) plugin installations on Firefox,
I get the same power as i did on Maxthon,
only now everything is faster, more reliable
and more customizable to my needs than even before!
As for the 3rd version of Maxthon,
the new engine does make it as fast as other modern browsers,
but what good is that when it lacks important features, and its less customizable than its predecessor?
And believe me,
the developers are taking their sweet time developing this one.
I’ve been asking for 9 months for them to make mouse gestures
as customizable as it used to be in version 2,
but that never happened,
Instead they prefer to solve problems,
like “compatibility with the webpage of the game Cut the Rope” when their browser is full of important bugs that need immediate attention.
Thanks IbizanHound. You will note that when this article was written more than FIVE years ago, you probably would have agreed with it. But I have not used it for about three years myself for the reasons you articulated. I tend to prefer Google Chrome now, but also use Firefox.
You are right Paralleldivergence,
I was a really strong supporter of Maxthon.
to the point of my friends making fun of me for it : )
Indeed,
5 years ago half of the 22 Firefox plugins
I mentioned did not exist,
so for me Maxthon was the way to go.
It is a shame!
It is a shame because this browser
is not even in the lists
of the top 5 internet browsers,
when its really, really powerful!
I think the Maxthon team forgot
what made Maxthon 2 great,
and that was that it was packed
with usefull features by default
which were highly customizable.
I follow the development progress
of Maxthon 3 for about 2 years now,
and every end of the week they upload
a new version and its changelog.
It is still of bugs, missing usefull tools
and its half as customizable as version 2.
I didnt mind continuing using version 2
until version 3 had reached a desent point,
but the problem is that ever since
I installed the latest version of 2,
it had HUGE memory leak problems,
to the point of tabs crashing literaly every 5 to 10 mins.
I even tried rolling back to previous versions
but it was too late.
The problem persisted.
Just a correction,
its 22 plugins not 32 (its less dramatic than what i remembered).
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