An IE-Based Tabbed Browser from China 163
wannabgeek writes "CNET reports that a new browser, Maxthon is gaining wide popularity in China. 14 percent of Chinese websurfers have used it ... Part of the reason, it has features that help in circumventing the Chinese government censors. CNET says it was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this year, and is slowly gaining foothold in Europe as well as the U.S."
Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:4, Funny)
First, women slaving away making iPods. Now, they've got trained dogs [dogbreedinfo.com] doing their network censorship. This could have an impact on Shinese-American relations.
Where will it end?
Perhaps China will start using Slashdot editors to proofread the English versions of official propaganda for spelling and grammar! That's almost like trained dogs!
Re:Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:2)
I know this is way off-topic, but I had to post this quote from the article you pointed to:
This is just one of the most outrageous piece of hypocrisy I have read in a long time. All this really does is hide the killing from the rest of the population. The guy ends up just a
Re:Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:5, Funny)
OTOH, there is a major difference; you can probably train dogs to actually catch such errors...
Re:Wait until PETA hears about *this*... (Score:2)
Come on, show a little respect for dogs.
Thank God! (Score:1)
IE Based, huh? (Score:3, Funny)
them pesky dogs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:them pesky dogs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:them pesky dogs (Score:3, Funny)
Re:them pesky dogs (Score:2)
(Score:2, Informative)
Hmmm.
Grathiath (Score:3, Funny)
FSF to the Rescue (Score:2)
Drunk? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Drunk? (Score:1)
Engrish? (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm. It almost sounds like one of our Engrish-reading friends submitted this story from behind the Great Firewall of Shina.
Re:Engrish? (Score:2)
Dad: Umm, that was in the time of Emperor Nasi Goreng. They, um, built it to keep the rabbits out. Yeah, big rabbit problem in China.
Kid: [looks out car window in awe of his fathers knowledge]
[Cut to a classroom scene] Teacher: And now Billy will present his talk on China.
(TV ad from Australia. It probably is a little bit more humourous if you know that they built a "rabbit proof fence" for thousands of miles in parts of Australia to keep out the rabb
Raccoon Slashdotter (Score:3, Funny)
New browser? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:New browser? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:New browser? (Score:1)
Re:New browser? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:New browser? (Score:5, Informative)
The main pitfalls of the app are it's still based on IE so the DOM Firefox support isn't there, and while Maxathon has an "AdBlock" like feature, Firefox's is cleaner and collapses the page where graphics previously were, while Maxathon keeps the ad space open and blank. And it still isn't great about handling file opening (torrent especially).
Overall it's a great little browser and on old machines I can live with its few features I wish worked differently in exchange for super low memory usage.
Re:New browser? (Score:2)
No it doesn't. It removes the ad. (speaking as a webmaster here)
Re:New browser? (Score:2)
A new browser? (Score:5, Informative)
Maxthon's been around for years. It used to be called MyIE.
Re:A new browser? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A new browser? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the copyright notice on the website is from 1999, which sounds about right to me.
CNET has been smoking something good in this case.
Re:A new browser? (Score:2)
People really are in wonder when they discovere that there are "browsers" other then IE and seen extatic when they discovere "a new one".
Today in the newspaper (article (Dutch) [freemetro.be]) they wrote "Internet Explorer has a new competitor, called Opera!"... new...12 years [markschenk.com] isn't as new to me...
CNET: all the news that's fit to subjugate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:CNET: all the news that's fit to subjugate (Score:1)
Shape & Color? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I use Opera because it's round & red.
Re:Shape & Color? (Score:1)
Maxthon, Not New (Score:5, Informative)
If you've ever wondered what a browser with an IE-engine and tabs that didn't suck is like, try Maxthon. It's really lightweight.
For development purposes and sometimes just pure speed (IE feels faster than Firefox sometimes), I keep a copy on my machines alone Firefox.
Re:Maxthon, Not New (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent oxymoronic.
And no, I'm not trolling. Most of IE's problems are due to its engine.
Re:Maxthon, Not New (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, I'm not trolling. Most of IE's problems are due to its engine.
While it's true that third-party browsers using Trident are vulnerable to the same security flaws as IE (and, of course, share the same CSS and other rendering bugs), there are a number of flaws in IE that are corrected by third-party browsers.
Because third-party browsers don't support IE toolbars, they aren't as affected by spyware. Third-party browsers generally have search boxes, tabs, and other features that IE lack.
And, quite frankly, saying that IE "sucks" ignores the reality of the situation.
From a developer's perspective, IE "sucks" because it means that I have to bend over backwards to support IE's broken CSS implementation (although, to be honest, the CSS standard sucks in many ways anyway). But even if IE stopped "sucking" in this regard tomorrow, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me - as a user, IE's crappy CSS support doesn't really affect me (because developers work around it), and as a developer, I'm still going to have to develop for IE6 because it will represent a significant portion of my users for years to come.
But from a user's perspective, IE isn't really that bad. From a security perspective, it's subpar, but IE has greatly improved in that regard since SP2. Users neither know nor care whether their browser has decent CSS2 support.
Re:Maxthon, Not New (Score:2)
That's the spirit! What's with these people who keep adding features and fixing bugs in software, when everybody knows that there are a bunch of old versions of the sof
Re:Maxthon, Not New (Score:1)
I've noticed this too. But chicken or egg? Is it because more sites are optimized for IE than Firefox, perhaps?
Re:Maxthon, Not New (Score:2)
Notice how this browser looks a lot like IE7? (Score:1)
Has anyone tried introducing any other other NUMEROUS options of web browsers to this country? Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc, etc...
Re:Notice how this browser looks a lot like IE7? (Score:1)
Fun With Statistics (Score:4, Interesting)
So...3 percent of the Chinese Web population employs the Maxthon browser for Web search without having used it?From TFA:
Re:Fun With Statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok guys, get over it. (Score:2, Interesting)
Out of all you wonderfully articulate people, nobody has anything interesting to say? I think this kinda squashes a huge mis conception that most of the Slashdot community seems to have, that is only people who don't know any better want anything to do with IE. Obviously, these people who created this aren't newbs.
Re:Ok guys, get over it. (Score:1)
Sure. You spelled misconception incorrectly
Come on. Incorrect spelling and grammar are some of the finer points of Slashdot. You could change it from "News for Nerds" to "Fifth Grade Proofreading Test" without much trouble.
Re:Ok guys, get over it. (Score:2)
You must be a new Shinese person here.
Re:Ok guys, get over it. (Score:1)
Re:Ok guys, get over it. (Score:1, Insightful)
You are all falling over yourselves comically to point out the fact that sombody said "shinese".
I don't think anybody cares that somebody who probably doesn't speak English as their native language mixed up "sh" and "ch".
I think the real problem people have is that somebody who does speak English as their native language, and who is paid to correct errors like these, is seemingly entirely incompetent, either in doing his job, or in spotting glaringly obvious errors in his native language. Is he lazy
Re:Ok guys, get over it. (Score:2)
Having never used their product though, I can't really comment on the level of sophistication that it has though.
Microsoft will fix it (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Microsoft will fix it (Score:2)
There probably isn't an engine as easy to integrate into your application as IE, although there is a drop in compatible Mozilla/Gecko ActiveX control.
Re:Microsoft will fix it (Score:2)
It's been known to be safer than IE (Score:3, Informative)
In Communist China.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In Communist China.... (Score:3, Funny)
--
Don't nail me to your cross, buy a new King Size cross from Vatican Technologies(tm)
Re:In Communist China.... (Score:1)
Instead of,
That would have been funny.
hard to tell.... (Score:2)
In which case be ready for it, or it's contributors, to vanish if/when it actually starts showing up as a means of bypassing that nations security. The Chinese who run things there are not the laughable Team America Kim Jong-il-esque style of villans. They're smart people. I mean look, they got Google to
USED it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:USED it? (Score:2)
Re:USED it? (Score:2)
The poor man's IE7 (Score:1)
Re:The poor man's IE7 (Score:1)
It brought tabbed browsing and all the other modern browser features to the IE engine. This is a big win if you are forced to use IE renderin for various things (as
Once you get it configured the way you like it, its nice to use.
Re:The poor man's IE7 (Score:2, Informative)
Why??? (Score:1)
Re:Why??? (Score:2)
This isn't new... (Score:2, Informative)
TorPack? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if Chinese users are aware of TorPack [nyud.net], it is Tor + portable Firefox + some extensions. Being Firefox-based, it can benefit from the wide range of extensions available, and is arguably more secure.
Wow... (Score:1, Funny)
Maxthon Access ? (Score:2, Interesting)
It looks like it offers "PC Anywhere" features, but the Maxthin browser is a required component (?).
Has anyone used it and could comment?
Is it safe / secure?
Any (known) spyware / back doors to it?
Re:Maxthon Access ? (Score:1)
Basically allows access to your files via a browser interface.
Re:Maxthon Access ? (Score:2)
yjchung (801385) said...
Maxthon can use Gecko as well? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maxthon can use Gecko as well? (Score:2)
I've used Maxthon, nee MyIE2, for years now. Natively it is a well-written shell over MS IE. Interestingly MS has even featured Maxthon in some of their conferences. Maxthon has a decent set of plug-ins that can overcome many of IE's worst shortcomings, including fixing PNG alpha-layers, control over flash, etc.
And yes, Maxthon can also use the Gecko Active-X (or whatever it's called this developer season) engine. Note "can", I haven't seen any interest in this since it was first done about 2 years ago and
You know what is sad (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey mabye China has got something right?
avant browser (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:avant browser (Score:4, Informative)
How ironic (Score:2, Funny)
Proxy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Proxy (Score:2)
Re:Proxy (Score:2)
These features are important for Chinese users specifically because they have to find and use open proxies in order to circumvent the censors.
This isn't really new (Score:2, Interesting)
Not new..I used it for a long time (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong. Maxthon is a decent browser. Aside from tabbed browsing its pop-up and ad blocking was terrific and ahead of competitors before others caught up.
The only drawback, of course, was that it uses IE engine, which means it's vulnerable to most IE holes and bad system interaction (like often freezes with outlook).
Firefox 1.5 has become good enough (with tab mix, adblock and other goodies) so I switched a while ago.
Anti-China as marketing scheme? (Score:2)
Re:It's an addon and hardly new (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not too bad, except that it's pretty cluttered, and it's still MSIE.
It can also use Gecko (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:5, Insightful)
You should be modded down as redundant anyway, because the title of the story begins "An IE-Based" [...] which makes it quite fucking clear that it's Windows-only, since IE/mac is gone, gone, gone.
If linux users want to run it, they can do it in vmware on a pirated copy of windows like everyone else.*
*Actually, I only run Windows 98 in my vmware right now, and I actually have a license for it... but this is a statistical anomaly.
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:2)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:4, Informative)
With that out of the way, Opera doesn't use any part of IE at all. Hell, it barely even uses Windows libraries, since the UI is built using Qt.
Opera uses as much IE as Firefox uses IE: practically none. (Practically because some people might consider opening downloaded files in the Windows shell to be part of IE - namely Microsoft lawyers when trying to prove that IE is a core part of Windows.)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:2)
Sheesh, everybody's got a plethora of surplus windows licenses lying around, we can't buy PCs without them.
Err, did you mean you actually have a license for vmware? Now that would be funny...
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:2)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:2)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:2, Insightful)
SILENCE HERETIC! (Score:2)
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:1, Insightful)
We've gone from RTFArticle to RTFSummary and finally we need RTFTitle.
It's based on Internet Explorer. Which is part of Windows. And, therefore, no, there is no Linux port as there is no Linux port of Internet Explorer.
RTFT.
Re:So what, it's windows only... (Score:1, Flamebait)
> mean shit if important little you can't run it on
> your platform of choice.
95% of the readers don't care about your post.
95% of users don't care what the internet runs in.
4.5% of the world does care.
I don't think this article means shit to the readers to be
honest.
Re:Shinese? (Score:2)
Re:Don't All Browser have Proxy Options? (Score:2)
None of this drilling into a stupid properties, sub-menu screen, third tab from the left, click here, check that, fill out this form in triplicate crap.
I use this feature at work to switch between our normal proxy and a test proxy, or to turn off proxy completely.