It has been a while… (again)

Just like last year, my exams kept me from posting here or on Maxthon forum, I apologise for not leaving a note or something, you know when you keep thinking: “I will do it today” but you never do it? it was exactly like that, I spent more time trying to post a notice than studying, nah, just kidding.

What happened during that quiet month? new Maxthon 3 public release and a final 2.5.2 version, just in case you were absent during June too.

Back to business now, see ya in my next post.

Back to Maxthon 2: 2.5.2.6608

Have you been worried that the Maxthon 3 buzz was taking over M2 and M2 was going the way of Maxthon classic? worry no more; a new update for M2 has been released, 2.5.2 beta4, click Read the rest of this entry for the changelog…

Download: http://dl.maxthon.cn/mx2/mx_2.5.2.6608.exe

How to improve Maxthon’s compatibility with Internet Explorer 8

If you have installed the latest version of internet explorer already, you would have noticed that the compatibility of Maxthon 2 with IE8 is less than perfect, particularly when it comes to supporting IE8’s improvements like the faster speed and better websites designing standards compatibility. Also there are some IE8 problems and bugs that affects Maxthon.

So here’s a few tweaks that should bring the goodness of IE8 to your comfy Maxthon 2 installation and even fix some of IE8’s issues:

Tip: “Magically” login to your favorite websites with one click

Maxthon 2 introduced a nifty feature called Magic Fill, this little tool can fill forms with pre-saved data either login information for websites or personal information in registration forms (from what you fill in the Setup Center).

Play button opens the website then fill and submit the login form

Unlike Opera’s Magic wand (and a lot like Roboform’s feature “fill and submit”) you can with Magic fill save time opening a website, clicking the fill button and clicking the submit button by using the sub-menu of the Magic fill button to access your favorite websites, this way it only needs one click to open the site, fill the data and then submitting it.

Clicking the item itself opens the website and fill only while the little “play” button on the right of each item works as a “fill and submit” option.

 

 

 

 

You can choose what sites you would like to keep in this menu by putting a “tick” next to them in Tools > Maxthon setup center > Magic Fill

Maxthon Setup Center's Magic fill section

Another update for 2.5.2 (beta3)

It has been a while since the last update for Maxthon 2.x, thankfully the buzz of version 3.0 hasn’t kept the developers team from continuing to improve the 2.x branch and has released another bug fixes beta for 2.5.2 recently (2.5.2.5442 to be exact).

Download
Forum Announcement  (includes changelog)

[Updated] Beta 2 of 2.5.2 released

Another bug-fixes update for the 2.5 branch, version 2.5.2.3272 Beta 2. This one has received very positive responses so far for its speed and stability.

And no, the popular show window frame option is still not back, patience is a virtue, guys.

Update: If you have downloaded this release before 15/3 please redownload as the “No focus on address bar when new tab is opened” issue was fixed in a new silent update (with the same version number).

Download | Announcement & Changelog

Maxthon 2.5.2.2801 beta

A new version has been released a while ago that includes fixes for the “Isolator” feature introduced earlier in 2.5. Nothing fancy, just a bunch of “underhood” fixes, but that’s a good reason to upgrade anyway If you are already using the 2.5 branch.

BTW: The ability to show window’s frame rather than the custom one is not back (yet), rest assured though, the team are looking for a way to add it back while keeping the new framework.

Download | Announcement

Maxthon vs Chrome: Isolated tabs

Maxthon’s forum admin abc@home, has recently posted an insighful summary of the differences between Google Chrome’s multi-processes feature and Maxthon’s isolator:

Essentially, the anti-freeze technique is to make the user interface (menu, buttons, toolbars etc) independent of the tabs, which contain the browser controls and where problems often arise, and make each tab independent of each other. Chrome uses multi-process to achieve this while Maxthon 2.x uses multi-thread to acheive the same. Yet whether multi-process or multi-thread, it is not possible to be totally independent. There must be inter process/thread communications to be a unity.

Generally processes are more independent than threads. But a thread consumes less resources than a process, and a thread works more efficiently with other threads of the same process than a process working with another processes. Before 2.5.1, the multi-thread technique was limited by the traditional windows framework and did not work as effectively as intended. Maxthon 2.5.1 uses a new windows framework to perfect the implementation.

To read more about the Isolator feature of Maxthon 2.5 visit Maxthon’s official blog.

Two Dot Five

Just as you all thought that this blog was dead and there are no new updates for Maxthon, a beta of an all-new Maxthon 2.5 has been released today, giving me something to post about here, and it IS something!

Maxthon 2.5 is a major update not just because of the big version number but for the new changes done to the tabs; before, even with the multi-threading feature on the browser may freezes for a while If a tab freezes, and the original anti-freeze feature wasn’t exactly perfect; as the tabs were still part of the browser itself.

Now with 2.5, each tab is considered as a seperate window, If a tab hangs, the main interface remains responsive, allowing you to close the tab or reopen it, this also means If a tab crashes it won’t take the whole browser down with it, Maxthon will notify you, too.

For the announcement, download link and changelog, click here.

2.1.5 Released

After ~2 months with no new releases and nothing exciting to blog about, a new fixes-only update has been released that should make Maxthon a bit more stable (and make this blog looks not too outdated)

Announcement @ The forum: http://forum.maxthon.com/viewthread.php?tid=74442
Download: http://www.maxthon.com/download.htm