Maxthon 1.0 browser is fast, has roots in Chrome
Maxthon 1.0.3, a browser made in China that has made it to the U.S. and the Mac, is a blisteringly fast, undeniably slick way to navigate the web.
Its also Google Chromewell, mostly Google Chrome, or at least its open-source sibling Chromium. Nods to Mozilla, WebKit, Darwin, and seemingly every other open-source browser framework also show up in the programs documentation.
Maxthon doesnt try to conceal its origins. From the look, feel, and usability of the bookmarks bar, to the option to open a new Incognito window, to the distinctive arrow graphics that appear at the edges of a page when you navigate forward or back, Maxthon might as well be Chrome. One dialog box even refers to a menu with a wrench icona feature in Chrome that appears nowhere in Maxthons reskinned interface. (To its credit, Maxthons about box has the courtesy to credit its Chromium origins.)
Everything you know from Chrome (and a lot youll find in Safari 6 ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) is here in Maxthon, including a handy unified search/URL bar, tabbed browsing, the exact same developer tools, and an options menu at the top right of the window. Maxthon has its own My Maxthon synching system for bookmarks and passwords, though youll need to hand over an email address to sign up.
So why should you even bother with a browser thats basically Chrome with a facelift? Maxthon offers several reasons, but not all of them are equally compelling.
Zip! Zing! Zoom!
Maxthon promises a fast browsing experience, and on this count, it absolutely delivers. HTML text on pages renders in less time than it takes to blink, and images and other features appear as quickly as your connection will allow. Full support for OS X gesture controls lets you scroll and swipe through the web with impressive grace. I dont know whether Ive used a Mac browser that feels faster than Maxthon.
Maxthon also offers extensions, although only six were available for the Mac as of this writing. I tried out a Facebook status extension, which installed fine, but only displayed an endless loading indicator when I tried to use it. Again, the browser doesnt even try to hide its debt to Chrome; on the page where you download extensions, the graphic for AdBlock declares it the most popular extension for Chrome.
Maxthon also tries to bring in the Reader feature from Safari, turning multi-page articles into a single coherent reading experience. Alas, here this feature is somehow even more broken than it was when it first appeared in Safari 5no mean feat. I couldnt get Maxthons Reader to load more than the first page of any article; in some cases where it should have appeared, the option to turn it on didnt show up at all.
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