Battle of the Browsers Part 3: Maxthon

In conclusion to this three part series, I decided to include a lesser known browser for comparison against the bigger name brands.  Maxthon is an IE-based web browser that has the expandability of Firefox, the features of Opera, and the security of both, built in.  Maxthon can be downloaded here: http://www.maxthon.com

Don’t let the 4.4 MB download size catch you off guard - this browser is truly packed with features.  It is far from bloated, though, using very good memory management and a very clean interface to supplement its various built in capabilities.

From the first install screen forward, Maxthon allows you to customize what features you want, and which ones you don’t.  It gives you the freedom to choose whether to install the pop-up blocker, the automatic form filler, etc.  This allows you to have all the features you want, and not consider it bloated!

As I mentioned above, this browser is based on Internet Explorer, so it integrates the basic features and settings of IE with tabbed browsing, a pop-up blocker, security features, skins, and many other small, but handy features.  It also provides for some added configuration options, such as a content filter, ActiveX filters (that’s right, it supports ActiveX!), and has a built in RSS Reader.

Good memory management is something that Firefox and Opera both lack strongly in.  Both browsers have memory leaks that cause the browsers to freeze after a few days - or eat so much of your RAM that you can’t run anything but them.  Maxathon has a very strong advantage here.  Throughout testing, its been using less than 10 MB of RAM, compared to the almost 150 MB that Opera used, and the 30+ that Firefox used.

Maxthon is also skin-able, allowing you to customize your user interface further.  It has five built in skins, and you can download / create your own skin as you desire.  This feature is handy for those of you who like to have pretty colors and graphics, but for the rest of us, there is a nice “no skin” option.

Something I love about this browser, something that neither IE, Firefox, nor Opera have is a “System Clean” sub-menu, allowing for quick access to clearing your cookies, temporary files, history, cache and more.  In the other browsers, you have to dig through several menus and tabs to get to these options.  In Maxthon, it is all laid out in the “clean system sub-menu of Tools.

In conclusion, I think I like Maxathon’s customization options, and some of its features (like basic ActiveX support), better than both Firefox and Opera.  The user interfaces are pretty much the same, but I have to give Opera the slight advantage in this category.  For memory management, Opera comes in dead last, while Maxthon takes the gold by a long shot.  In the end, all three browsers serve their purposes well, and will probably grow to be the best three browsers made.  Overall, it comes down to personal choice: if you want built in functionality and capability, go with Opera; if you want basic functions, but the option to add features as you need them, Firefox is probably the way to go; if you want to find a balance between the two, or have a computer with limited RAM, Maxthon is probably your best bet.  Try them out and put them up to your own personal test!

On a side note, I will be taking a break from this column for the month of August.  Although I personally will not be writing the content, I have two guys (maybe three) lined up to help me out this month.  The “guest authors” will be keeping up this column in my absence, in the same form it has been since I took over.  For those of you who want to know - I recently undertook a job that requires more dedication than I have to spare at the moment, and since school will be starting and this job (detailed in next week’s K&C) increasing in demand as the month goes on, I need to take a step back.  The amount of work I do in a week right now is crazy, and I simply can’t do everything.  It’s time to take a break and realign my priorities, with PCMech at the top, where it should be.  I’ll be back on this column the first week of September.  If you have comments, complaints, suggestions, anything: feel free to e-mail me.  My doors are always open.