Slashdot Mirror
An IE-Based Tabbed Browser from China
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."
"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 Shinese 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."
First, women slaving away making iPods. Now, they've got trained dogs 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!
The people need protection from both the Chinese and the Shinese... Glad to see someone is finally helping these folks!
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
SHINESE? Oh please... come on, at least try a little bit.
Who the hell are they? ;-)
libertarianswag.com
So that means that the goverment can exploit it to add censoring? Won't that be a switch from what we're used to?
- Kal`Goblez
Apperently the Shinese dog breed have taken over the government of China Hopefully they will be kind to their previous masters.
If all you have to do is lisp to avoid Chinese government censors to connect Chinese people to the rest of the planet, then Spain is going to take over the world again.
--
make install -not war
This is old stuff. Popular in commie land.
There's no linux version, unless I missed something, if that's the case, mod this down. Otherwise, does anyone have it working in wine?
Why UNIX?
Wath timmmothy drunk when he wrote thith?
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
"...features that help in circumventing the Shinese government censors."
Hrm. It almost sounds like one of our Engrish-reading friends submitted this story from behind the Great Firewall of Shina.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Ooh... Shinese!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Maxthon hasn't been new for a long time. In fact, the only thing in the article I hadn't heard a million times already was that it's made by a Chinese company. And this "parallels" feature they're working on--sounds like MDI.
Maxthon's been around for years. It used to be called MyIE.
Why doesn't CNET just come out and give the Chinese government the IP addresses of every Chinese websurfer using Maxthon? Better yet, the company's in Beijing - why not just throw a street address up there? Of course, if the web is censored in China, then the censors aren't reading unfiltered CNET in English, are they? Naaaaaah!
My company doesn't speak for me, nor do I speak for my company.
"Browsers are very much like a car," said Jacobsson. "Most people don't care what engine is inside, (they) choose which type fits, with the right shape and color."
Yes, I use Opera because it's round & red.
Maxthon isn't all that new. Long time users know it as MyIE2.
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.
Has anyone tried introducing any other other NUMEROUS options of web browsers to this country? Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc, etc...
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
So...3 percent of the Chinese Web population employs the Maxthon browser for Web search without having used it?From TFA:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Next update of Windows will prevent it (the browser) from running. No worries.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
On occasion the authors of Maxthon have hacked in third party protection against zero day exploits. I can't be arsed finding the reference, but I thought i'd mention it since this is such an uninteresting news post.
Browser tabs YOU!
Hard to tell from the fact that most of the developers aren't using their actual names. But it looks to me like this might be being developed a substantial amount of work from behind the great firewall.
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 bend to their will...
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I don't understand what this browser has that makes it so good for using proxies? Can someone please explain?
This sounds like IE 7. Only this one is built on top of the previous IE, so it's less secure than 7. Plus, it's missing a whole lot of features that 7 has. But hey, at least it's free, right?
There are no uninteresting things. There are only uninterested people.
Is this like being different for the sake of being different? If it's based on IE, it's still garbage. Use Firefox or Opera. If you really want IE with tabs, just use the IE Tab Firefox extension and set it to work for every page. That way you get a shitty rendering engine AND good karma.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
Maxthon is not new, and it's not a browser iteself. Its just a shell for IE.
I wonder if Chinese users are aware of TorPack, 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.
python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
WE CAST THEE OUT!
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
That's great and all, aside from the fact that it's built upon Internet Explorer.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
I see on the Maxthon web site a related product called "Maxthon Access". Does anyone have any addtional information /reviews about this product?
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?
python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
Is that a third party browser like that could gain such a sizable market share in china that quickly, granted its still IE but they are seeking out browsers none the less. Whats that say about the US & internationally, which still reports firefox and other 3rd party browsers at no more than 10% according to some studies (I can't remember the link right now)
Hey mabye China has got something right?
Did someone say cake?
Spiffy skinjobs on the browser are nice and all, but they've been done before. The fact is, you're STILL running the fugly IE6 engine underneath, with all it's nasties and security issues.
NO EFFING THANK YOU!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Avant Browser is another tabbed browser based on the IE engine. I prefer firefox for most of my browsing, but I use avant when I have to load up my company's intranet site, which breaks in firefox.
It used to be called MyIE2, not MyIE. It also has the ability to use Gecko (the Firefox rendering engine), too. I'm surprised no one's brought that up yet.
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
and has found a good use for its poor security. Instead of infecting the user's PC, why not use its flaws to ignore government censorship?
Hey, Stallman can Lisp.
Wait, so this shelled version of IE exploits security holes??
Maxthon uses a proxy. If the China's government is smart they would release Maxthon that uses it own proxy - let the end users view censored infor. Let use Maxthon spread. Then you have a nice log of who the trouble makers are and can take them down at any point. I for one would not trust a browser that uses a proxy to surf the internet. I think the AOL browser also routes all your internet traffic through their proxy servers.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
If you go to the Maxthon page link and scroll to the bottom it lists awards that it's won. The first and only one I clicked was the last one on the page, p2btech, because I never heard of it. It's an article that doesn't even mention the Maxthon browser at all. It rates a few different browsers from a long time ago, Firefox 0.8 and Opera 7.5.
I'm actually using it right now. I've been using this browser for the past few years, ever since it used to be called MyIE. It has most of the same features and a few a like more than Firefox like the mouse gestures feature.
What is this hype about? It's just IE again with all bugs and non-standardness :( Don't spread it please...
Pixel image editor - http://www.kanzelsberger.com
Actually, in Shina this ia JAILBAIT ! bit flamebait. Oh, the heartache.
Why so much negativity? Have you been brain washed by the media?
Oh cwap...
Yes this helps the government, because now they can keep tabs on the users...
sorry for the obvious, but while I'm at it; In Soviet Russia, the tabs keep you!
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
Did anyone see that Maxthon is actually made in china
9/F Flat D, Tower 1, Sky Tower,
38 Song Wong Toi RD, Kowloon,
Hongkong, China
From --> http://www.maxthon.com/donate.htm
http://iesucks.org
..and recently switched to firefox.
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.
The OffByOne browser is way lighter on resources, even lighter than Opera. It does tabbed browsing too. Best of all, it's self-executable, caches entirely in RAM, and not reliant on any other browser. It fits nicely on a floppy too. Granted, its features are minimal, but it's great for surfing message boards and slashdot on even an early Pentium with even a quarter of the RAM you have.
... In Soviet China.
I could have sworn I used something that looked just like this before FF came out... it was called Avant :)
-Christian
Ive had this browser installed on my parents computer for over 2 years now b/c when I set up their computer many, many pages were still firefox incompatible pages (mostly gov't pages and other major organizations, which is all the pages my parents usually visit anyways - dial up sucks). I just recently took it off and put firefox on it b/c I have yet to see many pages FF wont load properly.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Since when is Maxthon new? Has been around for years!
Millions of Chinese staring at screenfuls of tabs saying, "The page cannot be disprayed"
It's also freaking slow. I did a comperison between a bunch of low-requirement browsers a few years ago and MyIE2 (aka, Maxathon) was quite clearly the fastest of the lot.
The order of slowness goes something like this:
MyIE2
Netscape 3
Opera
K-Meleon
Off-by-one
Mozilla
(However, keep in mind that this was a while back and continued development on most of the browsers listed has probably rendered this obsolete)
How easy is it to get attention in Slashdot with keywords like "China proxies and freedom?" I live in China and work in IT field. I never heard of Marthon until I heard of it in CNet podcast and saw it on Slashdot. Slashdot effects are used to promote the very browsers supported by the authority. Somehow a 1984 moment...