Maxthon: IE on Steroids Tabs, Groups, and Skins Scott Koegler
Tabs, Groups, and Skins
After opening several browser windows, I've always been frustrated when I look at my task bar and see a series of IE icons that are indistinguishable from each other, making it impossible to pick the one I want to use. Maxthon's tabbed window inerface cures the problem. And as with most Maxthon functions, you have several options for handling tabs.
Your first choice is whether to display the tabs at the top or bottom of the browser window. You can also set up the look of the tabs, the names associated with the tabs, and what actions trigger a new window. For instance, if you're always right-clicking links and selecting "Open in New Window," you can set Maxthon to use the center mouse button to open a new tab when clicked. And finding the browser tab you want to view is simple since each tab is uniquely labeled.
Maxthon's Group feature is an extension of the tab interface and is useful if you visit several sites regularly. For example, if you regularly check on several employment sites, start by viewing each site in its own tab, then use the Group tool to create a named group of all the tabs. The next time you want to view all the sites, simply open the Group and Maxthon will proceed to launch each of the selections in its own tab. This is also a great tool for saving search results that you expect to reuse in the future.
And when you're tired of doing serious work, you can select one of Maxthon's skins and change the look of your browser. Several skins are included with the initial download, and there is a growing list of user-created skins available at http://www.skinnable.com/maxthon/), which even includes a tutorial for those that want to create their own personalized skin. Unlike some browsers, most of the skins can be applied immediately without the need to restart Maxthon.
One of the more interesting features in Maxthon is its open plug-in structure. Several plug-ins come pre-installed with the Maxthon download, and they're useful by themselves. But the real customization comes from the contributors who create their own plug-ins and post them for other users at http://maxthon.tarapages.com/.
The current list of plug-ins includes more than 400 items. Some of them are generally useful, while some have very limited use. One of the traditionally popular plug-ins is called Kill Flash Ad and Flying Ad. It's a handy little add-on that gets rid of all those floating pop-up advertisements — it's so handy in fact that its functionality has made it into the browser, as Maxthon's Ad Hunter now offers the ability to eliminate these types of ads as well. For those who want to know the details of their online visits, you'll find a plug-in called SiteCheck that displays information about the site being visited, including the date the site was last modified, its real domain, and a list of the cookies being stored by the site.
