Best Browser Nobody Knows About: Maxthon

Love Firefox's customization but annoyed that it sometimes doesn't display pages properly? Frustrated with how slow it opens compared to Internet Explorer? Then by all means give Maxthon a try.

I've been using it for 5 years and I am still convinced it's the best browser out there. Firefox is great, but it requires a bit of customization to realize its full potential. With Maxthon, everything you need is included in one package ready for download. I'm talking about auto-filling forms, password tracking, mouse gestures (this is probably the best thing for browsing most people don't know about), ad blocking, pop-up blocking, url aliases and much more. And it's free!

The best thing about Maxthon is it's 100% compatible with Internet Explorer. That's because it uses the IE engine. When you open Maxthon, you are essentially opening Internet Explorer, but with a bunch of addons that make browsing faster and better.

Here are some things I can do with Maxthon:

Mouse gestures - I can program Maxthon to recognize the movement of the mouse when I hold down the right mouse button and program it to do a certain task. The most popular task is the 'left' gesture which makes you go back a page. No more searching for the 'back' button at the top of the browser.

URL aliases - I can assign aliases to URLs. So instead of typing out the full URL out, for instance for this site, http://brian911.blogspot.com, I can simply make it recognize the word 'blog' and I will be automatically directed to this site.

Search aliases - Let's say you want to search Wikipedia. You can type out the full URL, go to the site, look for the search box and conduct your search. You can save a bit of time if you make an URL alias for Wikipedia such as 'wiki'. However, the best thing you can do is to create a search alias. Then in your address bar, you can simply type 'wiki' followed by your search terms and it'll take you directly to the results.

Give it a try:
Step 1: Register
Step 2: Download Maxthon 2.5