Maxthon 2.x

The list:
Introduction
Getting Maxthon 2.0
Migrating from Maxthon 1.x
The GUI
Sidebar plugins
Toolbar plugins
Further resources
Ad blocking
 Introduction

Welcome to the area where I share my personal knowledge of the wonderful Maxthon 2.0 browser. There is so much to learn that is actually worth learning that the information can no longer fit within the confines of freeware recommendations.

Getting Maxthon 2.0

First, you'll need an account. This is not some sinister information-gathering exercise but simply a requirement for how the browser works: it stores your favourites online so they're accessible wherever you go. Set up your account HERE.

Now download the latest version HERE. If you're already using Maxthon 1.x, do NOT install over it, rather in a fresh folder (say C:\Program Files\Maxthon2).
Migrating from Maxthon 1.x

There's an option, available from the File menu, to import 1.x settings. If you do nothing else, at least import Favorites. Probably best not to do plugins en masse as many 1.x plugins aren't compatible. For a list of 2.0-compatible plugins, see HERE.

If you've customised any plugins, you will want to bring those over, but chances are you'll already know that all it takes is copying the plugin folder across*.

*NB with any such operations, carry out only when Maxthon is closed.
The GUI

As far as customisability goes, no other browser touches Maxthon 2.0: the GUI layout is largely described by a single .xml file (located at e.g. C:\Program Files\install folder\account\Config\ui.xml), hence total control is potentially possible (see Editing the XML below).

Bars

All bars may be hidden or shown as desired. You can literally browse fullscreen. Even the window frame and status bar can be hidden. A very useful feature is toolbar re-sizing: in other browsers, toolbars, especially those of the third-party variety, tend to hog complete lines and take up a ridiculous amount of screen space. With Maxthon, I have Standard, Plugin and RoboForm toolbars all on the same row. And pretty much all the buttons can be placed on whichever bar you please.

Drag-and-drop

Given the preceding, it's obvious that (some) toolbars can be dragged and dropped anywhere. Also, buttons may be moved simply by using <Alt>-drag, without going right-click, Customize. But other elements may also be thus treated, specifically the sidebar (as well as left/right, it can also be docked top/bottom, although I have yet to find an application for this!), the tabs themselves may be re-ordered thus, and the split pane, leading on to the next feature:

Split browsing

This really useful feature comes in two flavours:

Basic split can be achieved at the click of a button or using F10 - the current view is squeezed to the left, a split bar appears and a new blank tab opens in the right pane. Tabs can be dragged from one pane to the other and the split position may be dragged as desired. Active pane selection is achieved by mouse-click.

The other version of split utilises the 'reader tab' concept. In normal mode, right click on the current tab (assuming it has some links you want to follow) and select New Reader Tab - this opens a special blank tab in the right pane of the split view. Now follow a link from the left pane - it opens in the right.

Editing the XML

Drag-and-drop support means you'll probably never need to delve into the XML, but just to give an idea of what can be done, here's an example (Maxthon must be closed to attempt this):

Suppose your plugin bar looks something like this:

The 2 icons on the right are external tools, not plugins - it would be useful to have a divider in there to emphasise this. There is no divider provided in the drag-and-drop (there is now a much easier way to do this, right-clicking the button in Customize mode and selecting Begin with Separator from the menu, but I leave this here for posterity), but a quick study of XML attributes of the buttons of this bar provides the means. Using XML Marker, and doing a search for a unique text string associated with the bar (e.g. I chose "newzie", one of the configured external programs), then manipulating the view, the following becomes apparent:

The CloseTabs button is the only one preceded by a divider and the only button possessing an attribute of BeginGroup="1":

Inserting this attribute in the Newzie button line thus:

will show the following when Maxthon is re-started:

Sidebar plugins

LookUpWord

For multi-source searching, this is the business: highlight a word on the current web page to automatically transfer to the search box (sometimes, this doesn't happen until the box is clicked) or simply type in the word of choice. Two modes are available: Radio Button and Check Box forms. The former is perfect for incremental searches, that is successive single searches of the selected (by click) source. The latter is useful for multi-source simultaneous searches.

For convenience, the 100 searchable resources are grouped into 9 categories: dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, special dictionaries, thesauri, acronym finders, encyclopedias, gazetteers, atlases & almanacs, rhyming & anagram dictionaries and quotations.

Radio Button mode: expand group(s) as required and click on each title in turn.

Check Box mode: as above, but now each check box may be selected individually before clicking the Search button - all checked are launched simultaneously in separate browser windows. Extra tip: to select an entire group, double-click one of the check boxes in that group. Repeat to de-select.

Customisation

The default background colour is 'aquamarine'. This looks horrible with most skins. To change, open the file plugin.ini and find the line:

BackgroundColor=#7fffd4

Use a colour picker (e.g. CPick) to choose a more suitable colour and paste it in. My own setting:

BackgroundColor=#F2F2F2
Toolbar plugins

To come...

Further resources

To come...
Ad blocking

The recent hype over Google Chrome had me giving it a trial... and very quickly uninstalling and getting back to what I know. The reason for this precipitate decision was advertising. It struck me that, since Google make their money from advertising, that they're never going to support ad-blocking in their own browser! The web looks so completely different with flashing messages and other such rubbish that it came as rather a shock.

I suspect that Maxthon is far and away the best browser for this. Here, I intend to provide a summary of the out-of-the box features and their powerful extensibility. An asterisk in the text indicates that further detail is provided in the Advanced section below.

Ad Hunter

Core to the features is Ad Hunter, a suite of four modules:

  • Pop-up blocker
  • Web content filter
  • Float ads filter
  • Text filters
The pop-up blocker works pretty much as it comes, requiring little if any further user input.

The web content filter is the central part of the suite, coming pre-configured to block (at a rough estimate) 80% of routine online ads. But the ability to block further content is greatly facilitated by its simple graphical method: no groping through viewed source code for likely keywords, just a click of the Block Page Content... button, a click on the offending ad, and it's pretty much job done*. One missing feature is the ability to choose to block the selected content from all web pages, but that can be effected by a little more manual work in the Setup Center*.

I assume the float ads filter does its job well since I'm never plagued by such entities.

The final and perhaps most powerful module of the suite is the text filter*. This may be utilised in different ways according to one's knowledge of website coding. Simplest is to install filters or filter packs. These are XML files that are placed in a defined folder and enabled via the GUI without any requirement to dive into the code. They may be installed directly from here, or text-grabbed from the screen (e.g. here) using this plugin (may need to right-click, save target as...).

Ad-vanced filtering

Looking a little more closely at the web content filter, there are a couple of things worth pointing out:

  1. On clicking the content to block, a complete hierarchy is presented, from an individual image all the way up to the domain. Basic commonsense should be an adequate guide in selecting the level. Obviously the higher, the broader: top level for ad domains, a subfolder for in-house content.

  2. To apply domain-specific blocks to all sites, click Edit Filter List... (here, we're in the Ad Hunter section of Maxthon Setup Center) and select the site from the list on the left. For a single entry, just select it, click Remove Website (if desired), scroll to the top and click on All Websites then click Add.

For text filters, two further levels of interaction are available:

This plugin applies a little of the functionality of the web content filter to any page element. Doesn't always work as desired, but certainly worth trying as it can identify all scripts and IDs.

Best is to create a filter from scratch. The built-in editor is OK, but can be a bit of a pain in some respects, for instance it isn't possible to simply copy a filter. To this end, I've created an Excel spreadsheet to facilitate rapid creation. If you'd like a copy - it currently hasn't any instructions.