Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Yesterday I downloaded Maxthon, a browser developed in China but with an excellent English website, American v.c. backing and a look and feel much better than even the next edition of Internet Explorer (still in beta version).

My current browser preferences in rank order are: Opera, Firefox, Sea Monkey (which is Firefox plus) and then in a distant last place IE (which, alas, you have to have, since Microsoft’s websites for downloads will, annoyingly, work only with Microsoft’s IE, and the web interface for LotusNotes that my employer uses doesn’t work smoothly with much else).

I’ll see how Maxthon works into this mix. I already like it better than IE 7 and Firefox for the simple reason that its default setting for the “new” command is to open a new tab, not a new, screen-cluttering window. This is a simple but important thing. I don’t want to create desktop clutter or lose the page I was on when I bring up a new page. With Firefox and IE you hit ctrl-t to bring up a new tab/page within the same browser window (or right click on a hyperlink then select “Open Link in New Tab”). I much prefer the Opera and Maxthon approach that defaults to a new tab. Ctrl-N means “new” and I want a new tab/window within my existing browser session. I don’t want to have to think about it. I don’t want to right-click or have to recall a different command. Opera and Maxthon get this right.

But to knock Opera off the top of my browser preference mountain, Maxthon will need to do more. For example, I really like Opera’s right click option to “Open in a Background Page” so that I can call up info but continue reading the page I was on. Maxthon doesn’t seem to have this feature.

Opera’s integrated mail, notes and RSS functions are also good.

Maxthon has something like a notes feature. I found a button on the bottom of a Maxthon browser screen labeled “Simple Collector.” It brought up a text entry space that I’m using to draft this post. That function may provide many of the benefits I get from Opera’s Notes function.

But what about Maxthon’s RSS features? When I clicked on a “Subscribe to this blog’s feed” link on Maxthon own friggin’ site, instead of getting a dialog box asking me to confirm the RSS subscription (as I do in Opera), I got a request to go on the web to look for a file extension! Below are the results of clicking on this link in Maxthon, Firefox and Opera, respectively:

I am a novice user of all these browsers (except perhaps Opera) and there may be simple work-arounds to the issues mentioned. But the point is I don’t want to think about the browser. I want it to be transparently useful, not something I have to put at the forefront of my attention. A browser is a window to other content, a portal to the online world. It should be transparent like a physical world window—beautiful if you pay attention to it but normally something that lets you see other stuff without calling attention to itself.