Maxthon Cloud Browser 4.4

Maxthon Cloud Browser 4.4 -Though it's far from being a leader among PC Web browsers, Beijing-headquartered Maxthon has devoted followers in numbers not to be sniffed at: The company claims over a billion downloads and 140 million active users for its unique Web browser, Maxthon Cloud Browser (free). Where others have been paring down the features, goodies, and doodads in their browsers for a minimalist experience, Maxthon takes the opposite tack—adding as many browsing helpers as possible. The latest of these include built-in PDF viewing, Ad Skipper (to fast forward through video ads), and a 3D gaming engine and portal.

Maxthon remains a twin-engine browser, including both the Internet Explorer's Trident page-rendering engine and Webkit, which powers Safari and Chrome. Maxthon also stands out for its cloud services like Cloud Push and Cloud Download, which, respectively, let you send content to other devices and save Web downloads to cloud storage rather than to your computer. Finally, it tops all browsers in support for HTML5 features—a result of its twin-engine architecture. In this world dominated by Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox, let's find out whether Maxthon should be your window to the Web.

Installation
Maxthon is available for Windows XP through 8.1 in both 32- and 64-bit editions, as well as for Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. It's as cross-platform as it gets. The small 1MB installer mini-program simultaneously puts a helper app on your PC that notifies you when new versions are available, and it gives you options of installation directory, shortcut placements, default browser designation (checked by default), and joining a product improvement program. The first page shown after installation urges you to sign up for Maxthon Passport, the company's cloud syncing and storage service, which is required for use of some of Maxthon's cleverer features.

Interface
One of the most striking things about the look of this browser is that it dispenses with the standard window border and minimize, resize, and exit buttons at top right. Oh, they're there, but only when you move the mouse over the vestigial, truncated, non-distracting buttons that have replaced the standard ones. Though a small touch, it's an innovative UI idea that removes distraction. Another small but brilliant design choice is that the search box enlarges when you click in it, so that otherwise the page address gets more space.

A placeholder smiley face button graces the top-left corner of the window; clicking this takes you to a login dialog for Maxthon Passport, which changes the smiley to your user photo and adds easy access to social networks. Below your user pic is a narrow sidebar column of buttons for Favorites, Downloads, RSS feeds, and notes. You can add to this button sidebar using extensions.

As with Firefox, Maxthon keeps the search box separate from the address box—a privacy advantage, since the address–search box combination sends every URL you enter to the search provider. As with any browser these days, if you type something in the address box that's not a URL, you can still search or see matching favorites or history if you enable this in settings. This is clearly displayed on page, with result highlighting.

Cloud Syncing and the Start Page
Maxthon has the ability to synchronize bookmarks, tabs, options, the address bar, new-tab links, and passwords among all Maxthon instances on computers and mobile devices you're logged into. You can also sync notes, a feature the company calls SkyNote.

Cloud Download and Push are a couple of cool Maxthon innovations. With the first, when you're at a website offering a file download, you can download to the cloud instead of to your local machine, making the download available from any of your Maxthon instances. Of course, you're actually downloading to your private Maxthon cloud. One problem with this feature, though, is that you can't actually download the files to an iPhone, even if they're common types the phone can handle, such as JPGs. You just see a list of what's uploaded.