Maxthon 1.3.1 or Opera 8 ??

[POOOS]

Best browser?? Opera 8 or Maxthon? Is maxthon secure?

[AnthonyG]

I would go hands down with Maxthon. I think in terms of security if you go into options at the top and click disabale Active X and java its safe but id wait for a reply from someone like Bigc or Bubba to be sure on that.

(to be honest ive been planning on posting this question about maxthon myself)

[bigc73542]

I would have to argue that opera is much more secure than maxthon for the simple reason opera doesn't have a known security risk browser as it's core.

[rdsu]

-{ Quote: "I would have to argue that opera is much more secure than maxthon for the simple reason opera doesn't have a known security risk browser as it's core." }-
I agree with you, but I only want to say that Maxthon is more secure than IE because you can only use BHO, toolbars, and other stuff that Maxthon author permit...

[Acadia]

-{ Quote: " I think in terms of security if you go into options at the top and click disabale Active X" }-
Correct me if I am wrong, I believe that Opera, just like Firefox, doesn't even have ActiveX, isn't that correct?

Acadia

[AnthonyG]

Yes but for ease of use, a lot of pages dont let you use Opera, or dont render properly if you do.

I use Firefox as my main and Maxthon as my backup browsers and i am happy.

Plus Opera is Adaware, something i do not wish to support!.

[bigc73542]

I have heard that statement that opera doesn't render some web pages right. I would appreciate it if you would give me the link to one of them as I have never run across one. I would like to check it out.

[bigc73542]

-{ Quote: "Yes but for ease of use, a lot of pages dont let you use Opera, or dont render properly if you do.

I use Firefox as my main and Maxthon as my backup browsers and i am happy.

Plus Opera is Adaware, something i do not wish to support!." }-


and as far as adware goes here is a screen shot of the ads I have. Hardly distracting. and very little to put up with to have the free version of the best browser there is in my opinion.

[shek]

-{ Quote: "I have heard that statement that opera doesn't render some web pages right. I would appreciate it if you would give me the link to one of them as I have never run across one. I would like to check it out." }-
there are lots of chinese websites, which are compatible with IE only and opera cannot render them correctly. For example, in bt1.btchina.net, opera and firefox cannot display the table. but IE does.

[bigc73542]

I appreciate the link. But I don't go to chinese sites anyways since I don't speak the language.

[shek]

to be honest, i never find any english websites which have problems with opera either.

[bigc73542]

We are lucky though to have the choice of all the browsers available, it makes it nice to be able to choose. ;D ;)

[Acadia]

I played with Opera once, several months ago. I was able to make the ad quite small actually, but I don't remember how I did it.

Acadia

[DigitalMan]

I've had rendering problems with some of our internal corporate webpages (expense system, database reporting web interfaces, web conferencing, etc.) with Opera in the past, but otherwise use it for visiting risky sites and have been impressed. Last time I tried Maxthon it was really buggy and not well organized IMHO (about a year ago), don't know if it is better now.

[pcalvert]

You might want to consider Deepnet Explorer instead of Maxthon. It looks pretty interesting.

I downloaded it a couple of months ago but never got around to installing it. I might use it as a backup web browser, but not as my main browser.

Take a look:
Deepnet Explorer (http://www.deepnetexplorer.com/)


Phil

[Paranoid2000]

-{ Quote: "I would have to argue that opera is much more secure than maxthon for the simple reason opera doesn't have a known security risk browser as it's core." }-This is true - Maxthon may reduce the risks of some spyware but it can't do anything about core Internet Explorer vulnerabilities (http://secunia.com/product/11/) - whereas Opera 8 has far fewer (http://secunia.com/product/4932/).-{ Quote: "I have heard that statement that opera doesn't render some web pages right. I would appreciate it if you would give me the link to one of them as I have never run across one. I would like to check it out." }-By default, Opera identifies itself as Internet Explorer to avoid problems with certain brain-damaged websites (http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/) - however I have noticed that the forum Thread Tools, Search Thread and Display Mode droplists normally displayed at the bottom are not visible with Opera 8.x (they were with Opera 6). Since they are visible at vBulletin.com (which is running version 3.5 beta compared to 3.07 here) I presume this is an issue with vBulletin that will be fixed once 3.5 is publicly available.-{ Quote: "Plus Opera is Adaware, something i do not wish to support!." }-While the unregistered version of Opera does display advertising, it does not involve the installation of extra software or the collection of personal data - you can choose either generic ads or ones "related" to the website you visit. See Opera's Banner Advertising Implementation (http://www.opera.com/docs/ads/) page for more details. Compared to most other adware, Opera does give you rather more control and has a number of advantages to compensate - even if you don't pay to register.-{ Quote: "I played with Opera once, several months ago. I was able to make the ad quite small actually, but I don't remember how I did it." }-The Google Text Ads are just two lines at the top (though you lose your toolbar) and can be selected via Tools/Preferences/Advanced/Advertising/Show relevant text ads... - they can be blocked using Proxomitron or a similar web filter but registering is the proper way to get rid of them.

[tuatara]

The only webpages that are not shown perfectly in Opera are those who are not w3c.org compliant.

see: http://www.w3.org

The reason is that in most cases this is an implementation of one Company,
and if you can see the page correclty, it means that your browser has some
serious vulnerabilities.

If you want to be able to see all pages, perhaps you must test the new
Netscape browser 8.0.x which has an option to switch between
Firefox (safe) and Internet Exploder (unsafe) view.

Although this new browser is not very stable yet!

i've tested a lot of browsers, and i prefer Opera,
because it is still the fastes! and one of the safest browsers out there,
has features others have not.

2nd is Firefox

3th Netscape latest version, very nice features, for testing you just built webpages, but sadly ...still ..unstable

then there or few dozen more and at the end is Internet Explorer.

Which is unsafe.
Which slows down your system.
Is to far intergrated in OS.
Has ALWAYS been behind on security over the years!!

b.t.w.
I think it is rather strange that Opera is that much faster then Firefox.

;)

[gerardwil]

Opera, no issues seen by now. I read there are no bugs to patch right now.
The ad I blocked.

[SvS]

-{ Quote: "The only webpages that are not shown perfectly in Opera are those who are not w3c.org compliant.
" }-
To be fair, Opera has some rendering problems (mostly CSS related) which will prevent even 100% valid HTML pages from displaying correctly. The "Standard Compliance" fairy tale is usually brought into the game by the developers every time their rendering engine has problems. In addition, if a single missing end tag in a nested layout or a single vendor specific tag in the pages CSS destroys the entire page design, "Standard Compliance" is just a poor excuse IMO.

[Paranoid2000]

-{ Quote: "Opera, no issues seen by now. I read there are no bugs to patch right now." }-Well, come to mention it, I encountered a number of crashes with Opera 8 (typically when entering a long response on a forum thread too...bah! :(). However the 8.01 beta (preview 1 build 7583, available from the Opera for Windows - Previews and Betas (http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/) page) seems to have fixed that problem.

[Jamestaylor]

BTW Maxthon has a known link with steadysearch, a well known scumbag company that uses browser hijacking and other evil practises.

[rdsu]

-{ Quote: "BTW Maxthon has a known link with steadysearch, a well known scumbag company that uses browser hijacking and other evil practises." }-
I also don'r agree that Maxthon have a search link to "Steady Search"...

[Trooper]

-{ Quote: "b.t.w.
I think it is rather strange that Opera is that much faster then Firefox.

;)" }-

Not on my machine. Firefox owned Opera bigtime. Unless there are some tweaks for Opera (like FF has) then the results on my machine did not show that at all.

Firefox opened and rendered pages MUCH faster than Opera for me.

Windows XP SP2
P4 3.0ghz
1.5GB RAM

Jag

P.S. K-Meleon on the other hand, now that is a fast browser! :o

[jamestaylor]

-{ Quote: "I also don'r agree that Maxthon have a search link to "Steady Search"..." }-

Don't agree? It's a fact

See for example

http://forum.maxthon.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1163&st=0&p=8006&#entry8006

[rdsu]

-{ Quote: "Don't agree? It's a fact

See for example

http://forum.maxthon.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1163&st=0&p=8006&#entry8006" }-

What you don't agree!?

[jamestaylor]

-{ Quote: "What you don't agree!?" }-

I agree that it is linked to steady search.

[rdsu]

-{ Quote: "I agree that it is linked to steady search." }-
perceived badly what you said, sorry...

[tuatara]

-{ Quote: "To be fair, Opera has some rendering problems (mostly CSS related) which will prevent even 100% valid HTML pages from displaying correctly. " }-

Can you give an example of the rendering problems? because i haven't seen those yet, and i like to learn about that.

-{ Quote: "The "Standard Compliance" fairy tale is usually brought into the game by the developers every time their rendering engine has problems. In addition, if a single missing end tag in a nested layout or a single vendor specific tag in the pages CSS destroys the entire page design, "Standard Compliance" is just a poor excuse IMO." }-

I totally disagree on that, there are a lot things made in websites
that are not w3c compliant but especially build for 1 brand webbrowser,
a lot of those features are not within the w3c standards because of their security problems.

Example:
Now that Internet Explorer is rapidly loosing customers, (logical because it is by far the most UNSAFE browser there is out there!)
more customers can see,with ALL kinds of other browsers which websites
are specificly built for Internet Explorer.

The compliance story has caused MILLIONS of Internet Explorer users to have problems with Browser hijackers, spy and adware and other malware that they otherwise wouldn't have.

Near my personal opinion a really good Anti Malware program
should remove Internet Explorer from your system,
sadly it is so hacked into the OS that this is not possible anymore.

;D

[pcalvert]

-{ Quote: "
Near my personal opinion a really good Anti Malware program
should remove Internet Explorer from your system,
sadly it is so hacked into the OS that this is not possible anymore.

;D" }-


That's a fairly common myth. It can be done. Using 98Lite or IEradicator, one can remove IE from Windows 98. I've been considering setting up a lean installation of Win98SE called "98micro" that is 100% IE-free, and which I will use primarily for email and the web. If I ever need to use Internet Explorer, I will just boot into Win2K or a different installation of Win98SE that is "chubbier." :)

Using other utilities or techniques, IE can also be removed from Windows 2000 and Windows XP. If you remove all of it, some programs will break, so one would normally leave the IE core files alone and remove the rest. Some people don't care, though, and they remove all of it.


Phil

[James Taylor]

-{ Quote: "perceived badly what you said, sorry..." }-

Sound like Yoda, you do.

[Rasheed187]

When it comes to features and ease of use I would recommend Maxthon. Yes, Opera and Firefox are probably more secure, but the risk of getting hacked via IE is not big enough to switch to another browser IMO.

At the moment there are 20 unpatched holes in IE (info from secunia.com), but if you look closer, most of them are less critical and for the highly critical ones there are workarounds.

Of course there are probably numerous of zero day bugs in IE (that perhaps have not been discovered yet), but I think most people who are getting malware via IE, are getting them through known (probably patched) holes, not zero day bugs.

And of course you should always run an AV-AT-AS, firewall and IPS system, 100% security doesn´t exist but it will make the life of a hacker/cracker more difficult. ;)

Edit: Changed "not critical" to "less critical".

[Rasheed187]

Btw, you should also lock down IE as much as possible:

I´m running Maxthon on XP SP2 in "non admin mode" and I have configured IE in the most secure way, that basically means I have disabled almost everything in the "Internet/Local Machine Zone". To lock down IE even more I also use "prepatch" tools like "BugOff" and "Secure IT". Of course IE/Windows should always be fully patched. :)

Maxthon also makes it very easy to toggle ActiveX, Java and Java/VBscript and it also features a very good popupblocker. Perhaps in the future, a "Download control per page" feature will also be implemented (like in Netscape). 8)

[rdsu]

The problem of IE, and of course Maxthon, it's that he doesn't have all the standard to see webpages...

Now we will have the long waited v7.0, but let we see if this a version to mantain or a version for more 5 years without improvements...

[Rasheed187]

That´s the good news of course, it can only become better in IE 7. And hopefully Maxthon will profit from that. I forgot to mention that Maxthon also features an ActiveX blocker. ;D

And no, it´s also not spy or adware, you only see an offer for the ZYB SMS service once and the default search engine is set to Steadysearch. You can all change that easily. :)

[James Taylor]

-{ Quote: "That´s the good news of course, it can only become better in IE 7. And hopefully Maxthon will profit from that. I forgot to mention that Maxthon also features an ActiveX blocker. ;D
" }-

So does IE XP SP2.

-{ Quote: "

And no, it´s also not spy or adware, you only see an offer for the ZYB SMS service once and the default search engine is set to Steadysearch. You can all change that easily. :)" }-

Any product that displays a unsolicited ad, is adware. Maxthon is adware.

[tuatara]

-{ Quote: "
Now we will have the long waited v7.0, but let we see if this a version to mantain or a version for more 5 years without improvements...
" }-


I will be very suprised, if Internet Explorer succeed, to move from the first place since Internet Explorer is, from the start, version 0.0 Beta the number one!

(regarding the unsafest browser there is) ;D

To be honest, i think you only find changes that other browsers
already have for years.

MS was never that good in INventing new things...

[rdsu]

-{ Quote: "Any product that displays a unsolicited ad, is adware. Maxthon is adware." }-
Where did you see adware in Maxthon?

[Acadia]

-{ Quote: "Maxthon is adware." }-
IT IS??

[Rasheed187]

Lol, if Maxthon is adware, then what is Opera? "Super-Adware" perhaps? :P

Anyway, perhaps you´re right, but we all know that Maxthon is not listed as adware on any site, and it´s also not recognized as adware by none of the spyware apps, so this discussion is kind of irrelevant.

And Maxthon´s ActiveX blocker is handy for people on Win9X/2000 of course. :)

[Rasheed187]

@ tuatara

VaMPiRiC_CRoW and I don´t really care about IE7 the browser, but we care about IE7 the engine. ;D I´m not expecting to see a whole lot of "power user" features in IE7.

[James Taylor]

-{ Quote: "Lol, if Maxthon is adware, then what is Opera? "Super-Adware" perhaps? :P " }-

Maxthon and Opera (free) are both adware. I'm not familar with the term super-Adware. I would appreciate a link to that, Rasheed187.

-{ Quote: "
Anyway, perhaps you´re right, but we all know that Maxthon is not listed as adware on any site, and it´s also not recognized as adware by none of the spyware apps, so this discussion is kind of irrelevant.
" }-

Why would spyware apps recognise other adware apps? Anyway, standards have gone so far down that nowdays adware isn't recognised unless it is more like spyware. I do agree that Maxthon is fairly benign adware.



And Maxthon´s ActiveX blocker is handy for people on Win9X/2000 of course. :) " }-

Makes it worthless to me, and many people here then. So much for Maxthon being more "Secure" than IE LOL.

[Acadia]

Ok, and can you direct us to one link, one thread, one ANYTHING that explains how Maxthon is Adware, ???

Acadia

[Eldar]

-{ Quote: "Maxthon and Opera (free) are both adware. I'm not familar with the term super-Adware. I would appreciate a link to that, Rasheed187." }-Have a look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adware) and the Opera Privacy Statement (http://www.opera.com/privacy/).

While Opera is adware, there's nothing malicious about it. :)

[James Taylor]

-{ Quote: "Ok, and can you direct us to one link, one thread, one ANYTHING that explains how Maxthon is Adware, ???

Acadia" }-

Are you blind? This very thread, shows that it is ad-aware. Even Rasheed agrees.

Any product that advertises another product (except perhaps nag screens to upgrade?) is adware,

Unlike noobies here who think 'malicious software' when they see the word adware, I'm remember the days when adware was not malicious.

[SvS]

-{ Quote: "Can you give an example of the rendering problems? because i haven't seen those yet, and i like to learn about that." }-
If you can make an input box fill a div using CSS so that there are no margins on the top and on the left when displayed in Opera, please let me know I'd like to reuse the code.

As for the rest of your post, I doubt that we are talking about the same things. I referred to HTML/XHMTL/CSS standards which really has nothing to do with imagined or real security problems. Such thing like a "secure browser" does not exist and those having problems with spyware and other things while using IE will manage to have similar problems regardless of the browser they use and regardless of the W3C standards their browsers support.

[Rasheed187]

@ James Taylor

What I meant is the following: Opera constantly displays an ad, while Maxthon only gives you a popup once, but after that you´re never bothered again. There is clearly a difference between the two.

And as far as I know, adware does get recognized by anti spyware apps, I´ve seen adware that pops up when the sidebar is accessed, or during surfing in IE. And I´m talking about pure adware not spyware.

I don´t understand your comment about the ActiveX-blocker being useless, there are still lots of people running Win 9x/2000, and it´s also useful for people who don´t want to use the XP SP2 blocker. ;)

[Rasheed187]

@ James Taylor

About Maxthon being safer than IE, I´ve never claimed this but in some cases it actually is safer. To give you an example, the iframe hole was fixed in Maxthon months before MS fixed it, and it actually saved people from becoming infected with the Bofra worm.

I also recall that there was a bug in IE which was fixed by the "Ignore window ID assignment in frames" setting in Maxthon´s options.

And btw, I´ve noticed that Maxthon is not vulnerable to the following holes, the third test didn´t work in IE either (Win XP SP1):

http://secunia.com/advisories/12304/
http://secunia.com/advisories/15491/
http://secunia.com/advisories/13251/