Maxthon Surges Forward with Release of Max-3 Alpha (3.0.0.140)
DNS Prefetching Speeds Up Display of Pages When a Link is Clicked
BEIJING, July 28 — Hardly a week after announcing the public release of the alpha 4 of it’s new browser, Maxthon today released 3.0.0.140 alpha of Max-3, the Internet’s first automatic drive hybrid browser.
The free alpha of Max-3 is available for download at http://dl.maxthon.cn/mx3/mx3.0.0.140.exe
Max-3, expected to be officially released early next year, will contain two rendering engines. One is the Trident engine already used in the current version of Maxthon, as well as in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer: the second rendering engine that is used by Max-3, known as Webkit, is also used by Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers.
The hybrid browser will automatically switch between the two engines, depending on whether a webpage was created using the original HTML formatting or was designed with the newer cascading style sheets (CSS).
Faster DNS Information
One of the major improvements featured in 3.0.0.140 alpha is the prefetching of domain name system (DNS) addresses, a change that improves browsing speeds. When a link is clicked, a browser has to contact one of several DNS servers on the Internet that maintain lists of domain names, such as www.maxthon.com, matched up to a DNS numerical address (for example, 219.232.241.166). The browser has to retrieve the numerical address before it can download the page’s contents.
With DNS prefetching, while a webpage is loading, Max-3 resolves links it finds on the page and stores the information in the background. Then, if a users clicks one of the page’s links, Max-3 begins downloading the new page without having to request the address information from a DNS server.
3.0.0.140 alpha also contains updates, fixes to the Webkit core, and improved support for keyboard shortcuts and mouse buttons.
Shifting Gears
In Maxthon’s hybrid rendering engines, running display commands through Webkit is called Ultra Mode in recognition of its extreme high speed and its ability to work with the latest Web design fashions. Ultra Mode significantly improves JavaScript execution and page loading speeds. It also has a much better support for the W3C standards, as evidenced by Max-3’s passing of the W3C’s Acid2 and Acid3 tests.
Most of the time, Max-3 will operate in Ultra Mode. Max-3 may encounter pages, such as certain online banking sites, that Webkit cannot display. When that happens, Max-3 automatically suspends Ultra Mode and engages the Trident engine to put the browser into Retro Mode. As the name suggests, Retro Mode will function to display correctly webpages that have used the same design commands that originated some 20 years ago. The switch from Ultra to Retro is seamless and ordinarily goes unnoticed by the user.
If the browsing mode is not switched automatically, the user can make the switch manually by clicking the Browsing Mode button next to the address bar. Maxthon makes a data entry about the mode selected by the user, and automatically activates that mode during return visits to the page.
——Maxthonguy
