WEDNESDAY JAN. 21st 11 AM
Alrighty…I’m going to start with this one.
What is the future RSS reader and SkyNote built in Maxthon Browser? Are these services will be further developed? Are there any specific plans? Skynote application was not updated since March 2012, is it going to change?
We will be doing sporadic, light updates of the RSS reader to maintain the feature, as with Skynote. Right now we have no plans to do much more to SkyNote other than to keep it updated and working.
What is the future Maxthon Kid Safe Web Browser? Does it receive some updates in the near future?
We are currently considering a major update to the Kid Safe Web browser to make it more useful as a mobile app. The plan is to take it beyond just the browser. Can’t say much more than that. Working out the timing and details of that project as we speak.
Why Poland is constantly ignored by the team Maxthon? Why Home Maxthon.com still does not support the Polish language?
I wouldn’t say Poland is constantly ignored by Maxthon. Our Polish customers have created a very vibrant and active community. Localizing the news pages is something we will be doing more of in 2015 — starting with an updated Russian start page — and then the UK.
Kind of like fast.maxthon.com and usa.maxthon.com/nitro … When he lived to see the Polish language?
Localizing start page is something we are beginning to do much more of — it’s a function of time, # of potential users and resources — as you probably know.
Whether and when to move Maxthon Nitro translation?
Nitro just officially launched. We will be localizing it into more languages as the weeks progress.
And finally, the last question: What plans do you have for the current year in terms of Maxthon Browser and other services?
The current year is one of fairly significant change for Maxthon. We will continue to update and improve our browsers but will also be exploring the creation of separate apps — including games. Look for some cool new products coming out in the next couple of months. Some have been in development since Q2 of last year.
Is the current year will be just as exciting as the previous?
All I can say is, If you thought last year was exciting 2015 will be more so…
PS: One more question, more a curiosity. What actually keeps the company Maxthon, since almost all services gives us for free? What brings you the most profit? What now is the state of your finances?
Great question — and one I get all of the time. Regarding how we make our money, Maxthon is like all other browser companies — we have partnerships with major search engines that drive traffic to the engines. In return for driving search queries we get a certain amount of money (different by country) for a 1000 queries sent to the search engine. We have partnerships with Google, Baidu and Yandex. That’s a big part of our overall revenue. But it isn’t the only part. In fact, we have diversified our revenue into other streams – including profitable web portals. www.maxthon.cn works like ‘yahoo.com’ — the content and e-commerce partnerships drive revenue. Also, we have moved more aggressively into games as a business, which also helps. To sum up, Maxthon’s finances are great. We have several, active and growing sources of revenue and spend our money conservatively. The company is solidly positioning to grow as mobile grows.
Hello Karl, We in the Linux community are wondering where development stands with Maxthon for Linux. Some of us are concerned that development for Maxthon’s Linux browser might have stopped. Needless to say, we’re hoping this is not the case. Are there any insights you might like to share with us who prefer using Maxthon Cloud Browser for Linux?
Hi — First, thank-you for using our Linux product. You are correct, Linux development has slowed. We haven’t yet gotten much traction on that plaform re: users. As such we’ve scaled back update frequency. It’s a software chicken/egg conundrum – hard to justify resources if the users aren’t there and growing — but it’s hard to get users without adding more value to the product. Having said that, we will keep the linux product stable and current. We will also do some digging to get a more detailed understanding of upcoming linux updates.
I would like to know what is the status of development for the Windows Phone application. Last version on the Windows Phone Store is from 09/15/2014. As a Global Moderator, some of the functions I use produce an error and the Dev’s have been notified a number of times, yet nothing is done to rectify the problem. Has development for Windows Phone also stopped?
Development for Windows Phone has not stopped, we are simply looking for a new product manager to drive that platform.
Can someone please get onto the dev team about making the UI a cohesive experience. Almost everything has it’s own style dialog. See this thread for more details. Is it possible to have someone spend a little bit of time just cleaning things up, update some icons, consolidate the dialog/tab/chrome types to one style.
Well, first off, the dev team does not do the UI/UX of the browser, our product managers and designers do. Good news though, throughout 2015 we will be implementing more of Google’s ‘material design’ guidelines in our products. That will standardize the experience a bit more.
Any details on the updated extensions system that BugSir007 hinted at here?
No updates on that. As I mentioned at the time, I strongly think we should be investing in making our entire extension effort more robust. It’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned. But that decision is also not mine.
What’s going on with the talk of being “more proactive about WHY a specific feature is not in the browser”. I think it’s fair to say that hasn’t been the case. The general response is “thank you for your request, we’ll pass it on to the team…” and it will never be discussed again till someone post about it again.
We can’t do every feature request, as you well know. We can do a better job about informing why. In most cases the decision is a combination of, ‘that’s more time-consuming than one might think to implement and, of our millions of monthly users, only 3 people have requested it.
Any update on a universal store app for Windows, especially now with win 10 around the corner?
We’re taking a wait and see on that question.
Any update on creating a web portal/micro site for skin/extension developers?
No update.
What is your take on Microsoft introducing a new browser using a forked version of Trident to be released alongside Windows 10?
My take is that Microsoft, following the lead of Maxthon, realized there was a real market need for a stripped-down, minimalist browser. The timing is pretty uncanny. (See this blog post – https://www.maxthon.com/blog/nitr … with-your-own-eyes/) My guess is the bigger thing driving it was that to add support for things like Cortana, offline reading and the page annotation, it was easier to start from scratch than wrestle with IE’s bloated code base — and fix a few long-standing problems from IE at the same time.
Given the lack of updates of Maxthon on a number of platforms, in hindsight do you think it was a mistake using resources to create these versions that may have been better utilised on bug fixing/tweaking/adding features for MX for PC/Android?
Hindsight is always 20/20, but we do not think it was a mistake to branch into different platforms. The key metrics that drives our decision-making around resource allocation to any one platform are: # of DAU/MAUs; uninstall rate and crash rate. For both PC and Android, MAUs continue to go up while the uninstall rate has remained low (and within what we could call normal. And, the crash rate has actually gone done for both platforms. Also, the resources required to add new platforms did not come from either our Android or PC teams. The question of adding new features remains balance between user-desire/usage rate of the proposed feature against any performance or stability hit adding such feature generates. Unlike the old days, we are a lot more careful and judicious regarding adding new features to any of our browsers — mainly because we don’t want to impact performance. We do that because every user test, survey and in-person test we do tells us the same #1 priority — make the browser as fast and stable as possible.
Anything you can tease about upcoming features etc that users might have to look forward to?
Well, you’re probably aware of the new PC and now Android versions of Maxthon coming with ADBlock Plus integration. Our own Ad Hunter is pretty good, but Ad Block Plus is the best, most comprehensive and most globally supported, ad block solution on the web, We’re excited about that. We also have a new Android browser that we will release in Alpha form later this week. I spent a good hour pounding on it yesterday — it’s slick, performs well and is really easy to use on an Android device.
When will be translated registration process in the Maxthon Passport to another languages?
Can’t give you and exact date but know that we are pushing hard to do it this year.
Can you make new build with updated languages for Maxthon for Linux (you forgot update languages in the last version) and Maxthon Kid Safe Web Browser?
Yes. We will look into that and get back to you.
If you have any questions, leave them in comments section, we will be more than happy to answer them!