Maxthon Issues Official Response Regarding The HTML5Test

By | July 10, 2012 | 18 Comments

Maxthon Issues Official Response Regarding The HTML5TestReestablishes the trust.

Recently, Maxthon was accused of cheating its score in the HTML5Test but, as it turns out, it’s not all doom and gloom for the Chinese company.

As explained in their official blog post, they simply released a build that (partially) supports Web GL, ‘Get user media’ and ‘Subtitles’ attributes too quickly and that, as a result, caused quite a backlash.

Here is what they had to say:

Specifically, some have cited our work implementing Web GL, ‘Get user media’ and ‘Subtitles.’ We looked into the work behind that, and here’s what we found: We pushed out code in a build of Mx3 that wasn’t ready to be pushed out. Plain and simple: That code should not have been released. It wasn’t complete.

Unfortunately, as it was implemented, it triggered a positive response from HTML5test.com. Hence the allegation of ‘scamming.’ That was a mistake; and we will fix the code within the week. It was not some effort to manipulate our score on HTML5test.com. It was a result of a development process that can be improved.

Engineers approach their work differently. Some start with an architectural idea of how they want to implement something, and they code toward that end vision. Others jump in, start coding and test until their code works. In this situation, one of our Mx3 engineers was coding, testing against the HTML5test.com and tweaking until it appeared to him that it worked. To put it another way, this was an engineer-error that should have been caught in QA.

That’s it, no conspiracy here, folks.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

    V, in your personal opinion, do you feel their response was enough? For me I think it was as the HTML5Test is actually poorly written and there is no way of verifying if a particular feature works.

    • http://hector-macias.blogspot.com Hector Macias Ayala

      Well they didnt argue that, so they must interested in presenting themselves as html5test compatible as they are coming with an official response.

      • jayjam

        Are their developers clueless? Why would they develop against html5test and not the actual specification?

        • Marcos

          This is pretty common. Marketing counts a lot, specially when you are small browser firm. 

          • jayjam

            I’m seeing a pattern: Maxthon constantly lying. Remember their press release bragging about all the stuff they “invented” which it turned out was just a bunch of lies?

          • Mikah

            Yep I remember not so long ago.
            Safari & Microsoft are two other companies who are very economical with the truth or as we say in the UK lying bast*rds

          • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

            Every company lies. From big to small, they have to be conservative with the truth as they want to have a big advantage over their competition.

            I can’t say anything for Maxthon but at least they’re trying to be honest about their mistakes.

          • jayjam

            @twitter-110151272:disqus ,@1afe8995cd7233567b82b9d8a64c8723:disqus 

            There’s a big difference between regular marketing fluff and consistent and hugely misleading lies.

            When Apple claims Safari to be the fastest, they at least have some random artificla benchmark to back it up. When Maxthon claims that it’s the only Webkit company with an R&D department it’s just a huge and obnoxious lie.

    • http://www.favbrowser.com FavBrowser.com

      Well, it depends.

      Releasing a half baked build is one thing but releasing and bragging about the HTML5 scores is another.

      I am happy with their response.

      • LordLink

        +1 for me too.

        I’ve been using Maxthon for a couple of years and it’s a really enjoyable browser that’s evolving in good pace.
        I must although say that their QA still needs improvement as in a lot of occasion builds marked as stable turn out to be bugged sometimes.

        Nice official response IMO showing Maxthon interest in others opinion.

        • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

          Opera are falling into the same trap. Opera’s latest v12 release is actually quite buggy and unstable according to some (if not many).

          At least for Maxthon they can improve as they’re going up the ladder while Opera, I’m not too sure about.

          • hotteamix

            If you go by “some” opinion logic, every software released ever is quite buggy and unstable.

            There’s just no way to verify it unless you’re experiencing yourself, so please don’t speak for others.

          • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

            I wasn’t speaking for others, just merely saying that Opera 12 is buggy compared to the earlier versions.

            Every piece of software has their bugs, yes, but some are more noticeable than others.

          • jayjam

            Every latest release of every browser is quite buggy according to some/many. That’s because browsers are insanely complicated applications, so they will never work perfectly for all the unlimited setups out there.

            As for Maxthon, it is going nowhere. At least Opera is the dominant mobile browser.

          • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

            Opera is dominant in the Mobile sector, and I will agree that Maxthon Mobile doesn’t get the same attention as the desktop counterpart does, but Maxthon does have somewhere to go even if it doesn’t look like it.

            Browsers are incredibly complex (I’ve worked with WebKit in the past) so I completely understand that point.

          • jayjam

            “I wasn’t speaking for others, just merely saying that Opera 12 is buggy compared to the earlier versions.”

            That’s being said about all new versions of all browsers. It’s a pointless comment because there will always be bugs, so your subjective opinion based on being affected by a bug that doesn’t bother most other people doesn’t really help.

          • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

            I’m not going to start an argument with you as I was just saying something that has been experienced by at least a few users.

            There is no denying that bugs do creep in with every new version of a browser and there’s no sure-fire way of squashing all of them before a release is made final.

          • jayjam

            Yes, a few users of all browsers will experience problems with new versions. A fact of life.

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