Maxthon Adds GPU Rendering for Smoother Text on Web Pages

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Maxthon

Apr 15, 2010, 08:00 ET

BEIJING, April 15 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Browser developer Maxthon International this week announced a technical preview version of the upcoming Maxthon 3.0 that uses a computer's graphics processing unit (GPU), a microprocessor on a PC's graphics card, to display smoother text on Web pages.

GPU rendering will be used in conjunction with Webkit, one of two code sets that make up Maxthon 3.0's hybrid rendering engine. The engine translates a Web's page's HTML code into text and graphics displayed on the PC's screen. The other code set is Trident, used to optimize older Web pages written for Internet Explorer's vintage display standards. Maxthon's rendering engine switches automatically between the two code interpreters depending on the type of Web page the browser is opening.

http://blog.maxthon.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/1.jpg

The accompanying illustration's enlargements show that fonts are noticeably smoother and cleaner with GPU rendering enabled, particularly on curves and diagonal lines.

Jeff Chen, CEO of Maxthon, said the current implementation of GPU rendering is merely an initial step. The final version will be more powerful and will support more features, Chen said.

GPU rendering is widely used in Windows applications, but it is fairly new to Web browsers. The only two other browsers known to use GPU rendering are Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox. Essentially the technology uses the power of the graphics processor to display Web page graphics and text using, respectively, the Direct2D and DirectWrite Windows APIs. Web pages look better and load faster as a result.

Almost a year after the initial release of Maxthon 3.0 Alpha, Maxthon has just released the final Alpha version and will soon officially move to the Beta stage. Chen said Maxthon had not rushed features during the Alpha stage but focused on the foundations supporting the program and worked on various aspects of Webkit, including the implementation of GPU rendering.

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SOURCE Maxthon

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