wow factor

Download here or here

The Mac install was smooth, picking up existing Bookmarks and compatible Add-ons. Hopefully previous issues are resolved. Gmail v2.0 even works.

Via 37 Signals

To use the new web applications, make sure you have one of these browsers: Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox 2 or later.

With the pending release of Apple MobileMe, they are declaring IE6 as not worth bothering with.
That's market leading confidence, given IE6's lingering yet high penetration.

Will this becomes policy for all new Apple applications?

Download Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP® Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

Related Zeldman article and links on the IE8 version targeting pipe dream that has been dropped.

Mozilla call's it Personas. After going through the built in offering, I'll stick with browser bling

Personalising your browser might be a great point of difference in the battle for market share however I look forward to some more usable themes that don't have me searching for basic icons amongst the snow flakes, waterfalls and foxes.

via: Read Write Web, also sporting a new design.

View some examples.. click here

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1 Release Notes

Firefox have launched this beta version to the wider community with the express purpose of having it tested. If your a browser tragic then get involved, but be warned, your extensions wont work. Out of the 30 odd extensions I have installed only Dom Inspector and Add New Tab worked.

This version integrates the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine and the rewrite of code is extensive. My first impressions is that its UI changes are subtle and the speed improvements are very noticeable

Installation:
I simply installed it in it’s own folder and am having no problems running this and Firefox 2.0.0.9 on my Mac.
It picked up my profile and bookmarks just fine. There is also a new Mac specific skin, which may excite some but I find too dark.

Bookmarking sees huge improvements. One example is Tags, where you can associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a developer preview release of Mozilla’s next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only

Important:

Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.