We started writing Enquiring Mimes just over a year ago and one of our first entries was intended to convince you to start using the Firefox browser. Mozilla had, amidst great hoopla,  just released Firefox 3.

We gave you a number of reasons to switch if you were still using MS Internet Explorer — they’re probably still true today, but the landscape changed.  There are now two other competitive web browsers, Google Chrome and Apple Safari, both very fast and by comparison their speed made Firefox 3 seem very slow.

Our story has a happy ending. Firefox 3.5, a major release, has been sent out into the world and once again, Firefox is great.  They replaced the Java engine and it’s now as fast as the other guys and there’s a lot to like.  It’s nice to come home to Firefox without sacrificing speed and there are more great plug-ins than ever.

Here’s the top five best features of Firefox 3.5

• Fast – according to betanews.com, Firefox 3,5 is 251% faster than Firefox 3.
• Location-aware browsing – if you let it, Firefox can figure out where you are and give location information to sites you’ve approved providing you a more local experience.
• Support for new web technology -  This will be a benefit in the future as sites begin to use the new features like downloadable fonts
• Better handling of tabs and windows – easier recovery of mistakenly closed tabs and windows.
• Private browsing – Firefox will keep no records of your browsing if you head for the wrong side of the tubes.

Here was our list from last year for Firefox 3: (all still true, “great performance” has been regained)

• Secure
• Great performance
• Smart URL bar learns how you browse
• Smart bookmarks
• Smarter “Remembered Password” handling
• Good security and malware protection
• Use it on Windows, Mac and Linux

Download Firefox 3.5.

Related articles

• Top 5 Killer Features in Firefox 3.5 (mashable.com)

In the good tool gets gooder department, today we have a new update to Google’s Chrome browser. With the new update comes a few new features which include:

New Tab Page Improved: The New Tab page in Chrome, by default, shows large thumbnails of your most visited sites to help you navigate quickly to them. That’s normally pretty helpful and cool, as long as one of the sites you visit often isn’t one that you would just as soon people not know about, like say Perez Hilton. Now on the tab page you have the ability to delete sites that you’d just as soon not have the boss or the mate know that you thaaat much.

Full Screen Mode: Google Chrome, by it’s minimalism, by default, gives you plenty of room to view your web page. Sometimes you just want a little more. Now by toggling F11 key there is a full-screen mode to use every pixel available.

Form Autofill: The browser now, also has, Form Autofill so that as you fill out web forms, previous information that you have entered is added to forms automatically. Stored information can be cleared out from the tools menu.

Okay, now you can say, that’s nice but not very exciting, all browsers do that kind of stuff. Probably the most significant changes to Google Chrome is under the hood. Over 300 bugs that caused crashes have been fixed. Probably the most important to me, the reason I use Google Chrome, the fastest browser has gotten 30% faster.

If you’re already using Google Chrome, it will update automatically — if you want to give it a try, install it from google.com/chrome.

Here at Enquiring Mimes we have a set of Web apps that we use every single day.  We’re always happy to see them improved, so here’s a summary of what’s new around our world of working online.

Oh yeah, it’s also a good time to give them a try if you haven’t yet.

Gmail – Our always favorite web mail has made it easier to perform Google searches while you’re reading your email.  Through the Labs technology, you can place a Web Search widget into your sidebar that when searched, does not disrupt emails you might be reading or writing.  Also, new today, Google has made it much easier to import email from older web email services (read Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL).  Now you have no excuse not to move to Google, Jim.

Google Calendar – The Google To-do list function called Tasks which had previously been integrated into Gmail is now also available in Google Calendar.  It’s a good way to create tasks with due dates and be able to see the To-Do items created in Gmail in your calendar.

Zoho – The Zoho office suite continues to develop and evolve, some of the more recent updates include being able to gadgetize (a word?) your Zoho documents and apps and put them in blogs, websites and Facebook.  Zoho is an excellent alternative to Google Docs for a free web office suite plus extras.  It is now spiffily accessible from mobile devices such as the iPhone.

Evernote – The best note-taking, information sharing uber-app around continues to update their product.  Recently they’ve added support for Blackberry mobile devices, the ability to direct your Twitter messages to Evernote account and localization into Russian.  We’re still waiting for Evernote for the Android G1.

MindMeister – This web-based mind mapping tool continues to be spruced up and enhanced.  What’s new includes localizations for German and Japanese, inline images, new formatting and a new widget for embedding your mind maps externally.  Since mind mapping is not a skill that’s in everyone’s repertoire,  playing with Mindmeister is well worth the time.  If you are of us who find it easier to visualize your world rather than just see it as lists, you’ll be surprised to find how intuitive it can be to create a mind map of exactly what’s on your mind.

VLC – While not a web app, VLC, the open source video do-everything is approaching their production 1.0 release with a release candidate.  The RC sports a spiffy new user interface and, as always, VLC is the best and easiest way to view your digital videos.

Software development is tied to an update cycle that requires continuous releases for a number of reasons – engineering – keeping up with technology, marketing – keeping your product looking fresh and in front of consumers and sales – use your products to sell more.   Branding also needs considering –  do you make a new version a major update – something like MyProduct 5 or a minor update MyProduct 4.5 — is this really some new and different or just an evolutionary step?

Apple this week released iTunes 8, a free download for Windows and Mac.  If you own an iPod you most likely use iTunes to manage your music and your videos, so you’ll probably consider downloading the upgrade.

What’s New?

There are one and half new features worth noting.

One – Genius Playlists and (sidebar) – The major new feature in iTunes 8 is the ability to create “Genius” playlists.  Select one of your favorite songs, press the Genius button and iTunes will try and create a new playlist for you from songs already in your library which are the same kind of music and would be good to listen to together. 

You can refresh the genius playlist and get more songs and if you really like, you can save it and listen to the playlist again later.  It’s kind of like Pandora.com for your own music library.  There is a less exciting associated feature – the genius sidebar which when you select one of your songs will show you in a sidebar songs that Apple might like you to buy you might like to buy from the iTunes store.

Half – Grid View – A minor, but cute, new feature in iTunes is a view of your albums featuring a grid of thumbnails of cover art.  You can view your albums, by album, artist, genre and composer.

That leaves us with the question – did those feature make this a major upgrade – should it be iTunes 8 or iTunes 7.5? Let us know in your comments.

Download iTunes 8