And one major improvement in Firefox 6 is speed. Firefox lost a lot of power users to Chrome because the Google browser is faster, lighter and feels better than Firefox. But the Mozilla team didn’t give up.

Last Firefox releases have much better speed and performance. And Firefox 7 seems to be another great improvement in this area. Let’s wait and hope Firefox will become a serious competitor to Chrome’s speed.

WebKit is the main player in nearly all mobile devices. iPhone, Android, WebOS, Nokia, BlackBerry and many more operating systems are using a WebKit browser with a relative updated version. This means we can use complex JavaScript mobile websites with HTML5, CSS3 and a lot of cool things.

Of course we have some exceptions. Windows Mobile and Windows Phone use some Internet Explorer variation, an old, outdated and bad browser for mobile. But we have some cool alternative mobile browsers too, like Opera Mobile, Firefox Mobile, Skyfire and a few others.

Which browser are you using on mobile?

In this new world, there’s  no place to major browser versions. There’s no place to big releases with years between them. We need a continuous release cycle with constant improvements and a simpler user experience.

Google Chrome was the first browser to realize this new requirements. When you download Chrome you’re not downloading version “4″ or “9″. You’re downloading Chrome and you always have the latest version (whatever it is) thanks to automatic updates.

The HTML5 expert group also noted that the new Web needs this continuous flow of inovation. There’s no HTML version anymore. There’s is just HTML, an evolving technology.

Older browsers still suffer from this “major version” release cycle. Firefox recently tried to change its release cycle to a more frequent one. Firefox 5 is expected just a few months after Firefox 4. And, according to the planned release dates, we will see Firefox 6 and 7 this year. But how much time until we have simple “Firefox”? No versions attached? Just the latest Mozilla goodness? My guess? Very soon.

Internet Explorer still has those big numbers attached to every release. They are also trying to decrease the interval between releases. IE 10 was announced just after IE 9 official release. Other browsers like Safari and Opera also have specific versions – Opera being the worst one labeling its versions, with an obscure numbering scheme.

A versionless Web is the best strategy to a continuous and constant evolution. It’s better for users, that don’t have to think about versions and updates, and will always have the latest version. And it’s better for developers that don’t need to think about supporting older browser versions.

It’s a great moment for the Web Design community. Although everybody here is using a better browser, most end users still use IE. And an update like this bringing HTML5 and CSS3 to the masses is a great moment. Developers using Linux or Mac don’t even need to test on IE9 every time, since every modern browser has the same features. No more doubled efforts to develop we had with IE6 ou 7.

Access the IE6 CountDown by Microsoft: http://ie6countdown.com/

We will soon update the program do support this new Internet Explorer 9 version.

All script modifications were already incorporated to IEs4Linux (see version 2.99.0). But we decided to also join forces to make the Mac GUI, Mac Application Bundles, easy Darwine installation and other things. That’s what we are calling the future IEs4Mac.

IEs4Linux and IEs4Mac are 99% equal; they do the same thing, the same way, with the same code. That’s why we decided to maintain everything together instead of creating a “new project”. The difference between then are very small (but very important do end users).

As I wrote before, Mac users already can run IEs4Linux 2.99.0 – it works on Mac Intels with Tiger or Leopard. But, soon, Mac users will have that “dedicated version” with a beautiful GUI and so on. (* people trying to run 2.99.0 on Mac: you need wine first; I recommend that you use one of Mike’s pre-compiled versions, just drag them to /Applications and run IEs4Linux)

I like webdesign very much (hey, that’s why I started ies4linux!), so I designed a new logo to celebrate this Mac support. Tell me what you think about it

Technical points

The GUI is written entirely in Python. Mike did something with ObjC before, but I’m now rewriting this. The point here is to have the same GUI on Linux and Mac, that’s why I chose Python. I’ll provide two implementations now: PyGTK (Linux) and wxWindows (Mac and Linux). You can see the python script (preliminary stage!) on svn.

Talking to Mike, we think about distributing four flavors of IEs4Linux+Mac:

* ies4linux.tar.gz : Focused on Linux people, with GUI installation, for end users
* ies4linux-script.tar.gz : only the bash scripts for power-users (useful to embed on other things, to make automatic installations, …)
* ies4mac.dmg : Focused on Mac end-users. Nice GUI, mountable dmg, easy installation
* ies4mac-script.tar.gz : like the Linux one, only with those few mac tweaks

I like those GUIs because end-users can run our software easily. But, as a power user, I like automated scripts too. That’s why we though about those “flavors”. And, as you may think, the core of ies4linux+mac (99%) is the same with all four downloads.

So that’s where we are now. We are working hard to make this happen soon. Also, I’m working on bugs and improvements you sent to me since our last post (thanks everyone for that).

And a special thanks (from Mike and me) to people that support this project with donations.

Stay tuned!