Submitted by: kirkland on Saturday December 09th, 2006 at 07:36 PM EST

Mozilla today hit an early milestone on the road to the next version of its open-source browser, but the final product is still a year away, developers say.

The Mozilla team released its first alpha release of Firefox 3.0 today, giving Firefox and Web application developers an early look at the next-generation browser. This release is not intended for regular users, not even those who like to play around with early versions of a product, Mozilla said.

The software, code-named Gran Paradiso, comes just six weeks after Mozilla shipped version 2.0 of the browser, but it has already been more than a year in development, according to Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

Firefox 3.0 also supports the Cairo graphics library, which aims to make Web pages look the same whether they are being printed or viewed on a Windows PC, a Macintosh, or a small-screen device.

» Full story @ PC World