Mozilla Foundation has launched the developer release of Firefox 3.0, designed to deliver a preview to the next generation of the open source browser. "Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 is an early developer milestone for the next generation of Mozilla's layout engine, Gecko 1.9. Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 is being made available for testing purposes only, and is intended for web application developers and our testing community," revealed Mozilla.

In fact, Mozilla does not recommend that current Firefox users switch to Gran Paradiso Alpha 1. Mozzila added that the release features the same graphical user interface as Firefox 2.0, and underlined the fact that Firefox 3.0 Gran Paradiso bring to the table core layout and rendering enhancements. Mozilla will introduce modifications on a gradual basis with additional testing versions of Gran Paridiso. "This is the first of many frequent alpha releases for Gran Paradiso/Gecko 1.9," promised Mozilla.

Firefox 3.0 Gran Paradiso is following the release of Firefox 2.0 at a distance of six months. Mozilla failed to present an official release date for the consumer version of Firefox 3.0, but the final variant of the open source browser is expected to be made available by the end of 2007. Currently Gran Paradiso delivers support for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Mozilla did not specify particular support for Windows Vista, but it has discontinued support for the Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME platforms. Gran Paradiso features Cairo as the default graphics library, impacting graphic and text rendering, an updated threading model and new SVG elements and filters.

Firefox 3.0 Gran Paradiso was tested by Softpedia as being 100% Free and is available for download here.