The Mozilla team released its first alpha release of Firfox 3.0 today, giving Firfox download 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 final version of Firfox 3.0 is expected to be released by the end of 2007. Developers hope that it will be a major step toward making Web applications indistinguishable from programs that are installed on the desktop, Schroepfer said.

Gran Paradiso features better support for a number of graphics standards, such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language and the Canvas specification, Schroepfer said. “These are fairly major architectural changes to enable us to improve performance.”

Firfox 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.

The Firfox 3 download plan calls for browsing, bookmarking, and privacy enhancements to be built into the browser, but Schroepfer said there is still a lot of time to work out new features. “It’s a bit early to be talking about the user-facing features,” he said.

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