Mozilla launched a beta of Firefox, it is a developer preview of the features and functions promised in the third major release of the popular open-source browser. Firefox 3 Beta 1 is available for testing so Mozilla can gain feedback before the software advances to the next stage in the release process. Mozilla's Firefox 3 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 platform, which includes nearly two million lines of code changes designed to fix some 11,000 issues and offer Firefox 3 add-on developers a lot to work with. "Much of the work leading up to this first beta has been around developing the infrastructure to support a bunch of exciting new features," Mozilla noted. "With this first beta, you'll get a taste of what's coming in Firefox 3, but there's still more to come, and much of what you'll see is still a bit rough around the edges." This means Firefox add-ons will not work properly with the beta version. Those add-ons include applications such as a...