Firefox 4 B4 Bringing Direct2D GPU Acceleration
Adventurous Firefox fans, there's a new beta coming on Monday that'll add a couple considerable features.
The fourth beta of Firefox 4 will be hitting on Monday, and notable will be the inclusion of hardware acceleration for Windows users that have the hardware and software to support Direct2D.
Firefox using your GPU to render won't be on by default – at least not yet. Mozilla's VP of engineering tweeted that Direct2D will be included in beta 4, but it isn't quite ready for everyone to be running it yet. Instead, the feature will be enabled through user intervention by modifying the config.
Mozilla details in its Wiki of how to turn it on and what to look out for:
D2D status:
- Direct2D is not turned on by default for Firefox 4 beta 4. (We weren't confident enough to turn it on for all users.)
- However, all the code in Firefox 4 beta 4, and it should work reasonably well for everyone.
- We really need testers, both on the beta and on nightlies. (We plan to enable Direct2D in nightlies as soon as beta 4 is tagged and branched.)
- To turn on Direct2D: Go in to about:config and set mozilla.widget.render-mode to 6, and gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled to true.
- To turn off Direct2D, once it is on by default, set mozilla.widget.render-mode to 0.
- To check whether you are running with Direct2D, go to about:support and look at the bottom. (Once bug 586046 lands, there will be even more information about your graphics card in there.)
- Please look out for memory usage, rendering speed, and any rendering problems you might see. Also focus on interactions with plugins like Flash.
Firefox beta 4 will also bring with it the first official implementation of Tab Candy, the super slick way of managing lots of tabs.
While we hate it when the weekend ends, we're excited to try the new Firefox beta 4 that'll work our GPUs.
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Firefox4, do not fall behind IE9.
Neato. Interested in seeing some performance numbers.
Nice
The Mozilla developers need to stick to using open standards for hardware acceleration instead of using MS's proprietary Direct2D GPU acceleration.
FF4 B5 is out, and this was around in FF4 B1 I believe.
It does cause some issues. Screen tearing does seem to occur a lot. Happens mostly when using the scroll wheel with flash. Getting better with each beta it seems however.
Bit slow on the take here Toms?
I leave fraps on generally, and it's kinda neat seeing a FPS counter in the top right corner.
FF4 B5 is out, and this was around in FF4 B1 I believe.It does cause some issues. Screen tearing does seem to occur a lot. Happens mostly when using the scroll wheel with flash. Getting better with each beta it seems however.Bit slow on the take here Toms?I leave fraps on generally, and it's kinda neat seeing a FPS counter in the top right corner.
beta 4 and 5 are only available via FTP sever but not yet for general release so their timing is fine
beta 4 and 5 are only available via FTP sever but not yet for general release so their timing is fine
nightly.mozilla.org I think beta 4 has been around for 10 days now, maybe more. What's this general release thing you talk about?
How 'bout using openGL/openCL, so other OS's can use it ?
Hey, where's the girl? I only clicked on the article to see the firefox girl pic
How 'bout using openGL/openCL, so other OS's can use it ?
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
you can only directly download firefox 4 beta 3
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla [...] est-trunk/
there you can get firefox 4 beta 4 and beta 5
How 'bout using openGL/openCL, so other OS's can use it ?
Sorry I accidentally quoted you I meant to quote Travis Beane
Keep doing the good jog firefox developpers!
I have used it for a few years now, don't want to change browser now!
I remember somewhere the FF team saying that the differences between using opengl and direct2d for this purpose was so large that they are going through the effort to implement direct2d on windows as well as opengl on other platforms (eventually).
must... beta..
How 'bout using openGL/openCL, so other OS's can use it ?
It probably will be because Firefox is on Mac and Linux.
The Firefox devs are working on D2D for Win7/Vista, on D3D9 support for WinXP and OpenGL for Linux and OSX.
For the time being D2D seems to have priority but you can bet that they'll be working hard on OpenGL because they need it for Firefox Mobile on smartphones.
I guess that D2D will be ready by the time FF4 is released but I can't even guess if the same is true for OpenGL and D3D9. You might have to wait for the next version before that is available.
Firefox 4 release schedule can be found here.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4/Beta
Am I stupid for asking WHY my browser needs to be GPU Accelerated?
Am I stupid for asking WHY my browser needs to be GPU Accelerated?
Little thing called multimedia. Its been around for a decade or three and is growing more demanding in web browsers.
But thats just a little guess of mine.
Little thing called multimedia. Its been around for a decade or three and is growing more demanding in web browsers.But thats just a little guess of mine.
I guess Im too good a PC building for that to be a problem.
Will this improve my Minions gameplay?
I guess Im too good a PC building for that to be a problem.
Since when does your computer building have anything to do with how someone else coded a certain software platform on the web...
I'll be turning this on now, thanks!
Firefox4, do not fall behind IE9.
If anything fell behind IE, I'd just give up.
Sounds like FF4 will be a resource hog.
my flash and videos run fine, doesnt it also matter depending on the connection one has?
maybe I've been missing something but seems like I've been enabling d2d since the first beta. nothing new here?
It will depend on your video card too, so if you have a setup for simple surfing and downloading you don't to turn on the switch.
I see using the graphics card as a very good evolution.
Hopefully they come around and get Direct2D ready as well as OpenGL.
ive not been interested in firefox before, but this new feature to use my graphics card has piqued my curiosity...only i can find this config page that was mentioned so i could turn it on......where did they hide this? i cant find it after 15 mins of searching......hooray for makeing things intuitive...or not.
Am I stupid for asking WHY my browser needs to be GPU Accelerated?
3D Porn!
The Mozilla developers need to stick to using open standards for hardware acceleration instead of using MS's proprietary Direct2D GPU acceleration.
Why other then cross platform which im sure they will do, the open standards suck.