Firefox 4 beta 4 due Monday with GPU acceleration, tab sets

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104

Mozilla is preparing to unload yet another beta build of Firefox 4. Due this coming Monday, the update adds hardware-accelerated graphics and tab sets, formerly known as tab candy. The browser's built-in graphics acceleration will use Windows' Direct2D, but it won't be enabled by default. Flipping the switch should only take a minute, though:

1. Enter about:config in the address bar and click through the warning
2. Enter gfx.font in the 'Filter' box
3. Double-click on gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled to set it to true
4. Below this, right click and select New > Integer to add a pref setting
5. Enter mozilla.widget.render-mode for the preference name, 6 for the value
6. Restart

Meanwhile, tab sets (along with app tabs) should help you manage unruly numbers of tabs. It allows you to create groups of tabs that share a similar purpose, such as research on an item you're looking to buy or communication sites like Twitter, Facebook and so on. If you're unfamiliar with the feature, you can watch a video demo after the break.

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Seeing that Firefox is my default web browser and that IE9, Flash, Silverlight and many other software are beginning to use your GPU for acceleration, this maybe the perfect reason to buy a new laptop with a decent GPU solution in the near future.
 
Tab candy looks pretty sweet. I know I browse most of the same websites every day. Usually I have to close some tabs after a while just so I can tell what I am doing but this will allow me to keep everything open and right there. Not so sure with the sharing tabs stuff though. Hopefully everything will be defaulted to private people don't end up seeing things I don't want them to see.
 
I can't use firefox or chrome since text is so tiny on 1080p resolution and the only one with permanent zoom is the IE. Sad.

GPU aceleration will make scrolling and flash animations more smooth?
 
@Guest 2 - No, I believe GPU acceleration is only available to render Java Scripting which practically most websites include. But it won't make scrolling or flash animations smoother. Flash 10.1 has GPU acceleration in its own right.
 
Guest said:
I can't use firefox or chrome since text is so tiny on 1080p resolution and the only one with permanent zoom is the IE. Sad.

GPU aceleration will make scrolling and flash animations more smooth?

What size monitor are using that the text is too small at 1080p? I fell like most that support it would be large enough that text looks normal.
 
Just use this for firefox... duh!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2592/
 
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