Mozilla launches Firefox 4

[Phone Man]

Hardware acceleration uses your video card to help render web pages in your browser. Takes some of the load off your CPU.

Jim

 

[Snowdog]

Can someone please explain "hardware acceleration".What is it and how is it used.

Speeds up some actions, but also saddles you with Microsoft DirectWrite font rendering engine (same thing in IE 9 BTW).

To my eyes DirectWrite font rendering is just wrong. Fonts are all thicker and kerning is tighter so the letters run together. I find it less readable at all distances, so I shut off HW Acceleration to get rid of it. YMMV.

 

[profdlp]

Alright, so what are the "must haves" with FF4?

 

[severedsolo]

Stupid question time... Im running the RC2 and haven't been offered the update, is there meant to be an autoupdate? or do I have to uninstall/reinstall?

 

[profdlp]

Running 3.6xx I just did the

Help>>Check for updates

and it popped right up.

 

[smsff7]

Stupid question time... Im running the RC2 and haven't been offered the update, is there meant to be an autoupdate? or do I have to uninstall/reinstall?

I think you need to click help and check for updates to get your updated to FF4

 

[Fayla]

The HTML5 video support is great (better than I expected), it looks like I won't need to leave the flash player installed on my two guest computers' soon.

 

[smarteyeball]

Can someone provide a link or two of sites that supposedly have blurry fonts?

I have H/W accel enabled and I haven't seen a single blurry font :huh:

 

[spine]

Compared to version 3.6, FF4 is faster. If you ask me, which ever browser you feel at home with, stay with it. IE9 , FF4 and Chrome looks the same with there tabs GUI.

 

[Fayla]

It's more hit and miss than anything, esp. now that hardware is more directly used. Now you have to consider issues like "Is my display driver causing the problems? Maybe it needs updated?", "Did I configure the MS clear type settings?" or just the plain old "Is my computer too low spec?". I have to admit that I found reading IE9/FF4 blurry issue threads interesting--

Anyway, my three computers have no problems with FF4, no blurry issue or whatever, at all. So I can't provide any evidence

I have H/W accel enabled and I haven't seen a single blurry font :huh:

 

[DaGooN]

i like FF4. but im unsure about the speed of it vs my tweak 3.6
maybe since it is on my SSD i don't see much of a difference
what i really like is the fact that none of my settings ect have changed since the update. my fonts are not blury and i have HA on? only thing that failed is my Mac theme but there is a 4.0 version that works and will do until they update my favorite theme

Go FF...

 

[msongs]

will this mess up my add ons and bookmarks?

just have a few add ons really, the ad block plus, no script, and cookie culler.

plus favorites and bookmarks

Is there a list/step guide for what needs to be done to use FF 4?

Msongs

 

[Snowdog]

Can someone provide a link or two of sites that supposedly have blurry fonts?

I have H/W accel enabled and I haven't seen a single blurry font :huh:

Well it could be that some just like the way DirectWrite renders and some don't. Perhaps screen shots would help. Are people at least seeing a difference??

From this site:
Choose Language | BioWare Social Network

Accel on / Accel off

 

[DaGooN]

also.

gfx.direct2d.disabled [Boolean] - Firefox 4.0 has introduced hardware acceleration features which utilize the GPU to improve performance in certain scenarios. Under Windows Vista and 7, this hardware acceleration uses both Direct2D and Direct3D, whereas under XP only Direct3D is available. If hardware acceleration is enabled, then you can set this preference to True to only disable Direct2D acceleration without disabling Direct3D acceleration. This will rectify the blurry/alternate text rendering method in Firefox in return for a drop in performance. See the 'Use hardware acceleration when available' setting of the Firefox Settings section for full details. New to Firefox 4.0

TweakGuides.com - Firefox Tweak Guide

 

[smarteyeball]

Thanks Snowdog - that screenie does indeed show a noticeable difference, yet when I visit the site, the impact is far less noticeable.

Either I'm used to it already, or it's my clear type settings mentioned by Newt or the fact I zoom page sizes minimizes it to the point that it doesn't bother me. Whatever the cause it appears to be a non-issue for me :huh:

 

[Fayla]

Which also brings up the issue of keeping DirectX up to date. If you run the DirectX updater after freshly installing Window's 7, it will download DirectX updates from 2005 to 2011. But I think most people will just assume that DirectX is 100% up to date already, which it isn't, Microsoft is constantly updating it with small upgrades.

also.

gfx.direct2d.disabled [Boolean] - Firefox 4.0 has introduced hardware acceleration features which utilize the GPU to improve performance in certain scenarios. Under Windows Vista and 7, this hardware acceleration uses both Direct2D and Direct3D, whereas under XP only Direct3D is available. If hardware acceleration is enabled, then you can set this preference to True to only disable Direct2D acceleration without disabling Direct3D acceleration. This will rectify the blurry/alternate text rendering method in Firefox in return for a drop in performance. See the 'Use hardware acceleration when available' setting of the Firefox Settings section for full details. New to Firefox 4.0

TweakGuides.com - Firefox Tweak Guide

 

[profdlp]

Can someone provide a link or two of sites that supposedly have blurry fonts?

I have H/W accel enabled and I haven't seen a single blurry font :huh:

It looks fine for me w/ HW Acceleration enabled on every site I've tried so far.

But -

I noticed that when I hit the "New Posts" link here, then hover my mouse cursor over a new thread link to see the content, it looks very grainy.

As a matter of fact, the text I'm typing right now looks similarly grainy.

For what it's worth, over the weekend I re-ran my monitor color profile on all three monitors, which includes the True Type tuning.

Edit: Grabbed a screenshot, but when it's pasted into Paint it looks OK.

 

[smarteyeball]

I noticed that when I hit the "New Posts" link here, then hover my mouse cursor over a new thread link to see the content, it looks very grainy.

As a matter of fact, the text I'm typing right now looks similarly grainy.

For what it's worth, over the weekend I re-ran my monitor color profile on all three monitors, which includes the True Type tuning.

Looks clear as bell here :huh:

I just realized I haven't touch any colour profiles, tuning etc with this installation.

H/W is definitely on and working for me too as Afterburner is showing load activity while browsing.

I won't be satisfied now until I discover an issue

Maybe it's something that shows up to varying degrees on different panel types?

 

[DaGooN]

well i found that vimeo ain't working with FF4? seems there is no controls when you try to watch a video.

Damn i wanted to watch Blinky lol

Blinky

 

[smarteyeball]

well i found that vimeo ain't working with FF4? seems there is no controls when you try to watch a video.

Damn i wanted to watch Blinky lol

Blinky

Working fine here mate, so it's not a FF4 issue.