Firefox 3.6 - Coming soon.

[MilesAhead]

Systems with pre-D3D10 cards will not see any improvements whatsoever.

So what's the quick and dirty way to find out what version hardware acceleration you have or can support?

edit: hmm put it on my quad core running Vista64. It didn't kill my AddOns this time. I don't know if it's the power of suggestion but the progress bars on tabs seem to zip across a bit snappier. So maybe it does have GPU enabled?

 

[SlackerITGuy]

Systems with pre-D3D10 cards will not see any improvements whatsoever.

So what's the quick and dirty way to find out what version hardware acceleration you have or can support?

edit: hmm put it on my quad core running Vista64. It didn't kill my AddOns this time. I don't know if it's the power of suggestion but the progress bars on tabs seem to zip across a bit snappier. So maybe it does have GPU enabled?

Video card on your Quad Core rig?

 

[MilesAhead]

Video card on your Quad Core rig?

It's NVidia GeForce 9600 GS. Vista64 SP1

edit: btw it's a mixed bag. Regular sites definitely seem to render faster but I was hoping stuff like Silver Light online video would be improved. Minefield doesn't work with Silver Light or at least I can't get Netflix online play to work. It works in FF 3.6 beta 5. I suppose support will come in as time goes along.

 

[johnwillyums]

I'm normally a Firefox man but recently I installed an Opera beta and I thought it was great.
However then Wave came along and Opera won't run it. FF runs it badly.
In fact only Chrome runs it (acceptably) well.
No surprises there then.
What this means is I am being gradually subverted into a Chrome user as Wave is quite addictive.
At first I couldn't stand Chrome and went back to FF as soon as I'd dealt with Wave but it's gradually growing on me and is certainly fast so I find myself staying in it most of the time.
My conclusion is that both FF and certainly Opera need to get their act together regarding Wave and the inevitable apps that will use the Wave technology or they will miss the boat.

 

[MilesAhead]

btw does anyone know how to tell if GPU acceleration is enabled in a particular firefox? Is there an indicator in about:config?

I have the same thing with Splash Lite Player. If I enable/disable GPU acceleration Task Manager shows the same memory usage and CPU usage. I'm starting to wonder if these are just placebo check boxes?

 

[MilesAhead]

btw on the developer's blog he left a link to a 2D GPU rendering enabled build of 3.7Pre. Here's the link if anyone wants to try it:

http://www.bassified.nl/f....win32.d2d.2009.12.20.zip

What I did to migrate my AddOns and all that was just install the latest 3.7Pre nightly build, then delete the contents of that folder and replace the guts with the contents of the zip file. It seems a tad snappier. Then again I'm not usually going on very complex sites so it's tough to tell for sure.

There are a couple of things that don't work as well as 3.6 beta 5. One is the descriptions on TV Guide site(they just open up a blank space, no text) and the other I can't get to work is Silver Light video. Other than that it seems solid.

 

[DanP]

I wonder if the fact that Wave is best run by Chrome was intentional...
Though it works fine for me in Firefox.

 

[lior]

I would like to work with Opera but the problem is it doesn't have a lot of great add-ons when compared with Firefox. Extensions like adblock plus and no-script, both of which are instrumental to privacy and filtering out today's ever annoying junk, are non-existent for Opera.

Also unavailable with IE so you have to wonder how bad you need 'em...

I haven't used IE for 7 years
I only use it once in a blue moon whenever I run into a site that is specifically built for IE. I also use it for some Microsoft updates. Beyond those two uses I avoid it like the plague.

When I first installed Windows 7 the default page in IE was the MSN portal. It downloaded so many spy cookies from that portal alone on the very first load. The lack of these extensions for both IE and Opera just makes you wonder how you'd ever live without them.