The race is on amongst the big browsers providers Microsoft, Mozilla and Google to be the first to release a production-quality browser with hardware-accelerated graphics. The race is nearing the end and it currently looks like Google might be the first to production.
Google planned to release it Chrome Beta 9 browser on Tuesday but has delayed the launch due to high crash rates. Anthony LaForge, a Chrome technical program manager, explained in a mailing: “The crash rate [of] 400 crashes per million page loads on the browser is simply too high,”
Enabling hardware graphics acceleration within a browser is not a simple case of enabling it but a process of tweaks and refining a long list of possible ways to use the graphics to improve browser performance. Including: SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), 2D graphics drawn with the new Canvas feature; font rendering, video decoding and resizing, the graphical formatting, transitions, and transformations of CSS, WebGL for 3D graphics and combining different elements of a Web page into the single view.
In an attempt to minimise problems on different computer systems Chrome is designed to disable anything that might cause problems for the browser. We will keep you updated as and when the new Chrome 9 Beta is launched.
Via CNET