On Monday Mozilla will be releasing the latest beat of its new Firefox 4 beta 4 that will bring Windows hardware acceleration and a major interface change called tab sets.
The tab sets was formerly know as the tab candy and allows users to group tabs into bunches and move them around. which is hoped will provide an easier solution than just using multiple browser windows with a linear top strips.
With regards the Direct2D hardware acceleration that seems to be arriving on all major browsers wont be active by default.
“b4 won’t have D2D on by default after all; just not quite ready to send it to that many users. soon!” tweeted Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s vice president of engineering.
But if you fancy putting the new hardware acceleration through it paces follow these instructions provided by Mozilla:
Here are Mozilla’s instructions for enabling Direct2D in Firefox by changing settings accessed by typing “about:config” into the address bar:
1. To turn on Direct2D: Go in to about:config and set mozilla.widget.render-mode to 6, andgfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled to true.
2. To turn off Direct2D, once it is on by default, set mozilla.widget.render-mode to 0.
3. To check whether you are running with Direct2D, go to about:support [in the address bar] and look at the bottom.
Via CNET