Firefox 4 beta 4 is expected to be released on Monday, and with it comes a few upgrades. The most important of those has to be the new hardware-accelerated graphics, which certain Windows users should be able to take advantage of. However, you will need to turn it on, as the default is set to off.
That’s not the only improvement in Firefox, there is a new feature called “Tab Set”, which allows you to group your tabs. This is certainly a great feature, but it is the hardware acceleration that is of interest to most. Most browsers have this in one shape or another, and helps to reduce the load on the CPU and allows the graphics processor to do some of the work instead.
Mozilla has managed to come up with this by using Windows’ Direct2D interface; this not only increases the display of text, but also graphics as well. Stephen Shankland from Cnet News points out that this new feature will only work on the newer versions of Microsoft Windows.
Mozilla has designed Firefox 4 to be their fastest web browser yet, something they need to keep on top off, as they are now competing with the likes of Google Chrome — the new browser that has taken the market by storm.
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