The new build introduces several new features including an experimental Direct 2D for Windows. As the web is slowly moving towards CSS3, Html 5, and more Javascript, it is no surprise that Firefox 3.7 main focus is about these three elements.Download Mozilla Firefox 3.7 now, if you’re a developer, you’ll be amazed by the improvement, however when compared with rival browsers, Firefox 3.7 is still an infant, losing out to the yet to be released Internet Explorer 9.
One of the reason for the lack of speed in Firefox 3.7 is their Gecko rendering engine, which is outdated. Due to limited resources, I believe they are now focusing on Direct2D rendering, which will be better than Gecko. Direct2D uses the Graphic Card to render the webpage instead of the CPU, this is a better solution because graphic cards are much more powerful than CPU.How to enable Direct2D in Firefox 3.7? The experimental Direct2D rendering is disabled by default due to stability reasons. Firefox users need to perform the following operation to enable it in the Firefox 3.7 alpha 3 release.
- Go to about:config
- Click through the warning, if necessary
- Enter ‘render’ in the ‘Filter’ box
- Double-click on ‘gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled’ to set it to true
- Double click on ‘mozilla.widget.render-mode’, set the value to 6
- Restart
