Firefox to get separate processes, Direct2D acceleration

The Mozilla Foundation is trying to match FireFox against other browsers feature-for-feature and has announced some of what we’ll see in the next few versions.  In addition to Chrome-style process-separation, they are working to add GPU acceleration:

GPU acceleration is another hot topic and here Mozilla hopes to offer Direct2D support in an update for Gecko 1.9.3, slated for October launch. Unfortunately this release doesn't include the Direct2D acceleration, but will be added later on, but hopefully not that much later.

Odd to see them choosing Direct2D, a uniquely Microsoft technology, over something like OpenGL.  Hopefully they’ll offer similar GPU acceleration options for Linux & OSX.

If you’re interested in the multi-process separation technology, a-la Google Chrome, check out ‘FireFox Lorentz‘, detailed over at Lifehacker today.

via Firefox to get separate processes, Direct2D acceleration.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.