Meet Firefox 4.0.1

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

If you have a DX10 or higher card then Direct2D+DirectWrite is enabled by default, people with DX9 cards need to manually enable it.

Does it make a difference if you have GDIPP installed already? As I do I presume D2D isn't necessary.

Direct2D is hardware accelerated drawing, improved rendering is just a side effect.

Direct2D is what makes the benchmarks go from 5fps to 60fps.

[Skittelor]

Does beta 4 have tab progress bars?

And what of that "homepage app tab" thing shown in the mockups? It should be do-able now right?

[gahbmwM5]

Really goddamn annoying :(. It makes it impossible to click the X (close) button on the firefox window, and the only way to exit out of Firefox is to either end the process, or use the "Firefox" button in the corner, which kills all my other windows as well.

Yes indeed as I was testing out the Adobe Flash Player 'test page' http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ and this happens quite often, as well as the Adobe Shockwave 'test page' too...

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/

[Unrealistic]

New menu needs a bit of work, D2D is going to take a little getting used to and they need to fix the Tab Candy issue where if you close firefox with multiple tabs, as it doesn't ask you if you would like to save your tabs.

What's the Current ETA for RC1?

[alinescoo]

Is it possible on Win XP to remove the titlebar ?

[cga]

For me D2D makes font rendering remember me of FF on Linux, in other words utterly horrid and not usable.

[Hari]

Anyone know how to disable the status bar sync icon?

Also, how to disable extension check in beta 4? The rule I used for beta 3 does not work.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Still looks too early on for me to really want to try this, sticking with Chrome for now, but good to see fairly regular releases.

[XP_2600]

Beta 4 is slower than 3? or its just slow for me ?

[Steven P. Administrators]

New menu needs a bit of work, D2D is going to take a little getting used to and they need to fix the Tab Candy issue where if you close firefox with multiple tabs, as it doesn't ask you if you would like to save your tabs.

What's the Current ETA for RC1?

Beta 5 is scheduled for September and the final in October, not sure about dates tho!

[alinescoo]

I really like this release :) Is it possible to hide completely the status bar ?

[Corris Veteran]

I really like this release :) Is it possible to hide completely the status bar ?

View > Click on "Status Bar"

Should be hidden now.

[XP_2600]

Do you think group your tabs is the right name for this feature ?

[ViZioN]

If you have a DX10 or higher card then Direct2D+DirectWrite is enabled by default, people with DX9 cards need to manually enable it.

I'm a bit confused by this because it didn't enable automatically for me but I've definitely got a DX10 card. I've now manually enabled it though.

[Chester0]

I'm a bit confused by this because it didn't enable automatically for me but I've definitely got a DX10 card. I've now manually enabled it though.

Its not on by default in beta 4. It is planed for beta 5.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, it just missed Beta 4, it's on by default on trunk builds and will be on by default in Beta 5 (they're aiming to have Direct3D layers on by default for Beta 5 as well, and OpenGL layers by final I think)

[Guichi]

long time lurker but don't post that often. Noticed something odd for me in FF4 b3 and 4. My hard drive activity immediately after clicking a link is just way too much. This doesn't happen using FF4 b1 or b2. Used resource monitor and it is indeed coming from my profile folders cache. I created a new, blank profile and started FF with that profile, still the same result. While loading a web page my hard drive is almost off the charts even long after the page is loaded.

[alinescoo]

View > Click on "Status Bar"

Should be hidden now.

Silly me, I wasn't using FF in a while and I totally forgot about View menu. Thank you, it worked like a charm.

This release feels fast for me, coming from using Chrome.

[XP_2600]

long time lurker but don't post that often. Noticed something odd for me in FF4 b3 and 4. My hard drive activity immediately after clicking a link is just way too much. This doesn't happen using FF4 b1 or b2. Used resource monitor and it is indeed coming from my profile folders cache. I created a new, blank profile and started FF with that profile, still the same result. While loading a web page my hard drive is almost off the charts even long after the page is loaded.

I got the same thing even worse, i got the mouse and keyboard totally frozen when a page start to load, this thing happened with me twice till now.

[SkyDX]

Yeah, it just missed Beta 4, it's on by default on trunk builds and will be on by default in Beta 5 (they're aiming to have Direct3D layers on by default for Beta 5 as well, and OpenGL layers by final I think)

Sorry if I appear noobish, I have the latest nightly and DirectWrite enabled, are Direct3D layers included in that or do I have do enable these separately?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

You have to enable it separately though an environmental setting.

set MOZ_ACCELERATED=11
start firefox.exe

Save that as a batch file and put it in the Firefox folder (easiest if you're using the zipped version), then run it and it'll load Firefox using Direct3D for all window drawing.

Edit: I should say, the environment variable only tells Firefox to try an hardware accelerated Layers backend, it doesn't tell it which to use. The default on Windows is to use Direct3D but it'll also use OpenGL if you flip the pref in about:config.

[vajlent]

Someone else who noticed the large gap between the menu button

and the tabs?

Maximized

Minimized

[Thino]

Someone else who noticed the large gap between the menu button

and the tabs?

I'm using beta 4 and I dont have this gap

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

OpenGL backed Layers doesn't work too well with Aero (that probably won't be the highest priority to fix, if you can do Aero you can do Direct3D)

But it's quite useful if you're using WebGL (it stays entirely on the GPU, no read back for compositing)

[SkyDX]

You have to enable it separately though an environmental setting.

set MOZ_ACCELERATED=11
start firefox.exe

Save that as a batch file and put it in the Firefox folder (easiest if you're using the xipped version), then run it and it'll load Firefox using Direct3D for all window drawing.

Edit: I should say, the environment variable only tells Firefox to try an hardware accelerated Layers backend, it doesn't tell it which to use. The default on Windows is to use Direct3D but it'll also use OpenGL if you flip the pref in about:config.

Thanks, it worked amazing! Atleast for 10 seconds before everything started to flicker and Minefield became terribly instable and crashed :pinch:

I'm running the latest nightly with Win7 x86 and a RADEON 5770. OpenGL causes nothing to be drawn at all :unsure:

Also, finally a working Download Statusbar Build came!

http://downloads.mozdev.org/downloadstatusbar/downbar/downbar0_9_7_1.xpi