Mozilla today released another beta version of Firefox. This release, Firefox 4 beta 5, has the Direct2D acceleration activated by default for Windows Vista/7. This Hardware acceleration feature makes page-drawing operations faster, as Mozilla’s Paul Rouget explains in a blog post.
The hardware acceleration enables Firefox to use graphics processing unit (GPU) whenever it’s possible, instead of the CPU. This improvement takes place at two different levels: Content acceleration and Compositing acceleration. The content acceleration has been activated for the latest beta release, while compositing acceleration is not available to the Fx 4 b5 yet. Content acceleration speed-ups loading of regular HTML elements including text, images, CSS etc. Firefox 4 will use Direct2D on Windows Vista/7, XRender on Linux and Quartz on Mac for this level of hardware acceleration.
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
The latest beta release of Firefox 4 has also integrated many more features like new Audio API and support for HSTS. The HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is a new security protocol on Mozilla platform which allows websites to insist use secured connections. Over HSTS, the servers return Strict-Transport-Security header. Firefox will rewrite the insecure connection to the secured (SSL) for such requests. This feature will ensure more security for the users.
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