Tag: HARDWARE ACCELERATION

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 will land in the Android Market today, bringing with it modest performance improvements for Android 2.2 and 2.3, and hardware acceleration for 3.0. Flash 10.2 is also the first version of Flash to work on the Motorola Xoom tablet. Engadget says that they "saw a slight but noticeable boost in framerate when playing a YouTube trailer at 480p" on their Droid 2, and that ...

In an official blog post, Adobe has announced that Adobe Flash Player 10.2 will available for download from the Android Market on March 18th. 10.2 supports Android 2.2 and 2.3, as well as the Android 3.0 Honeycomb-packing Motorola Xoom. On the Xoom (and future Honeycomb tablets), 10.2 will enable hardware acceleration for h.264 video and bring better browser integration. Adobe also says that ...

We've spent a lot of time jabbering on and on and on about hardware acceleration in the next generation of Web browsers. The problem, however, is that no stable browsers have it turned on by default. Unless you're running Firefox 4 beta or Internet Explorer 9 RC, you're probably not enjoying hardware acceleration. Heck, our latest poll shows that almost 50% of Download Squad readers run Chrome, ...

Gamers and other enthusiasts know the importance of keeping their video card's drivers current, but it's not something the vast majority of the computing public pays any attention to. If the computer is running OK, there's no need to update drivers, right? As it turns out, there's a very good reason to update: your old driver might be causing your Web browser to crash excessively. That's ...

After the most pregnant of pauses -- like hot and lazy Spain, things moves slowly in the oil-rich barrens of Norway -- Opera has finally released a build of its 11.50 browser with hardware acceleration and WebGL support. Like Chrome, Opera has opted to use OpenGL for hardware acceleration -- at least for now: DirectX, and presumably Direct2D, support is coming at a later date. The OpenGL ...

Adobe recently announced that Flash Player 11 would feature some impressive upgrades -- including new hardware accelerated 3D graphics APIs. Currently, Flash 10.1 can render a few thousand polygons at 30 FPS. The updated 3D kung fu allows Flash 11 to easily render hundreds of thousands of polygons at 60 FPS, which is obviously a massive improvement. End users won't notice much difference ...

Okay, so we're not quite at the point where you're going to be playing the next Crysis sequel in your browser, but still -- the arrival of WebGL in Chrome's beta channel is kind of a big deal. Apart from being able to play around with cool demos like the ones offered up by Google in its official announcement, WebGL is another important step in bringing more desktop-like functionality to the Web. ...

Fennec for Android, aka Firefox for Mobile, is coming on strong and while still very much in beta, shows enormous potential. Now hardware acceleration support has hit Fennec nightlies with OpenGL-powered compositing. While this isn't the first mention of hardware acceleration for an Android browser -- Opera has promised it sometime later -- this is the first implementation for the Mozilla ...

Earlier this year, in June, I ran the first of my side-by-side deathmatches to try and work out which, if any, of the browsers is truly the hardware accelerated king. As it turned out, Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 were pretty equally balanced. Just two months later, in August, Chrome had stolen the top spot and sent Firefox 4, in a fit of tears, to the bottom of the heap. In the last five ...

Hardware acceleration seems to be the one feature all the cool kids are working feverishly to implement in their browsers right now. And we're not just talking desktop browsers, either -- Opera has announced that Opera Mobile for Android will be hardware accelerated when it arrives in the Android Market. As Opera's Aleksander Aas puts it, hardware acceleration in Opera Mobile "allows us to ...

Hardware acceleration is a hot topic in the current browser market, as competitors attempt to differentiate themselves through speed. Somewhat surprisingly it's actually Internet Explorer 9 leading the way, with its decidedly Windows 7 biased approach. Google's Chrome browser has also flirted with hardware acceleration for many facets of its rendering engine, mainly targeted towards WebGL. But ...

Windows users of Firefox have been enjoying hardware acceleration for a little while now, as Mozilla hurried to keep pace with Microsoft's hardware acceleration in IE9. Without MS to compete with on the Mac, acceleration for that platform took a backseat in Mozilla's development schedule. But wait! There's good news, Mac-loving Firefox fans: hardware acceleration has worked its way back into ...

Internet Explorer 9 isn't the only pony in the hardware accelerated rendering race. Just about everyone is getting in on the GPU action, and Google's offering up some new partner-created demos to show what Chrome can do. The WebGL-powered demos include a wall of photos by CoolIris, virtual aquarium, an animated grassy field, and a slick little paint-your-own-figurine -- on which I wasted far ...

In a blog post -- nay, a call to arms! -- published just moments ago, Microsoft's IE9 team has lowered and braced its hardware acceleration joust and begun its thundering charge towards September 15th: the date of the beta. The entire post seems dedicated to hardware acceleration, however. Does IE9 have another weapon up its sleeve, or is this it? Perhaps we'll see a series of blog posts over ...

Last night, Firefox 4 Beta 5 was officially released. Nightly builds have now moved on to beta 6. We've actually covered the two main additions in beta 5 already: hardware acceleration (check my three-way browser showdown!) and the new HTML5 Audio Data API. Apparently, the Firefox button (yes, that ugly orange thing) now has a new look on Windows Vista and 7, but I can't see much of a ...