How to Enable D2D in Firefox 4

Firefox 4 will be bringing hardware-accelerated graphics with Direct2D support in Firefox 4, but that will not be enabled by default. The Firefox team believes that feature is not quite ready to be rolled out for everyone.

Even though it’s not enabled by default, you can still enable it manually with the help of the instructions given at the Firefox Wiki.

How to Enable D2D in Firefox 4

Follow the instructions below to enable D2D support in Firefox 4:

1. Enter ‘about:config’
2. Click through the warning, if necessary
3. Enter gfx.font in the ‘Filter’ box
4. Double-click on ‘gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled’ to set it to true
5. Below this, right click and select New > Integer to add a pref setting
6. Enter ‘mozilla.widget.render-mode’ for the preference name, 6 for the value
7. Restart

Firefox 4 beta 4 will be released on Monday which will have support for hardware-accelerated graphics!