We have seen how to enable Mozilla Firefox hardware acceleration on Linux and this time we will see how to enable Google Chrome hardware acceleration; this guide will work on any major Operative System since the steps indicated are fully contained within Google Chrome’s settings.
Hardware acceleration is the use of specific computer hardware, like the graphic card for graphic related tasks, to perform some functions faster than is possible in “software-mode” running on the more general-purpose CPU. In order to benefit from hardware acceleration, the application must be programmed to support it and such support must be enabled at runtime (when the application is run by the user); the major browsers, like Mozilla Firefox and in this case Google Chrome, are programmed to support hardware acceleration, but not always they are enabled to use it.
Firefox
Enable Firefox hardware acceleration on Linux
Despite its past, Mozilla Firefox browser is now as fast and agile as its rival Google Chrome, but there is one aspect where the open source browser still loses a few points: the GPU hardware acceleration support on GNU/Linux. With this guide we will see how to enable Firefox hardware acceleration on Linux and therefore improving its performances.
The guide has been tested on Ubuntu LTS 14:04 with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers and Mozilla Firefox 34.0, but it should be valid for all distribution of Linux and newer versions of Mozilla Firefox.
Enable HTML5 YouTube playback on Firefox
Today we will learn how to enable HTML5 YouTube playback on Firefox, since it is supported by version 36 of the popular Mozilla browser.
HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content for the Internet introduced by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element and without the support of plugins, like the proprietary Adobe Flash plugin.