Mozilla Agrees, Update Your Graphics Drivers
A few days ago, Chrome told users and developers that upgrading their graphics driver is a good idea to avoid Chrome crashes and making sure that the performance potential of the software is fully exploited. Mozilla follows suit.
As more GPU-acceleration features are made available and content that supports this feature it is increasingly beneficial even to average users to add graphics driver updates to their monthly maintenance routine.
Mozilla now also says that graphics driver updates are important to avoid browser crashes. "Firefox 4 brings many new features in the Graphics department, notably hardware acceleration and WebGL," Mozilla's Benoit Jacob wrote in a blog post. "However, when we turned these features on by default in nightly builds around September last year, and then in Beta 7, crash statistics and bug reports quickly showed that bugs in graphics drivers were often making these features misbehave."
I tend to be a bit pessimistic about graphics driver updates outside the professional and enthusiast segment of computing. There is a certain lack of education, especially in the mainstream market, that graphics drivers need to be updated on a regular basis. The mainstream user will need to receive a much better option for updated driver updates than what is available today. I wonder if browser manufacturers will, in fact, find a way to help users upgrade their graphics drivers as GPU acceleration seems to become an essential feature for web browsers.
- Nissan Leaf Deliveries Delayed for UK Customers
- Wimbledon to Be Broadcast in 3D Cinemas
- UK Postman Crowned Cyber Security Champion
- PikkoTekk FPS Supports 1K Simultaneous Players
- Lenovo's ThinkPad X220 Laptop and Tab Spotted
- Blizzard: Our Next MMO Will Blow People's Minds
- WD Acquires Hitachi GST for $4.3 Billion
- Chinese Factory Workers Write to Steve Jobs
- Loot Drop is John Romero's New Game Studio
- Nintendo Details UK Launch of 3DS
- Report: UK 'Too Reliant' On GPS Signals
- MSFT is Hiring A Fistful of Xbox Hardware Devs
- Hi-Res Texture Pack for Dragon Age 2 Available
- New 'Alice: Madness Returns' Looks Awesome
- Lenovo's X220 Notebook and Tablet Are Official
- Britons Worried About 3DS Price and Eye-strain
- MSFT: Games for Windows LIVE Had Rocky Start
- EA: PC Could Become the Leading Platform
Yeah this is great for me, I've been struggling with Firefox and Chrome apparently due to a graphics issue which causes pages to stop loading after a any flash loads and I'm using an old notebook with a Radeon Mobility 9200 (reads as a Fire GL in Ubuntu). I'll just pull a new driver out of my arse.
Had to fall back on Arora btw
Most techies upgrade their drivers frequently, if only for the increased gaming performance it brings. But will the mainstream do so?
Average Joe hardly knows there are other browsers than IE, thinks Office and Windows are the same thing and types url's in google rather than the adress bar and vice versa.
And you expect such people to install drivers for a component of which they don't even know it exists? Sorry, not gonna happen. Maybe driver updates should be included in Windows' automatic updates?
Personally I tend to give up updating drivers a couple of years after getting a graphics card on the assumption that there wouldn't be much benefit from new drivers to an old card and indeed they might introduce some bugs / extra overhead. I guess it might be worth trying an update again.
If they want people to update though then maybe having something that can run and actually test whether there are any errors due to the driver installed might be handy.