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After more than one year of development, new versions of the popular instant messenger were officially released on Wednesday, August 25, 2010.

TabSRMM 3.0

A while ago I wrote about Direct2D and DirectWrite rendering in Firefox 4 and explained how to activate it. Recently, the method to activate D2D has changed somewhat, because the developers decided that it is about time to make D2D the default on platforms that can support it (Windows Vista SP2 or later).

Around August 15, 2010, the method changed and now works as follows:

• If mozilla.widget.render-mode is set to -1 (which is the default value for a fresh install), Firefox will automatically activate D2D when available. It will test operating system version and video drivers for DirectX10 support and make sure to run on a supported OS service pack level.
• If mozilla.widget.render-mode is set to 0 (can be done in about:config - restart required), D2D will be disabled, regardless of OS and driver support.

Other values (like the old value of 6 which activated it) are probably still supported, but they are no longer needed. Should you prefer to disable D2D, because of its remaining issues, simply set mozilla.widget.render-mode to 0.

Update on this

There is now a new visible option to control D2D behavior in recent nightly builds and this option will also be in b5. Options->Advanced->General->Use hardware acceleration when available is what you want to modify. Uncheck it to disable D2D even when your operating system and hardware supports it. Using about:config to control its behavior is no longer necessary.

As of August 10, 2010, TabSRMM is now officially in BETA. Miranda 0.9 will go final in the not so far future, so we need a stable plugin.

Another feature "borrowed" from another browser :)

In Google Chrome, when you open or close tabs, they will smoothly slide into or out of view. It's a neat little piece of eye candy and people tend to love it. Consequently, there is an addon that implements animations for opening and closing tabs in Firefox. The author states that he was inspired by a feature planned for Firefox 4 - tab animations.

And indeed, the feature has recently landed on trunk and already works with recent nigthly builds of Firefox 4, but since it is a new and experimental feature, it is disabled by default and there is no option for it. As always, about:config will be more than happy to help :)

Look for browser.tabs.animate and set it to true. If the setting does - for whatever reason - not yet exist in your profile, create a new Boolean value and set it to true. A restart of Firefox is required after changing this setting.

You need to have a very recent nightly version of Firefox 4. If it doesn't work after adding the value in about:config, your version is probably too old. Get a newer one.

One warning though

There is one issue which will result in "ghost tabs" - when you close a tab, it will lose its label, icon and close button, but the tab outline will remain on the tab strip. This happens when you have modified your maximum tab width (here is an article that tells you how to do this) which apparently confuses the animation code. Just make sure to NOT use a modified maximum tab width and all should be fine. The bug is not triggered when only changing the minimum tab width.

What it does?

• Make the tabs like Google Chrome's tabs :)
• Change the look of the app button (the orange Firefox logo in the top left corner).
• Change the look of the personal tool bar (bookmarks bar) to be more compact and using a tool bar skin.
• Combine the Reload/Stop button with the URL bar (like in Google Chrome).
• Change the appearance of the URL and search fields in the navigation bar (less rounded corners, closer to the look of text fields in the Windows Explorer).
• Change the minimum width of tabs to a much lower value. The default in Firefox 4 is, in my opinion, way too high. See here for a more detailed description.

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