Mozilla Enables WebRender in Firefox Nightly

Mozilla has started using WebRender with the Nightly version of its Firefox browser. The graphics renderer for the Servo browser engine for now only works in combination with Windows 10 and an Nvidia GPU.

In addition, WebRender with Firefox Nightly only works with Nvidia desktop cards and not on laptops. According to developer Jeff Muizelaar of Mozilla, this still concerns about 17 percent of the users of Nightly. Mozilla has been testing WebRender on the Nightly builds since July, but with a limited group of users. WebRender can already be enabled on other platforms, except Android, via the gfx.webrender.all setting.

WebRender is a completely new graphics renderer for the Servo engine, which should render web content as if it were a game engine. For example, rasterization should be done by the GPU as much as possible. According to Mozilla, the advantage is that an increase in the use of the gpu can relieve the cpu, so that it can spend more time on, for example, the processing of JavaScript.

In addition, GPUs are better equipped for high-resolution processing, which is necessary given the increase in, for example, 4k screens. In addition, there are advantages in terms of multithreading.