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Why am I Having Graphics Problems with the Latest Version 29.0.1 of Firefox?

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It seems like after I installed version 29.0.1 of Firefox, I'm having intermittent graphics problems I've never had before with any previous version and I don't have with any of my other browsers.

Sometimes Firefox just scrambles the web pages on all of the tabs I have open. No other components of the Windows XP desktop have graphics problems when this happens and no other open applications seem to have graphics problems. It's just Firefox. Sometimes I can refresh the tab/page (F5) and it clears up the blotchy random graphics characters.

Does anyone know if there were changes to the graphics engine in version 29.0.1?

Thanks!

It seems like after I installed version 29.0.1 of Firefox, I'm having intermittent graphics problems I've never had before with any previous version and I don't have with any of my other browsers. Sometimes Firefox just scrambles the web pages on all of the tabs I have open. No other components of the Windows XP desktop have graphics problems when this happens and no other open applications seem to have graphics problems. It's just Firefox. Sometimes I can refresh the tab/page (F5) and it clears up the blotchy random graphics characters. Does anyone know if there were changes to the graphics engine in version 29.0.1? Thanks!

All Replies (10)

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Can you attach a screenshot?

Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot.


Try to create a new Boolean pref on the about:config page via the right-click context menu with the name layout.paint_rects_separately and set the value to true and leave hardware acceleration enabled.

See comment 414 in bug 812695:

That way you still have the benefit from hardware acceleration, but may not suffer from rendering issues.

Edeziri site na cor-el

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Of course, now that I want it to have graphics problems to do a screen capture, it hasn't for almost 24 hours.  :) I'll attach a capture as soon as it happens again. In the mean time I may try the above suggestion. Thanks.

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It finally happened again. It looks like it's not refreshing properly. If I scroll or click around with the mouse, sections of the web page start to redraw.

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Did you disable hardware acceleration in Firefox?

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I haven't done anything yet because I wanted to reproduce the problem. Now I'll try the first suggestion, which seems to be to add a new preference and leave hardware acceleration on.

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Unfortunately, added a boolean preference layout.paint_rects_separately didn't correct the problem. I guess my next step is to figure out how to turn off hardware acceleration when browsing. I suppose the other alternative is to revert back to the previous version of the browser.  :(

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You can disable hardware acceleration in Firefox:

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: [] "Use hardware acceleration when available"

You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.

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I've disabled hardware acceleration to see if that works.

Even if it does though, why would I want to disable this feature because it isn't working in version 29.0.1 rather than just uninstall Firefox and reinstall the previous version where acceleration appears to have been working?

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Hi Steve, unless you use a lot of 3D, I think the performance improvement with hardware acceleration is small. You need to balance that against the security implications: Mozilla discloses security flaws after each new release.

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No, I don't view a lot of 3D in browsers but it always annoys me when I LOSE functionality going to a new version of Firefox.  :)