Firefox hopes to one-up IE with fast graphics

Last week, Microsoft showed off some browser technology that could help Internet Explorer leapfrog the competition. But if Mozilla succeeds in its hope, Microsoft could be playing catch-up instead.

The technology in question is hardware-accelerated graphics and text using interfaces called Direct2D and DirectWrite that provide an easy way to use graphics cards' computing power. They're built into Windows 7, and Microsoft is bringing them to Windows Vista but not Windows XP.