Hey all,
tl/dr; Help us by testing WebRender software fallback, and file bugs against the meta 'sw-wr-dogfood'.
WebRender Software Fallback is a project involving the development of a software (vs. accelerated) backend for WebRender. Its purpose is to replace the old graphics pipelines on platforms where we suffer from various stability issues revolving around driver issues, missing rendering features, and as a target for the long tail of hardware that doesn't show up in our release population in significant numbers. We plan to ship this new backend to targeted devices and drivers on various platforms in 2021.
Today we are kicking off a dog fooding phase to accumulate bug reports for issues and Firefox profiler profiles for performance issues. If you're interested in helping please continue reading!
If you are currently running Nightly, please try temporarily enabling software fallback and comparing it to your regular browsing experience.
During testing if you -
1) Run into stability issues, we'd appreciate bug reports with crash signatures.
2) Notice painting glitches or errors, we'd appreciate bug reports with screenshots.
3) Detect noticeable performance issues with page interaction and scrolling that normally don't occur, we'd appreciate bug reports with Firefox profiles.
We're interested in reports from users who currently qualify for one of the WebRender accelerated backends as well as from users who do not. If your device currently defaults to one of the older graphics pipelines (in particular, Basic Layers) we're very interested in hearing about your experience with software fallback. You can identify your default backend by checking about:support's Graphics section.
To switch to using software fallback, flip the following prefs -
gfx.webrender.all = true
gfx.webrender.software = true
The first pref change ensures WebRender is enabled. The second pref switches WebRender to use the software fallback backend.
Once you have finished testing, reset both of these preferences to their defaults to reset to your default graphics backend. We'd like to ask that you run with software fallback for as long as you are comfortable using it and report any issues you come across via Bugzilla. File bugs under Core : Graphics : WebRender [1] and please block any bugs filed against the meta bug 'sw-wr-dogfood' [2] so that the Graphics team can find and triage them.
Thanks for the help!
Platform Graphics Team
[1]
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Core&component=Graphics%3A%20WebRender
[2]
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=sw-wr-dogfood