kaled - 9:03 am on Aug 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

Sorry, this is just spin. Browsers don't have direct access to hardware which means they have to go though the OS and rightly so. In order to access the hardware directly, they would have to install their own device drivers which might then stop games working properly, cause crashes, etc.

What they can do is make better use of acceleration features that the OS provides, however, this shouldn't really be necessary since the OS itself should do this by passing calls to old and slow functions to newer faster functions (but, surprise, surprise) Windows is weak in this area. For example...

Suppose I want to draw some smooth text - I just call the old functions and it magically comes out smooth, but suppose I want to draw a smooth circle - for this I have to call new functions because calling old ones will result in a jagged circle.

So, what they really mean is that they will use more new drawing functions and fewer old drawing functions but if they actually said that people would ask "why are you using old functions when newer ones are available?" SPIN, SPIN, SPIN.

Kaled.