FireFox doesn’t use hardware acceleration for drawing, but this should change very soon (they have been talking about it for more then a year). IE 9 is also receiving hardware accelerated drawing, both this and FF are using the new Direct2D API on Windows.
Don’t know about Opera and WebKit, but tbh if 90% of users have hardware accelerated graphics then they would be mad not to follow.
IE9 most likely won’t support Canvas. IE10, however, definitely will.
IE9 preview has support for HTML5 / Canvas
http://www.ditii.com/2010/03/21/amd-reveals-internet-explorer-9-ie9-canvas-element-support/
The sad thing is that IE9 will not be available for Windows XP. >:(
No more or less forced update, on XP, like we saw with IE7 => IE8
The latest statement (which is more recent than that article) from Microsoft (well, from the IE team) was that Canvas most likely won’t gonna make it into IE9 though. And those IE9 “tech demos” also didn’t support it.
Care to share the link to that more recent statement?
It would be a FAIL for IE9 not to support and it would further shrink their marketshare, which IMHO is a good thing, if MS really can’t get its act together. They have been ruining the hard work of webdevelopers long enough now.
If IE 9 doesn’t get then MS should just fire the IE team and give it to an entirely new one.
IE was once the best browser, and it was once helping to lead the internet. Since about IE 6 it’s just been consistently following the competition, always getting features after everyone else. It needs to get back to leading rather then following.
Actually, when Microsoft was leading, everyone was complaining too! ;D
The problem wasn’t so much that they were leading, it was that they were leading, adding new proposed functionality and then failing to update the functionality when it got standardised with subtly different behaviour. Meaning they were forever adding stuff that wasn’t spec-compliant and keeping it that way in the name of backwards compatibility.
It’s also one of MS’s products where I feel it’s implemented at lower quality then the alternatives. It’s an excellent browser, it’s just that everyone else is awesome.
clearly you haven’t suffered the masses of pain IE has inflicted on millions of web developer 
Just like Windows. 
Yeah I totally disconcur. That’s sort of like saying a horse and carriage is an excellent means of transportation, it’s just that cars and airplanes are awesome. Once upon a time IE was a good browser, but it has been pitiful at innovation or at matching others’ innovation.
In addition to all that, they seem to sort of flatly refuse to make their browser work like anyone else’s, thus making the nightmare it is for web developers to make compatible websites.
There’s a new one.
It’s old but Webster hasn’t acknowledged its awesomeness yet. 
This looks interesting: firebreath
[quote]FireBreath aims to be a cross-platform plugin architecture, targeting:
* NPAPI browsers on windows, mac, and linux:
o Gecko/Firefox
o Google Chrome
o Apple Safari
* ActiveX Control hosts:
o Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8
[/quote]
What does it actually, er, do?
Cas
MS “version” of Java, IE vs. browser standards, C# vs Java, Zune vs. standard MP3 devices, etc. Microsoft makes products built to standards. MS standards.
And if they were the only tech company in the biz then we’d all be happy, right?! :’(
Lets you develop browser plug-ins in a cross-platform way. What it says basically.