
Chrome and Firefox sometimes display text unpleasantly - avodonosov
http://avodonosov.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post.html
======
isomorphic
I tried his code.

It renders with proper anti-aliasing in Firefox 26 and Safari 7 on Mac OS X
10.9.

Perhaps his problem has its roots in his operating system, or rather browser
developers' use of that operating system? I admit to ignorance about whether
browsers are doing their own font rendering or if they are handing that off to
the OS...

~~~
cheapsteak
Looks fine on Chrome 32 / Win 7

Here's a fiddle for the lazy:
[http://jsfiddle.net/garnwraly/CqW6k/show/](http://jsfiddle.net/garnwraly/CqW6k/show/)

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chrismorgan
Convenient link (unfortunately not linkified):

data:text/html,<h1%20style="font-size:300%25;color:%234f81bd;font-
style:italic;font-family:Times%20New%20Roman,Times,serif">WINTER%20ACTION</h1>

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atesti
Have you disabled ClearType in the operating system and IE ignores that
setting and uses ClearType anyway, while the other two browsers don't?

~~~
avodonosov
Yes, you are right, others suggested to check that too, and enabling ClearType
fixed that

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jamesaguilar
Doesn't look like that on my machine. Anything more you want to tell us about
your setup?

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tasty_freeze
Not only does it look OK in firefox for me (ff26, windows 7), but if I CTRL-+
to boost the text size, it always looks antialiased. So the supposition that
it renders then scales is false.

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arunitc
This bug is pending for almost a couple of years in Chrome -
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692)

You can try opening this icon
([http://fontawesome.io/icon/windows/](http://fontawesome.io/icon/windows/))
in all three browsers to test - check for the smallest size. Works fine in
Firefox and IE, not in Chrome

~~~
cbhl
The bug suggests that it's Windows-only, and the bug also looks like it saw
some activity last month. Has someone tried the --enable-direct-write flag
that's mentioned in it?

~~~
arunitc
Yes I tried it and it works fine once you enable that flag. But fonts look
much thinner than what they should be

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smtddr
Back in the day this was some kind of problem in Linux. I always had to do
stuff[1] to get MSWindows fonts to the Linux OS. But I don't think anyone
needs to do this anymore. Gotta know more about this person's environment.

1\.
[http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/29](http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/29)

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jdbernard
I am marking this bug as closed: unable to reproduce.

Really, though, you should do a little more testing before you try to go
public like this. This code renders almost the same for me on all three
browsers: [http://i.imgur.com/fmEhGOB.png](http://i.imgur.com/fmEhGOB.png)

~~~
avodonosov
OK. I am glad to hear this works for others.

I would now change the title to something like "Chrome and FireFox sometimes
display text unpleasantly" but the edit link is not available.

~~~
piyush_soni
When you do that, also add the words "for me" at the end. Thanks.

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zobzu
Looks perfectly fine for me on firefox/windows.

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kijin
Windows 7 x64 :
[http://i.imgur.com/fsXFgAw.png](http://i.imgur.com/fsXFgAw.png)

Chrome is a little choppy, but Firefox and IE 11 look exactly the same.

All browsers use hardware acceleration nowadays, so I'm suspecting that
something is wrong with OP's graphics settings. Are you running those browsers
in a VM by any chance?

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brendanib
I dealt with this after a user complaint last week - The "-webkit-text-stroke:
1px" hack mentioned in the Chromium thread does indeed work, but only for
headings. If you use a webfont for body copy, and absolutely need cross-
browser support, probably just have to fall back.

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jdkanani
Looks perfect on chrome32/Ubuntu.

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callesgg
Looks more like three is no anti aliasing. And as James say does not look like
that for me.

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jinushaun
Maybe because proper font rendering trapped is behind patents? Chrome and
Firefox probably rely on public system APIs. IE probably uses private APIs to
render fonts. That's just my guess.

------
avodonosov
FireFox 26.0, 32.0.1700.76 beta-m, Windows 7

~~~
nrc
For Firefox at least, this is probably because you are not using DirectWrite -
that in turn is probably because you are not getting D3D10 (you are probably
using D3D9 or no hardware acceleration), the usual cause of this is due to out
of date drivers or black-listed hardware. You can check what hardware
acceleration you get in the graphics section of about:support.

If you are not getting HWA, you can try forcing it on by setting
'layers.acceleration.force-enabled' to true in about:config (I would do that
in a throw away profile though because it might crash Firefox; that overrides
the black list).

~~~
avodonosov

      Graphics
    
      Adapter Description	NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M
      Adapter Drivers	nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
      Adapter RAM	1024
      ClearType Parameters	DISPLAY1 [ Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: RGB ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 200 ] DISPLAY2 [ Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: RGB ClearType Level:   100 Enhanced Contrast: 200 ]
      Device ID	0x0a28
      Direct2D Enabled	Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 257.21 or newer.
      DirectWrite Enabled	false (6.2.9200.16571)
      Driver Date	7-23-2009
      Driver Version	8.15.11.8644
      GPU #2 Active	false
      GPU Accelerated Windows	0/1 Basic Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 257.21 or newer.
      Vendor ID	0x10de
      WebGL Renderer	Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 257.21 or newer.
      windowLayerManagerRemote	false
      AzureCanvasBackend	skia
      AzureContentBackend	none
      AzureFallbackCanvasBackend	cairo
      AzureSkiaAccelerated	0

~~~
taspeotis

        Driver Date	7-23-2009
    

When will users learn to upgrade their drivers properly?

EDIT: For everybody who thinks this should be easy, what's the latest version
of the NVIDIA drivers on Windows Update? Is it not "version 257.21 or newer"?

~~~
RussianCow
To be fair, I think the better question is when will driver vendors learn to
have their drivers update automatically? Checking to see if your drivers are
up-to-date and installing new ones is a tedious process, and I shouldn't have
to do it just to have a usable machine.

~~~
taspeotis
[http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-
update.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-update.html)

> I shouldn't have to do it just to have a usable machine.

The complaint isn't that Chrome and Firefox don't work.

