
Windows Chrome, why do my fonts look so bad? - JustResign
http://lee.greens.io/blog/2014/01/13/windows-chrome/
======
JohnTHaller
This is a years-old bug in Google Chrome on Windows which leaves
designers/developers with a choice of using Google Fonts (saves you bandwidth
and can save the user bandwdith and page load times since it's cached between
sites) and just accepting that Google Chrome Windows users will have an
inferior experience or self-hosting your fonts (you do the bandwidth,
increased page load to users, making sure you get the font loads in the
correct order, slightly longer load time for Safari users). It's kind of
amazing that this is still unfixed given how poorly the font rendering makes
pages look and the fact that every other Windows browser handles it with
aplomb.

~~~
giovannibajo1
While the bug is being fixed, why doesn't Google add the SVG workaround to the
CSS being served for its fonts?

~~~
JohnTHaller
I have no idea. We've been suggesting that for years as well. But the web
fonts team seems to have no interest in mitigating the Google Chrome Windows
bug.

~~~
tracker1
"ChromeOS" Chromebooks look so much nicer than Windows... if you want to
browse the web like it's supposed to work, get a Chromebook. /sarcasm

Seriously, this has bugged me for a very long time myself. I don't get why it
hasn't been fixed, it's been an issue as long as I can remember, and
fortunately, other than at work or my desktop at home, I'm not on windows...
My HTPC, which I use for reading more than anything is on Ubuntu, and I
recently got a Chromebook as an interim replacement for my stolen MBP.

Though some of the comments mention (rightly) that SVG fonts are larger files
than WOFF... they don't seem to take into consideration that SVG, being
text/xml can be greatly compressed in transit. I also, REALLY don't get why
Google's web fonts' css doesn't give the SVG first to chrome+windows users, so
things at least look better there until they fix chrome.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It doesn't bug me much other than having to self-host font files and ensure
they're in the hacky order to fix Chrome's issue. Then again, I don't use
Chrome other than for testing web pages. I run Firefox on Windows and Android
and sync them. When Firefox first started using DirectDraw, there were some
issues with fonts, but Mozilla made it a priority and got it sorted relatively
quickly (lightning fast compared to Chrome's font bugs).

------
Tomdarkness
Chrome Canary has experimental support for DirectWrite which should make your
fonts, and text in general look much nicer.

See the issue here:

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541)

For details on how to enable DirectWrite in Chrome Canary. Might be worthwhile
to see what your fonts look like using DirectWrite.

~~~
bhauer
I have had that issue starred for years, as I assume most of the others have.
The failure of Chromium to support DirectWrite in a reasonable timeframe has
kept me pure in my unwavering support of Firefox, even when Chrome was
considered the hipper browser. It's easier now to remain with Mozilla, what
with anti-Google sentiment becoming mainstream.

Jokes aside, it's embarrassing how long that issue has been left to rot. All
fonts in Chrome-Windows look awful once one is used to Firefox or Internet
Explorer's rendering.

~~~
zw
Similar type of deal with [going
64-bit]([https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323))
on Mac OS X. Has languished for multiple years. DirectWrite shipped in 2009,
one month after Snow Leopard with 64-bit recommended for apps by default.

~~~
cpeterso
Plus ASLR is much less effective with only a 32 bit address space. (Firefox on
OS X is a 64 bit application.)

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ahugon
I don't think this is related to the issue this article talks about, but it
may be relevant to Windows Chrome users whose fonts suddenly look bad...

I noticed in the past week that sites of mine that had imported a font from
Google Web Fonts without _explicitly_ specifying to import bold/italics
versions too were looking odd (e.g. weird text-shadow for no reason on what
used to appear bold). In past versions of Chrome (or perhaps it's Google Web
Fonts that has changed, I'm not sure), I've been able to use [b] and [i] HTML
tags around text and my Google fonts have responded accordingly (without my
needing to explicitly import bold/italic versions) -- but that's no longer the
case. The fix is (obviously) to explicitly import the versions of the fonts
you bold/italicize, but it actually took me a little while to figure out that
that (and not some weird CSS issue) was the problem.

Hopefully this saves a few other people 15 minutes of poring over their CSS
trying in vain to figure out what isn't working!

~~~
xcrunner529
It's a bug and really
annoying.[http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=332958](http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=332958)

~~~
vyrotek
Thank you (and ahugon) for confirming this! I noticed one of our sites was
having this issue and wasn't sure what was causing it.

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badman_ting
Just MAKE SURE NOT TO COPY FROM THE FONTSPRING POST linked to in the article.
Their code samples have curly-quotes in the CSS which fails silently and you
will go nuts trying to debug it. Um, hypothetically. Ahem.

Developers, man.

~~~
JustResign
Thanks.

<.< Double-checking my CSS in the article >.>

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mschuster91
All browsers: why can't you display an intermediate font while downloading the
custom font-faces?

It just sucks so badly. Most time I'm stuck on a 8 KByte/sec cellphone
connection, and I have to wait YEARS just to read text - or press ESC to force
display of system fonts.

~~~
sergiotapia
I have just given up on using Google Webfonts. :)

I just use:

    
    
        font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

~~~
cpeterso
I've read that Windows' Helvetica font is uglier than Arial (perhaps a hinting
issue) and, since few Windows'users have Helvetica Neue, that a recommended
don't family is thus:

    
    
      font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif;

~~~
Raphael
Unless the situation has changed, the Windows registry has an entry to show
Arial when Helvetica is requested.

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captn3m0
For those of you who don't care about custom fonts, I made a quick
extension[0] that disables use of all web-fonts (woff/ttf/otf) by blocking all
requests made to these extensions. It does save me a lot of bandwidth when I
do enable it. Plus, it saves you from FOUT. Its open source on GitHub as
well[1].

I still have to add support for a whitelist, so that it can be actually useful
(for instance, GitHub needs web-fonts for most of its interface).

[0]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-web-
fonts/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-web-
fonts/olmabeadgbpmhllgdkemfdnmkngkbkeg/)

[1]: [https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-
fonts](https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-fonts)

~~~
devindotcom
What's "a lot"? Aren't font loads on the order of a few kilobytes a page?
Seems like loading the front page of the New York Times once would use more
bandwidth than all the web fonts you run into for a month.

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kclay
I found using the SVG version rather then tff helps a bit on windows. Its
nasty looking but it does make it a bit more presentable. Only thing is that
for some reason Google Web Font doesn't display the SVG so I have to use
something like Font Squirrel to create my fonts and host locally. I only tend
to do this if the client just so happens to tests on windows , most of the
time they don't care since they are on macs so its not that much of an hassle
when I have to go down this road.

Edit: Maybe I should of read the article before my comment, seems he does the
same thing.

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adventured
I've noticed as well that Windows Chrome produces a bit of an ugly jagged look
to even common fonts.

I use this to fix it:

-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0.15px; (some suggest 0.25px)

~~~
tdj
This. I use 0.1px for smaller type, and 0.25 for bigger. It also makes it look
thicker.

Also, the same problem is also present in Safari for Windows, in case anyone
actually uses it..

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joaohenriques
Take a look at comment #123 on
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692#c123)

Its almost fixed, but then it needs to go through the "food chain" before it
reaches every one of us. So, only in about 6 months that it might be finally
fixed.

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mistercow
So the article is suggesting that you could do this with Google Web Fonts by
copying the CSS instead of linking to it, and then changing the order.

While that would work, I wonder if copying and modifying their CSS would
technically be a TOS violation.

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ciquar
This is, for the most part, a rehash of this article:

[http://www.dev-metal.com/fix-ugly-font-rendering-google-
chro...](http://www.dev-metal.com/fix-ugly-font-rendering-google-chrome/)

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asadotzler
I presume this is simply that Chrome uses GDI rather than DirectWrite here.
Perhaps they're prioritizing speed over beauty?

~~~
joseph_cooney
And also the ability to run on Windows XP, where DirectWrite doesn't exist.

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omegote
This has been a bug for so long, it feels like Groundhog day. Chrome
developers couldn't care less about windows users.

