Font smoothing for Windows
- Thread starter Dmitriy
- Start date
Adam Howard
Well-known member
I like the way Apple does it. So much cleaner, clearer, and easier to read.
Need to figure away to make Windows render like that.
Need to figure away to make Windows render like that.
Dmitriy
Member
Mac OS ok. Many users are using Windows. We should do nicely for them.
EQnoble
Well-known member
You can set a shadow to the text and use an extremely low opacity, choose a color somewhere between the font color and the background-color in darkness.
text-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
http://codepen.io/anon/pen/xGDre
Other options rely on @font-face...it really is up to you and what will work better in your situation and for the most people viewing your site.
Searching for 'anti-aliasing', '@font', or 'smooth text' will get you headed in the right direction...
text-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
http://codepen.io/anon/pen/xGDre
Other options rely on @font-face...it really is up to you and what will work better in your situation and for the most people viewing your site.
Searching for 'anti-aliasing', '@font', or 'smooth text' will get you headed in the right direction...
Dmitriy
Member
SilverCircle
Well-known member
About smoothing. I came into Windows, I opened Chrome and I came on kremen.ua
Enormous difference in display of a font to Mac and to Windows!
There are solutions of JS/CSS for font smoothing in the browser?
No matter what you try, you'll never get the font rendering quality of OS X in Windows. ClearType is total crap and DirectWrite (which, in theory could do it) is not mature/widespread enough.
Just live with it - as a Windows user you'll sooner or later get used to ugly and typographically incorrect font rendering.
Dmitriy
Member
Is similar for other browsers? It's tolerably for IE. But ugly in Chrome, Mozilla & Opera. this is how the shows:
digitalpoint
Well-known member
It's really more of an underlying issue with how the operating system treats fonts. Specifically Windows tries to align things to the nearest whole pixel, while Mac OS X doesn't.
http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophies-of-windows-and-mac-os-x
http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophies-of-windows-and-mac-os-x
Dragapult
Well-known member
I believe in Win7 and beyond, you are now able to adjust ClearType settings so you can make fonts look a little more or less sharper. Making things a little bolder makes text look somewhat similar to Mac OS X, which uses Quartz Extreme for font smoothing and anti-aliasing.
digitalpoint
Well-known member
Unfortunately, that doesn't really help the issue of wanting a website to look consistent for all users.
Jason
Well-known member
Basically, Windows heavily favors the pixel grid which improves readability and prevents blur, but at the cost of not being a true typeface. Apple chose the exact opposite approach for OS X, where fonts are rendered in such a way to preserve the typeface, but at the cost of sometimes appearing a bit blurry (years ago, this was more apparent -- OS X fonts were atrocious). Now that high resolution displays are becoming more common, ClearType isn't exactly needed to the extent it once was.
For websites, the only great solution is to use a cross platform font (there's ~6 of them) and web fonts (but even browsers may render fonts slightly different), and fallback fonts for critical sections. Or, images if it really must look the same, but that's bad for your health!
For websites, the only great solution is to use a cross platform font (there's ~6 of them) and web fonts (but even browsers may render fonts slightly different), and fallback fonts for critical sections. Or, images if it really must look the same, but that's bad for your health!
mistypants
Well-known member
It won't help you make your website look nice to everyone, but you can replace Cleartype with GDI++, which is what (if memory serves) Linux & OSX use for font smoothing.
It's not a full blown program right now but it works alright.
Again, this doesn't really fix the issue, though. At the end of the day it's really just up to the end user to configure their Cleartype settings properly... and some people really just could be arsed.
It's not a full blown program right now but it works alright.
Again, this doesn't really fix the issue, though. At the end of the day it's really just up to the end user to configure their Cleartype settings properly... and some people really just could be arsed.
Dragapult
Well-known member
Unfortunately, that doesn't really help the issue of wanting a website to look consistent for all users.
That's near impossible because a website is going to look slightly different for each user, based on their OS settings.
Dmitriy
Member
most users will not set. smoothing to do for all users.
screenshots in this topic of Arial. I do not know the concept of cross-platform may affect the quality of display.
webfonts are not the solution. I tested http://www.google.com/fonts/#ChoosePlace:select in all browsers for Windows and it's ok only in IE. Safari for Windows not tested.
fallback fonts its for symbols?
I think something can be.
SilverCircle
Well-known member
That's just an ugly hack. ClearType doesn't support true sub-pixel placement of glyphs and this is the single most important feature for proper (and typographically correct) font rendering. It has little to do with sharpness and a lot more with the x-placement of glyphs.
Strict alignment on the pixel grid is not enough unless you have an extremely high resolution (about 200-300dpi, dependent on viewing distance, of course) pixel grid. Maybe, for retina displays, a simple pixel-alignment would work, but certainly not for the average display where sub-pixel placement is the only way to solve the issues.
Another interesting article about font rendering in general can be found here.
Biker
Well-known member
Honestly? Who cares? Want to see a huge disparity on how fonts are rendered? Fire up Linux and hit a few sites. If you're OCD about how a font looks online, you'll go running back to Windows and never worry about font rendering again.
Unless your site specializes in graphics and the preview of said graphics is critical, minor issues on how the various operating systems render fonts should be a non-issue. Seriously.
Unless your site specializes in graphics and the preview of said graphics is critical, minor issues on how the various operating systems render fonts should be a non-issue. Seriously.
Dmitriy
Member
I think the little things are important. It's like a Unibody and Magsafe for Apple. Even more important.
