Introduction of Safari to Windows has rehashed old discussions about which font rendering is better, Windows ClearType way or Mac OS X way. My experience so far tells me that it is largely a matter of habit: each and every Windows user I talked to thinks that Mac font smoothing is “shit”, “unreadable”, “hurts” etc. Mac users use the same adjectives, just vice-versa.
Here’s what some long-time Windows users say…
The always-opinionated Joel Spolsky says this:
Safari even managed to bring the inferior font rendering of the OS X platform to Windows, no easy trick.
On another hand, this post is perfect example of “I fucked up writing on impulse, realized my main argument is mute and then dug my self even deeper trying to cover my mistake with half-ass attempts to irony”. On my office computer (Pentium 4 3GHz, 2GB RAM) 1st time Safari startup took 5s. Joel later wrote a quality post on font rendering, which is usually his norm.
Jeff Atwood obviously agrees with Joel:
I’m curious why Apple’s default font rendering strategies, to my eye — and to the eyes of at least two other people — are visibly inferior to Microsoft’s on typical LCD displays
Jeff also wrote a great article on font smoothing.
Mac users are another story
Jeffrey Zeldman uses examples to drive his point:
It’s worth pointing out that these tests were done on Macintosh computers, which are known for their superior handling of text…
Jon Hicks clearly agrees:
Its wonderful looking at a website on XP, and seeing gorgeous text smoothing.
Truth is somewhere in the middle
Me, as a long time Windows user who have long time ago fallen in love with ClearType but am increasingly using Mac, agree in parts with both.
Non-italic font smoothing is better with ClearType, but is ugly with most sans-serif italics, like Verdana or Tahoma. Mac handles this much better. Here are few examples, made using Firefox 2 and Safari 3 beta, on Windows:
Tahoma rendering in Firefox and Safari
Mac rendering to me looks better. Which is the reason why on this site I use different fonts for italic and non-italic styles.
But, like I said, it’s a matter of habit. I even know few people who disable all font smoothing and use blocky fonts. They are usually non-front-end programmers. ;)
I think the preference actually comes down to the size of your monitor and how close you sit to it.
When I used non-aliased fonts I didn’t want to switch because I couldn’t see the individual pixels any more.
Once I’d lived with ClearType I found myself sitting back a little and enjoying more relaxed reading and ergonomic positioning as the fonts were a little bolder, larger and smoother.
With my Mac I can lean right back and look at the screen like it’s a poster and forget about pixels entirely.
[)amien
Damien, that last sentence you wrote is great, nails the essence. On the technological aspect of things, I’m astonished by FontFocus, found via Jeff’s second article. The Word small font size example is nothing short of miracle.
Few Comments:
Issues arise because we are trying to map fonts designed for printing to LCD screen. Ideally we should have fonts designed for LCD screen.
One should remember that the goal is to make a font look the best on screen, and not try to emulate it on screen they way it should appear on paper. Ease of reading is more important than accuracy.
Accuracy is more important for pre-press people not for screen readers.
Clear type tries to maintain more contrast/dark color by sacrificing smoothing. Whereas MAC prefers more smoothing and sacrifices contrast. People equate that to fuzzy edges.
Personally, I prefer Cleartype because I cannot stand fuzzy edges.
I suspect those humans that disable all font smoothin’ might be the same ones with faulty cornea or lens due to some kind of Astigmatism, I doubt their eyes have developed built in font smoothing, so artificial font smoothing on top of what they see would probably look really bad, see