I have been using “smooth edges of screen fonts” option in Windows from the day it appeared. It made web browsing experience much more enjoyable, especially when page uses italic fonts.
On recent Win versions, there was a choice between two technologies for font smoothing: Standard and ClearType. I always used Standard, because I read that ClearType is created for TFT screens, and that it was not suitable for CRTs.
I have tried ClearType on my CRT monitor and the menu options looked blurry, just as that page says. Thus, I gave up on it.
Now, that is not true. I was so wrong.
Turning point was when Andrei introduced his new layout, with large italicized headings. On my screen they looked…ugh. With Andrei being very picky as he is, I doubted that it looked the same for him. So I switched ClearType on, and forced myself to use it over the weekend.
To my surprise, I quickly got used to it. Menu and taskbar fonts are still blurry, but far from unreadable. And web pages….web page fonts look absolutely fantastic. Here is how serif fonts are displayed with Standard smoothing:
And there is the same text with ClearType:
Almost identical display is shown on MS Typography pages. On the very same page you can also fine-tune the ClearType settings (page works properly only in IE as it uses ActiveX control). I tried several of the available six options; all of them worked great for web pages, but the upper middle (sort-of semi-bold), is the best for general system fonts.
If you want to learn more how ClearType actually works, check How sub-pixel font rendering works.
Haha! i’m laughing because of the timing of this post.
Yesterday i’ve been user testing my recent website at my uncle’s on his notebook. And he had 16-bit color, standard font smoothing settings (probably by default—he ain’t tweaker, just average user), so when we connected (at 36kbps Dial-Up) and the page loaded, i get shocked how poor it looks at these settings.
I guess we should consider testing even on such systems, especialy when the project’s audience consists of mostly average users.
I was looking at such displays until yesterday, which is probably the reason why I rarely used italic or serif fonts. They were just downright ugly.
I think a campaign “use better font smoothing” is in order. :)
I agree. But first thing’s first—there’s still too many bad user agents out there (we both know which one i’m refering to).
Although according Microsoft ClearType is created for TFT screens:
"It works especially well on Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) devices, including flat screen monitors and laptop computers.", on my lap-top this feature show blurry text. Something better display is on my CRT monitor.
I have tried the ClearType font smoothing, but because sub-pixel font rendering uses R,G,B individually, I end up with nasty coloured ghosting on black and white fonts…
anyways… I am all for font smoothing especially since i am a webdesigner and hate to see the fonts not smoothed..
right now I’m on OS X at work and the fonts look great.. how come OS X has great looking smoothed fonts w/o the colour ghosting???
I have to agree about the sorry look of fonts on Windows. In this room are 2 Macs running OS X and 1 IBM PC running Win2KPro. No matter what I tweak on the PC, the fonts still look shabby. If anyone has a suggestion besides MS ClearType, such as another program or DLL, please follow this thread and let me know.