Chrome finally fixed it's font rendering problems

Fatbat

Fatbat

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May 10, 2008
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Fonts have always rendered poorly, with terrible anti-aliasing, in the Chrome browser on Windows machines, which is ironic since Google serves up the largest collection of open source webfonts. It's something that's always been a problem but was reported and officially entered into the Chromium developer's issues more than 2 years ago. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692

The problem revolved around Chrome using old GDI rendering methods, while other browsers like Firefox and IE moved to DirectWrite a long time ago.

Well, 2 years have gone by but as of version 37, DirectWrite is now the rendering method in Chrome and fonts are now gloriously smooth.

I know many of you couldn't give a crap, but for web designers who notice shit like this, we can celebrate a little.
 


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Shit hurts my eyes. Blurry as fuck. In order to disable DirectWrite.

Go to address bar and type chrome://flags/.
 
conjamuk said:
Shit hurts my eyes. In order to disable DirectWrite.

Go to address bar and type chrome://flags/.
Click to expand...

Why on earth would you want to do that? GDI rendering is horrific, with jagged lines and almost no anti-aliasing except on fonts larger than around 30px (varies slightly depending on the font). Chrome is now rendering the same as Firefox and IE and the rest of the Windows operating system. It's crisp and smooth and isn't blurry at all. Maybe you need glasses?
 
just popped some of my finest champagne in light of this announcement
 
conjamuk said:
Directwrite on FF is fine for me. Not in chrome https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=405445
Click to expand...

Weird. You're right. Upon further inspection I CAN see differences, especially with really small type between FF and Chrome. In some places I think Firefox is rendering better and in others I think Chrome is rendering beter. I guess they need to tune it some still. It's at least a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned though.

This is a useful site if you want to do some comparison testing Typetester – Compare fonts for the screen
 
So I did a little comparison of the CNN site in both browsers. I don't think it's a clear cut case of one being better than the other. They both have strengths and weaknesses. In some places Chrome looks nicer, and in other places Firefox looks nicer.

type-rendering-comparison.png
 
Not fine for me too, the old rendering was crap, the new one is crappier.
I didn't mind seeing some bad anti-aliasing, now they fixed that, but the fonts look blurry, especially small ones.
rendering_zps8e25435d.png
 
I like it mostly, small fonts just seem a little too heavy but one thing I have noticed is kerning on smaller fonts seems better than FF.
 
I must be blind as fukk since I don't see any difference and I've been using chrome for ages... also never seen any difference between chrome and FF
 
Noticed a difference over the past day or two.

Some fonts seem smoother. Others seem a little blurry.
 
Besides fonts being blurry on a bunch of sites any underlined text also looks like shit (the underline touches the bottom of the text instead of being below it). Disabled it because it was hurting my eyes.
 
Jesus fucking christ finally. I realized it just today actually.

What this does is - it makes letters that didn't have a problem before blurry and overly anti-aliased, which is a problem. But then it also fixes the extremely jaggy big fonts problem I had on so many fucking websites with open fonts.

Even though in general this makes things blurrier, I am all for it.
 
How do you disable it it?

The blurry stuff is annoying. This is one of the things I hated about IE.
 
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