Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

[squall_leonhart]

Memory usage appears to have returned to normal in the latest nightly.

[sysKin]

Is there any way to disable vertical font blur, or otherwise make text more visible?

I have nothing against cleartype but total contrast between background a text is significantly reduced, making it harder to read

[AdLeester]

Indeed, I'm using the standard ClearType settings for everything on my system, and now (with both acc options enabled) the fonts looks slightly different, here and there...
For example, the menu fonts are much thinner, some of the fonts on pages are a bit smaller and those that were bold already, are even, erm, more bolder-ish
Does that mean the accelerated-font-blurring take both ClearType and Direct2D blurring into consideration or does it only blur the Direct2D way?

[squall_leonhart]

I have nothing against cleartype but total contrast between background a text is significantly reduced, making it harder to read

Disable "Anisotropic Filtering" in your graphics card controls/settings.

[sysKin]

Disable "Anisotropic Filtering" in your graphics card controls/settings.

Hey that helped, thanks!
I did read about anisotropic filtering on first page but somehow concluded this was about nvidia. I just re-read it and it's not.

Still, while it "helped", black letters on white background are still quite thin while white letters on dark background are quite thick. I am not sure if my monitor gamma is wrong (although I do my best to have it correct) or somehow gamma is applied wrong (or twice?) in the process...

Can anyone else see that? Compare thickness of address bar when address is unselected and fully selected.

those that were bold already, are even, erm, more bolder-ish

This is because, unknown to anyone anywhere, a html <b> tag does not actually make things bold. It makes them *bolder*[1] which is, well, more bold than bold. Websites are full of <b> tags which are expected to make things bold and all those websites are in for a surprise.

If you ask me, firefox should now go against the recommendation and redefine <b> to be bold. Dunno if that's going to happen.

[1] resource://gre-resources/html.css line 403

[Omega X]

Disable "Anisotropic Filtering" in your graphics card controls/settings.

Hey that helped, thanks!
I did read about anisotropic filtering on first page but somehow concluded this was about nvidia. I just re-read it and it's not.

Still, while it "helped", black letters on white background are still quite thin while white letters on dark background are quite thick. I am not sure if my monitor gamma is wrong (although I do my best to have it correct) or somehow gamma is applied wrong (or twice?) in the process...

Can anyone else see that? Compare thickness of address bar when address is unselected and fully selected.

I was told that it was a driver issue. The Steam 2010 Beta uses DirectWrite and also has issues with light text on dark backgrounds being a bit chunky.

[sysKin]

I was told that it was a driver issue. The Steam 2010 Beta uses DirectWrite and also has issues with light text on dark backgrounds being a bit chunky.

Oh I've seen that.
I dug a bit deeper and it would seem that gamma correction is indeed involved: This website http://blogs.msdn.com/directx/archive/2 ... write.aspx says:

In order to efficiently support hardware acceleration, Direct2D uses a slightly different approximation to Gamma correction called “alpha correction”. This doesn’t require Direct2D to inspect the render target color pixel when rendering text.

This looks weird because you can't apply gamma correction without knowing brush colour: if your algorithm applies gamma 2.2 on black text then it will automatically apply gamma 0.45 on white text, leading to ugly lack of symmetry between them.
Interestingly, an application can influence this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx
It's possible to specify own gamma when rendering any directwrite text.

I wonder if it's possible to compensate for this problem by simply specifying own gamma correction depending on font colour.

[squall_leonhart]

I was told that it was a driver issue. The Steam 2010 Beta uses DirectWrite and also has issues with light text on dark backgrounds being a bit chunky.

From what i saw, Cleartype doesn't seem to effect directwrite much at all, but still, i used the calibration tool to improve the font anyway.

[Omega X]

That gamma thing looks interesting. I wonder if Bas knows about this already.

[sysKin]

This looks weird because you can't apply gamma correction without knowing brush colour

I think I take this part back: it's not font colour that's unknown, but background colour.
Approximation makes sense then.

[Omega X]

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Perfo ... fault.html
This test from Microsoft shows an interesting stress on D2D. IE9 preview gets 60fps while Minefield gets 30. I wonder if it has something to do with the script that rotates the images.

Edit: One more thing, It has the same issues with fonts as Steam 2010 Beta and Minefield.

Either its a limitation of the system or it really is the drivers.

[iceccold]

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/01FlyingImages/Default.html
This test from Microsoft shows an interesting stress on D2D. IE9 preview gets 60fps while Minefield gets 30. I wonder if it has something to do with the script that rotates the images.

I tried it on MozillaDeveloperPreview 3.7 alpha 3 and I get around 60fps.
Same as Internet Explorer 9.

[supernova_00]

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/01FlyingImages/Default.html
This test from Microsoft shows an interesting stress on D2D. IE9 preview gets 60fps while Minefield gets 30. I wonder if it has something to do with the script that rotates the images.

I tried it on MozillaDeveloperPreview 3.7 alpha 3 and I get around 60fps.
Same as Internet Explorer 9.

I get 8 :/

[iceccold]

I get 8 :/

Did you enabled D2D?

Edit: sometimes I get around 30.
Dunno why is this happening.

[_Dexter_]

Don't forget to post the resolution you are running at along with the frame rate for the ie9 test. I run at 1920x1200 and get 50fps.