Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

[Cyberbeing]

There needs to be a DirectWrite version of that ClearType tuning wizard..

This has been my annoyance as well.

As hews310 illustrated, a particular ClearType setting doesn't have identical font gamma/thickness/heaviness in DirectWrite as GDI. Since I have an ATI card and hews310 has an NVIDIA card, this must be some global Microsoft problem, or a problem with Mozilla's implementation. In general, a light Cleartype setting looks more faded in DirectWrite then GDI, and a darker ClearType setting looks heavier in DirectWrite then GDI. There is really no perfect setting for both, and you pretty much need to keep Firefox open with the ClearType Tuner to make DirectWrite look decent after a lot of trial and error.

I wonder if Mozilla has considered just overriding the Global ClearType setting by default when using DirectWrite, and forcing some compromise setting which doesn't look overly faded or thick?

[drbaltazar]

on this page when i control+ all the way text look good everywhere but page it self,but when its 100%, text look average!

[Taranli Maren]

The problems with the antialiasing go beyond just rainbow text. For me, when hardware acceleration is on, heavily saturated text on a dark background (bright red on black) looks heavily aliased. It is even worse when the text is bold.

Firefox 4b11
ATI Catalyst 11.1
Windows 7 64bit

[hews310]

Yes, it does affect the rendering. But if I'm not mistaken it doesn't affect it in the same way as GDI - since GDI will be less thin to begin with, right? So you can't really see what you're doing.

I don't know, will it ? Sorry no expert here, but to me, what sticks out particularly on my menu cleartype comparison on the previous page, is in the hardware accelerated 'fat' cleartype, not only does the text look less smooth in general, but you can actually see colours, purple and turquoise mainly, around or on the text which looks extremely crappy, perfectly summed up by a comment I just found on feedback:

"The words on the screen (only while using Firefox) frequently blur, with a purple-blue hint (like trying to watch a 3D movie w/o glasses)."

http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/sea ... =3D+movie+

this effect is not occuring in IE9, so is this down to Microsoft not giving the full info to Mozilla in order to be able to get acceleration right, or is just Mozilla not doing it right yet, due to lack of experience with it?

on this page when i control+ all the way text look good everywhere but page it self,but when its 100%, text look average!

Yeh, I think this is correct, the hardware accelerated text on FF4 looks at its worst when it is small, not sure why.
scrap that just turned hw accel on and it looks crappy whether I zoom in or not

[hews310]

"The words on the screen (only while using Firefox) frequently blur, with a purple-blue hint (like trying to watch a 3D movie w/o glasses)."

OK look at this...FF4 with hw off, Opera 11, and IE9 all use slightly different shading, but in each, they have the same pattern i.e. if each colour was a number they would be identical, but in FF4 with hardware acceleration on, there is clearly something very wrong, it follows a completely different pattern, why ?



full size png
http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php? ... 79a3ng1mcj

[patrickjdempsey]

Those don't look "slightly different" to me, they look identical except for the top right (Firefox w. HA).

[Omega X]

IE9 looks lighter than the others.

Both Fx with HA off and Opera 11 uses GDI. But Firefox again is slightly darker.

[scratchee]

the reason identical letters are getting non-identical sub-pixel anti-aliasing is the new DW feature, sub-pixel positioning.
It is intended, it is supposed to stop letters having different sized spaces between them, which can be a little jarring (ever seen a word where there is a bizarre gap in the middle and you think its a space, but its not? that.).
The problem is that sub-pixel anti-aliasing needs to be toned down so the colours can't be seen, that way the rainbow effect wont be visible. Whether the problem is ffx or MS, I don't know.
The problem is most visible for repeated characters using sub-pixel positioning, but it will be happening to all text rendered with overused sub-pixel anti-aliasing (e.g. without sub-pixel positioning, the rainbow would stop, but you'd still get a line of green "l"s or a line of red "l"s)

[WonderCsabo]

Fx4 w/ HW is darker than the others. Maybe you should post this image to the right bug and ask Bas for explanation.

[hews310]

the reason identical letters are getting non-identical sub-pixel anti-aliasing is the new DW feature, sub-pixel positioning.

The problem is that sub-pixel anti-aliasing needs to be toned down so the colours can't be seen, that way the rainbow effect wont be visible. Whether the problem is ffx or MS, I don't know.

It doesn't look like MS are using this new feature in IE9 though does it given the similarity between IE9 text and other browsers above? Maybe that is because MS knows the feature doesn't work yet, which brings the question whether FF should be using it if MS are not? Something is clearly going badly wrong with this new feature as hardware accelerated text in FF4 sticks out like a sore thumb:



http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php? ... hq&thumb=6 png download

Fx4 w/ HW is darker than the others. Maybe you should post this image to the right bug and ask Bas for explanation.

It is darker, but I think it's just plain broken, I can't see any logic in the way the aliasing is occuring compared to the other browsers. I'll post something later in the rainbow bug, or some other if you know a better one?

[Toppo]

in that comparison, Opera and IE9 look the best by far, Firefox4 HWon the worst by far.

[hews310]

Posted a bug, if you can post on it your own examples with other pages, Oses., GPUs, and vote if you see the issue, that would be helpful:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635490

[Rodze]

For the record, IE9 RC is disabling DirectWrite on mozillazine.org



Can you tell which is IE9 and which is Fx4?

[a;skdjfajf;ak]

For the record, IE9 RC is disabling DirectWrite on mozillazine.org



Can you tell which is IE9 and which is Fx4?

Interesting, how do you know ie9 is turning off DW on certain web-sites ? I've been using ie9 quite a bit lately and I can tell no difference on my machine between ie9 and latest trunk 4.0b12pre.

[WonderCsabo]

IE9 turns off DW when it is in compatible mode.