Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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orizng
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by orizng »

phuzi0n wrote:
orizng wrote:it seems a amd graphic card specific issue, nv card, or intel chip have no such problem.

Either way, I have disabled it for months now, I did some testing and hardware acceleration only improve js performance, or video playback, or webGL by 10-25%. I don't think it worth my eyesight.

What card did you use for your screenshot? One of your earlier posts suggests that you have an nvidia card.

mds67 said they have intel graphics and their screenshot looks similar to ours. My card is an ATI HD4670. It seems like people are just spreading anti-ATI FUD without any evidence that it's vendor specific.

My laptop is HP dm1z, has an Radeon HD 4225, and AMD K625
My desktop is self-build, has an Radeon 5770, and AMD QUAD 640

All my computers are using minefield nightly

I also uses my friend's computers:
A office desktop has Radeon 3200, and AMD QUAD 635
A home desktop has NV 7900, and AMD QUAD 640
A Samsung N150 +, this netbook has an intel chip. For day to day use, I installed Opera 11 for my friend, its really faster than firefox, IE on that little machine (win7 starter and 1G memory).

All these computers are using firefox 4 beta 8.
I only saw this font problem on my computers and my friend's office desktop. SO i concluded it might be an AMD card specific problem.

Obviously I love AMD, thats why all my computers are AMD CPU/GPU. So are the computers I recently helped build for my friend. I just stated what I think is the facts.
Last edited by orizng on December 28th, 2010, 5:52 am, edited 2 times in total.
Rodze
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Rodze »

Your friend's netbook has no problem because many Intel chips are not supported to have hardware acceleration by Mozilla and have DirectWrite disabled.
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orizng
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by orizng »

Rodze wrote:Your friend's netbook has no problem because many Intel chips are not supported to have hardware acceleration by Mozilla and have DirectWrite disabled.

Good point.

Like I listed, I have a bunch of A card, but only one machine with a N card, maybe other people who have N card can post some screen shot to confirm OR deny the problem being card-vendor specific?

Also those with A card who has no problems? post some screenshots too.
KWierso
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by KWierso »

Image
Taken with ATI HD 5770.
NVD
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by NVD »

Everyone on Windows 7 should install KB2028560 update, it fixes some Direct2D and DirectWrite bugs.
This should be required update for all Windows 7 without SP1 users, Windows 7 SP1 will include all the updates. It does not fix the DirectWrite font rendering issues, MS is still working on that & haven't release an update for that.

As you can see from the KB article, D2d1.dll and Dwrite.dll were both updated to 6.1.7600.20781 , so MS is fixing their buggy Direct2D and DirectWrite in Win7.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028560

32bit
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... v2-x86.msu

64bit
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... v2-x64.msu
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squall_leonhart
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by squall_leonhart »

good job with the repost of ancient kb patch.

unfortunately, back when it was posted it didn't fix the blur, and it still doesn't now.

there has not been a blur on nvidia display drivers since Release 195, and said blur affected anything using directwrite, not just Firefox or IE, only when AF was enabled globally.

I created profiles for any applications using DirectWrite fonts with AF set to app default at the time which resolved the issue, but later testing after having Release 197 drivers for some time, i was no longer able to reproduce driver AF causing any blur.
Last edited by squall_leonhart on December 28th, 2010, 7:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
mds67
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by mds67 »

I have allready updated that and helped a litle but not too much.
Ver Greeneyes
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Ver Greeneyes »

So, the questions are:
1) Does everyone who sees the blurring use an AMD/ATI card?
2) If they use an Nvidia card instead, are they running pre-195 series drivers?

With those questions answered, is there a bug on file for AMD/ATI-specific or Nvidia post-195 driver series font blurring? This certainly won't get fixed unless there is, since Mozilla won't know about it. The only way to fix this (updates to D2D/DW aside) may be for Mozilla to contact AMD about it or work together with them on a fix.
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squall_leonhart
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by squall_leonhart »

hakubo wrote:I have Radeon HD 4850, and all "blurry text" problems I saw were fixed sometime around beta 7.


set a AF setting in the CCC and do a screenshot comparison with it enabled and disabled. I am still hearing AMD/ATI users complaining about blurry fonts on IRC using the latest drivers.

Dessimat0r wrote:Run the Cleartype Tuning tool -- type 'cleartype' into the search box in the Start menu and click what comes up.


System Level Cleartype DOES NOT affect DirectWrite fonts. I wish people would get that into their heads.
The Filtering types employed by WPF fonts is implemented per the implementation of DirectWrite. you can verify the same in IE9, if you like.
Though you might get fooled if a site is in compatibility mode, or you compare against the GUI (which still uses GDI).

The option to disable ClearType or go back to standard grayscale Antialiasing can only be done via configuration in the application. (LOOK IT UP FOR GOODNESS SAKE)
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Stifu
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Stifu »

@squall_leonhart: need some chill pills?
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squall_leonhart
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by squall_leonhart »

im not raging yet, besides theres no barstools handy.
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orizng
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by orizng »

KWierso wrote:Image
Taken with ATI HD 5770.

Thanks

this is the same i saw on mine when hardware acceleration is enabled.

PS. I have driver 10.12 (latest)
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orizng
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by orizng »

Ver Greeneyes wrote:So, the questions are:
1) Does everyone who sees the blurring use an AMD/ATI card?
2) If they use an Nvidia card instead, are they running pre-195 series drivers?

With those questions answered, is there a bug on file for AMD/ATI-specific or Nvidia post-195 driver series font blurring? This certainly won't get fixed unless there is, since Mozilla won't know about it. The only way to fix this (updates to D2D/DW aside) may be for Mozilla to contact AMD about it or work together with them on a fix.


mds67 has same problem with Intel MHA4500. So, it looks more than AMD alone now.
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by LoudNoise »

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phuzi0n
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by phuzi0n »

squall_leonhart wrote:System Level Cleartype DOES NOT affect DirectWrite fonts. I wish people would get that into their heads.

This is the problem though, font rendering is very subjective and different people using different display hardware have different opinions of what looks good. DW ClearType needs to have the same tunable anti-aliasing that GDI+ ClearType does.

Also, it wasn't quite clear but were you suggesting that using basic grayscale anti-aliasing or any other kind with GDI+ will give the same look at DW anti-aliasing? ie. is there any settings to make DW and GDI+ look the same to tell that nothing else is making DW fonts look blurry?
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