Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

[Virtual_ManPL]

Patch fixes problem with blur when you use anisotropic filtering as far I remember. Natural Symmetric isn't used as default. Natural is.

I remember that rendering also changed with an updated version of DW that also SP1 of win7 has.

Yep it was, but still Firefox uses Natural as default, not Natural Symmetric and thank God for this, because Asians fonts in this mode looks like crap (over-bolded)

OK, I know it's funny, so lets stop this pointless conversation. You like one method, I like another one. So we won't get simply some consensus in this discussion

And I give you my arguments, some of it were screenshots in bug.
I asked also this if you could perform one, so I will see this how it looks on your end with all 7 values.

until then, we're probably stuck with what we've got..

If they care, they will use mode "2" as workaround for meantime to get old font rendering.



@ DEΧTER - Could you please provide some screenshots with comparing all 7 values ? It will be very helpful

since Mozilla wouldn't switch from DW to gdi.

It's not about switching like Opera or Chrome into GDI and not using DirectWrite. It's about using GDI Classic mode rendering in DirectWrite, so font's will look the same like in old days.


@ Bruce L. - disabling HW Acc should bring old rendering mode in Fx4

"Fixed" in Firefox 6 in august

Don't think soo
They only for now add options in about:config, so I don't think masses will use/change it...


@ kliu0x52 - nice info thanks

[T0morrow]

"Fixed" in Firefox 6 in august

Don't think soo
They only for now add options in about:config, so I don't think masses will use/change it...

Hence the quote marks

[_Dexter_]

Screenshots of render pref -1 through 5.

http://img30.imageshack.us/g/capture1lr.png/

[Bruce L.]

@ Bruce L. - disabling HW Acc should bring old rendering mode in Fx4

I tried that before posting. I didn't see any difference at all.

[avada]

Yep it was, but still Firefox uses Natural as default, not Natural Symmetric and thank God for this, because Asians fonts in this mode looks like crap (over-bolded)

OK, I know it's funny, so lets stop this pointless conversation. You like one method, I like another one. So we won't get simply some consensus in this discussion

And I give you my arguments, some of it were screenshots in bug.
I asked also this if you could perform one, so I will see this how it looks on your end with all 7 values.

That was the point I was making. You prefer it, and there is nothing to fix. As kliu0x52 too explained it. (much better than I did)
Oh yeah, the asian character. They just appear with a plain aliased rendering in natural mode:

With natural symmetric they're properly anti-aliased.

[DuncanL]

And that about wraps up this thread - stick a fork in it; it's done! (We can only hope!)

A round of applause for kliu0x52 for an informative and comprehensive summary.

[Bruce L.]

I went back to 3.6.

I also did not like the download bar in the tabs on v. 4. It was too small. The older version covers the whole tab and is much more user-friendly.

Why is it that so many people think that change -- any change -- is always "good," even if something doesn't function as well?

[scratchee]

@Bruce L.

Same could be said with "good" replaced with "bad" . Alternatively to waiting for Firefox 6, you could use this extension, which allows you to return the text to original form in Firefox 4. Just select "GDI Classic" in its preferences for small text (or both, if you want). Though it wont produce results that are as good as 3.6 or 6, so feel free to stick with 3.6 if it bothers you enough. Dunno why turning off hardware acceleration didn't work...

@kliu0x52

That is pretty much what I was trying to say, you speaking much betters than I

@Virtual_ManPL

They *might* switch as a stop-gap I suppose, and personally I'd have no problem with that in the short term, but I can't see them going back without any plans to ensure "natural" rendering is used when "whole pixel" rendering is at its worst (angled text, or worse, animated text).

@DuncanL

You could be right . I'll make this my last post here.

[WonderCsabo]

kliu0x52, thanks for your great description! This should be in Fx Help or some place like that...

[LordStriker]

Long time now... The only solution I found was to drop the monitor's contrast from "5" to "3" in a scale 1-10.

It really works and the blurriness goes away. Not lower 'cause then another type of blurriness comes up.

Check how I see the UI and the sites and tell me if you find any problem: http://min.us/lng5Ic

Especially on sites that using fonts like Mozilla's site, is totally perfect.

[fumo]

I just installed 4.0.1 this morning and the fonts stink. I've read dozens of posts here, but I don't have the time or interest in trying to learn all of these possible workarounds. I disabled the hardware accelerator but it didn't change anything.

Can anyone tell me, in layman's terms, if the font problem will get fixed? I've been using FF for about 7 years and don't want to switch, but if there is a better browser I will. Any recommendations?

I recently discovered pretty cool browser named Maxthon 3. Unfortunately for now version 3 doesn't support plug-ins but there is many nice features already installed. Oh and also it's very fast. For now I use it together with Firefox 3.6 depending on what I'm doing because I'm addicted to some Fierfox plugins
I tried Firefox 4 about 3 times (2 in beta stages), played with setting to fix fonts but each time in the end I just returned to 3.6 - it's fast enough for me and I was under the impression that it runs smoother than FF4 which seemed to had some spit second "chokes" pretty often.

[_Dexter_]

Just came across this addon. It might improve the way fonts look. I installed it but really can't tell if it did anything. Maybe someone else will see more of an affect.

FancyText :: Add-ons for Firefox

[code65536]

Just came across this addon. It might improve the way fonts look. I installed it but really can't tell if it did anything. Maybe someone else will see more of an affect.

FancyText :: Add-ons for Firefox

That's because hinting is the process by which text is adapted into a pixel grid. Natural rendering should be free of hinting and should be "geometrically precise". So if you are already using natural rendering, this should have no effect aside from rotating your text by a fraction of a degree.

This is a silly extension.

[Astrophizz]

Natural rendering will still have hinting. The only kind of font that won't have hinting is a pixel font.

[mattcoz]

Ideally, in the future, Firefox will be "smarter" and will default to whole pixel rendering for just those certain text sizes (DPI-adjusted) that would actually benefit from whole pixel rendering and use natural rendering for all other cases.

Yeah, hopefully they can figure out a way to do this.