Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

WonderCsabo wrote:IE9 turns off DW when it is in compatible mode.


hmm, I don't see the broken web-page symbol on this forum in the address bar to enable compat-mode, so one would assume DW is on. So, unless compat-view has been forced on for all sites, I still don't see how it could be any different for this forum.
Ver Greeneyes
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Ver Greeneyes »

By the way, scaling the image up like that won't get you the intended effect. The idea of subpixel positioning and anti-aliasing is that your eye will group the color channels together that are closest to each other, but when you scale the image up like this that effect is lost. Here's an attempt to show what's really going on, by separating the image into three color channels, scaling the image to 300%, then shifting the green layer right by one pixel and the blue layer right by two, and finally recomposing the three layers into a single image:
Image
And here's what it would look like if each color channel was black and there was no blending: (I also made the surrounding area white to compensate for the differences in each color channel)
Image
As you can see, it would look quite nice if each color channel was actually black - unfortunately they aren't. I believe Bas said the above could be improved by doing gamma correction, but the method he found was patented by Microsoft >.< So I don't know if it'll be improved anytime soon.
Rodze
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Rodze »

Littlemutt wrote:
WonderCsabo wrote:IE9 turns off DW when it is in compatible mode.


hmm, I don't see the broken web-page symbol on this forum in the address bar to enable compat-mode, so one would assume DW is on. So, unless compat-view has been forced on for all sites, I still don't see how it could be any different for this forum.

Microsoft has a list with various sites where it'll automatically activate compatibility mode (something you can disable, if you want). When the broken page disappears, it is because the site is on that list and compatibility is enabled. You can also check developer tools (F12) and see which document mode is being used.

http://www.mozilla.org should display DW fonts on IE9.
hews310
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by hews310 »

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

Where is the evidence for that?

Rodze wrote:Microsoft has a list with various sites where it'll automatically activate compatibility mode (something you can disable, if you want).

Do you have a link?

Ver Greeneyes wrote:By the way, scaling the image up like that won't get you the intended effect. The idea of subpixel positioning and anti-aliasing is that your eye will group the color channels together that are closest to each other, but when you scale the image up like this that effect is lost.

I was just scaling up to show how FF4 with hardware on seemed to be the odd one out.
hews310
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by hews310 »

Rodze wrote:When the broken page disappears, it is because the site is on that list and compatibility is enabled. You can also check developer tools (F12) and see which document mode is being used.

http://www.mozilla.org should display DW fonts on IE9.

OK this is confusing, you can have IE9 compatibility view on for browser mode, but that still allows you to enabled IE9 standards in document mode, so hardware acceleration can still be on in compatibility mode #-o ?
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

hews310 wrote:
Rodze wrote:When the broken page disappears, it is because the site is on that list and compatibility is enabled. You can also check developer tools (F12) and see which document mode is being used.

http://www.mozilla.org should display DW fonts on IE9.

OK this is confusing, you can have IE9 compatibility view on for browser mode, but that still allows you to enabled IE9 standards in document mode, so hardware acceleration can still be on in compatibility mode #-o ?


Yeah,me too confused. So far I've not found anything that states that different compat-modes actually turn on/off DW.
Here is there list of compat-mode sitess and mozilla or mozillazine is not on the list:
http://ie9cvlist.ie.microsoft.com/ie9cvlist.xml
Ver Greeneyes
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Ver Greeneyes »

hews310 wrote:I was just scaling up to show how FF4 with hardware on seemed to be the odd one out.

Oh, it's definitely different than all the others, since for whatever reason IE9 doesn't seem to use subpixel positioning on this page. I'm just showing how the effect is supposed to work.
hews310
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by hews310 »

Littlemutt wrote:Yeah,me too confused. So far I've not found anything that states that different compat-modes actually turn on/off DW.
Here is there list of compat-mode sitess and mozilla or mozillazine is not on the list:
http://ie9cvlist.ie.microsoft.com/ie9cvlist.xml

I can confirm mozillazine was by default running at IE7 standards document mode, as IE7 had no hardware acceleration, I assume this confirms that it is indeed by default off. So how are MS determining which pages get put in what mode, do they have thousands of minions checking to see whether sites look crappy or not, or do they have some automated way of doing it? Since they are implicitly acknowledging some sites do not look good with their own hardware acceleration technology should they not be sharing this with other browser companies?
hews310
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by hews310 »

Ver Greeneyes wrote:
hews310 wrote:I was just scaling up to show how FF4 with hardware on seemed to be the odd one out.

Oh, it's definitely different than all the others, since for whatever reason IE9 doesn't seem to use subpixel positioning on this page. I'm just showing how the effect is supposed to work.

I don't think it was using hardware acceleration at all as it was in IE7 standards document mode- see new comparisons with IE9 with forced hardware acceleration for mozillazine added. Although IE9 with h/w accel on also has a more blurry effect than the non hardware accelerrated text, I don't think it is as bad as with FF4, the letters look a little clearer & sharper on IE9 with h/w accel on than FF4, particularly the cs, ws, bs, the capital DW.

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

The zoom comparison shows a difference in aliasing between FF4 with h/w accel on and IE9 with h/w accel on
Image
http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php? ... 2x&thumb=6 png download
hews310
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by hews310 »

As I just posted on the bug, IE9 (and the non hardware accelerated text to some extent) seems to create more white/light space between text i.e. between the i and the x,
the x and the e, the e and the l of pixel which would have the effect of making text clearer.
Last edited by hews310 on February 19th, 2011, 12:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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a;skdjfajf;ak
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by a;skdjfajf;ak »

hews310 wrote:As I just posted on the bug, IE9 (and the non hardware accelerated text) seems to create more white/light space between text i.e. between the i and the x,
the x and the e, the e and the l of pixel which would have the effect of making text clearer.


Before coming to work I spoke briefly with the gfx folks on IRC, and they are not sure if DW is actually turned 'off', but they are pretty sure that the rendering mode as defined in the head of the site is causing the rendering to change from DW Cleartype to GDI type fonts, there is uncertainty if hardware accel is actually off - or just the mode forced in the head of the page, examined with IE9 Tools F12.

There has been a long on-going debate whether GDI fonts rendering is better or worse then DW+Cleartype, folks argue both ways for 'what looks better'.

At this point, I'm in over my head, so rather than make any more 'rash statements' I'll shut-up and read.
Husar
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Husar »

Since I am web designer (and a long time user of Firefox) I am directly affected with the font rendering problem and the issues I have been encountering are really bothering me.
So I hope my post here will somehow contribute to fixing them and making the browser better, not only for me, but for us all.

I have noticed that the rendering quality varies between different sites and fonts. To be honest, on most sites I don't notice to much of a difference. On mozzillazine for example the experience is almost the same, HW on or off.
But, on some sites the issues are so severe that they are almost unusable.

This is from a web site I have done (font is PT Sans Narrow, embedded via Google Fonts)

HW on:
Image

HW off:
Image

Also on gmail.

HW on:
Image

HW off:
Image

I'm using Firefox 4 beta 11 on a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 OS.
Graphic card is ATI HD 5750 (Catalyst Version 10.11).
hews310
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by hews310 »

Littlemutt wrote:Before coming to work I spoke briefly with the gfx folks on IRC, and they are not sure if DW is actually turned 'off', but they are pretty sure that the rendering mode as defined in the head of the site is causing the rendering to change from DW Cleartype to GDI type fonts, there is uncertainty if hardware accel is actually off - or just the mode forced in the head of the page, examined with IE9 Tools F12.

Thanks for the explanation, I have just done a little study of how FF4 handles double lls with hardware acceleration on, the answer is not very well, and IE9 does it better mainly because they separate the letters better as I stated before, with lighter colors. Another observation is that neither double ll's on either IE9 or FF4 hardware accelerated are symmetrical, as they are, non accelerated in FF4 and other browsers. You can see this even at normal size with the second l of 'you'll' on IE9 looking thinner than the first, because the first l has two darker bars and 1 light, and the second only one dark bar. I'm not sure why this is better, in fact I think this lack of similarity in the way text is aliased across a page is possibly what is the major cause of this blurry/3d without 3d glasses look :|, conclusion- directwrite text is not yet fit for purpose, even if IE9 does it a bit better than FF4.

Image
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?6vwrxagax41dxn0 png download

Image
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?znw7oho98n0cn7o png download

also posted on bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635490#c11


Husar wrote:I have noticed that the rendering quality varies between different sites and fonts. To be honest, on most sites I don't notice to much of a difference. On mozzillazine for example the experience is almost the same, HW on or off.
But, on some sites the issues are so severe that they are almost unusable.

I'm using Firefox 4 beta 11 on a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 OS.
Graphic card is ATI HD 5750 (Catalyst Version 10.11).

Argh, the pink/turquoise colour fringing on the first hardware accelerated text is killing my eyes :shock: , I am actually getting black spots after looking at that! I am afraid the problem seems to be Microsoft's as much as Mozilla's, although as you see from my post above, Microsoft seemed to have made some improvements that Mozilla don't seem to have caught onto, although it still looks pretty crap imo . All I can suggest is please post on the bug below and vote the bug at the top as they seem to be under the impression most people are happy with h/w accelerated text
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635490

The gmail problem many people have reported
http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/sea ... gmail+text
http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/sea ... gmail+font
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exactlyy
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by exactlyy »

the 1st thing i do when creating anew profile is to disable the HW accelararion .. my eyes cant stand the bad font quality
and so many people think that FF4 looks old when turning HW on .
i'd suggest disapling it and whoever needs it can easly activate the function, till microsoft fix it .
(°-°)
Husar
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Re: Will they ever fix font rendering in firefox 4?

Post by Husar »

Thanks for the link hews310, I have posted my samples there as well. Hope more people vote for the bug to be fixed, it really is a major issue.
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