Thunderbird 31 ignoring system font aliasing/smoothing.

[jimnms]

Thunderbird just notified me of an update, so I let it update and restart. The first thing I notice is the main screen's fonts aren't properly aliased/smoothed. The fonts look fine everywhere else except the main screen. I've tried changing fonts in the options, but that doesn't seem to effect the font used in the main screen. Is anyone else getting this?

[tanstaafl]

Nope.

Try exiting Thunderbird and then deleting the localstore.rdf file in your profile. That stores the toolbar, window layout and size/position settings. When you restart it will be replaced with one with default values. If that doesn't help you could use the Theme font & size changer add-on at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunde ... on/162063/ as a temporary workaround while figuring out what wrong. It changes fonts/font sizes in menus, toolbars etc., but not within a message.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Toolbar_or_wi ... ot_working

[jimnms]

I tried deleting the localstore.rdf file, it didn't work. What does work, temporarily, is running Thunderbird in safe mode. When I check the option to make the changes permanent and restart, it seems to do the same thing as removing the localstore.rdf file, but that still doesn't work. It only works while running in safe mode which, as far as I can tell, the only difference is it disables the default theme.

[DanRaisch]

No, Safe Mode doesn't disable the default theme. It does disable any non-default themes, any installed extensions, AND it disables hardware acceleration.

See the ninth bullet point in this article to disable that acceleration and then close and restart Thunderbird. See if the issue is cleared up.

[Pauliemon]

Thanks for posting that Theme font changer add on. I was having the same problem. Open messages were fine, but the overall list of emails I could barely read because of the small font size. That add on fixed that.

[jimnms]

No, Safe Mode doesn't disable the default theme. It does disable any non-default themes, any installed extensions, AND it disables hardware acceleration.

When I'm in safe mode, the addon window shows the default theme as disabled.

See the ninth bullet point in this article to disable that acceleration and then close and restart Thunderbird. See if the issue is cleared up.

Setting the gfx.direct2d.disabled to true in the config editor seems to fix the problem. What changed in TB 31 to cause this? The unread messages have a purple tint to them and read messages have a green tint to them as if it's using the wrong aliasing or sub-pixel rendering method. Taking a screen shot won't show you what I'm seeing. Even when I copied the window and pasted it into an editor it didn't look as bad.

[DanRaisch]

I couldn't say what was changed to give you this problem. It could be something related to an extension you have installed or with the video card you're running on that system.

[jimnms]

The only extension I have is Lightning, and my video card is a GTX 660 running the latest WHQL drivers.

[xtassin]

I also experienced blurry UI fonts after upgrade to TB 31.0 (On windows 7)
Disabling Direct2d fixed the problem.

[Malygris]

I've just upgraded to Thunderbird 31 from 24 (It's been awhile since I've checked for updates, apparently) and I'm running into the same issue. Fonts in drop-down menus look fine, but everything else is a bleeding, blurry mess. Exiting and restarting did no good, and I'm kinda stuck for ideas at this point. Any other suggestions?

[DanRaisch]

Did you disable hardware acceleration?

See the ninth bullet point in this article to disable that acceleration and then close and restart Thunderbird. See if the issue is cleared up.

[Malygris]

Sort of - I followed the directions to disable it but (and I think I deserve some credit for admitting this in a public forum) I did it in Firefox, not Thunderbird. Took another run at it through the Thunderbird config editor and it appears to have fixed things up. Thanks for straightening me out.

[DanRaisch]

You're welcome.

[city_zen]

I can too confirm that from version 31 onwards, Thunderbird is showing serious font anti-aliasing problems.
Fortunately, I tried the solution proposed in this thread (setting gfx.direct2d.disabled to true in the configuration editor) and it worked beautifully.
Thank you jimnms and DanRaisch for pointing me to it.
It'd be nice to know what caused this bug. I tried looking it up at the Thunderbird release notes for the newest versions but couldn't find anything that looks related to it. Does anyone have a clue? Should we report it as a new bug at Bugzilla?

[tanstaafl]

Yes. If you do that please post a link to the bug report. However, I suggest you try to figure out whats unique about your configuration or environment that the problem occurs before filing the bug report. Otherwise it will probably get marked 'works for me' (and closed) or left unconfirmed (and ignored).