Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

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TheVisitor
Posts: 5469
Joined: May 13th, 2012, 10:43 am

Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by TheVisitor »

We've known for some time that if you install the IE 10 Preview on Win7 x64 that fonts will mess up which scrolling usually fixes giving them a rainbow like appearance and hard to read.

It was mentioned somewhere recently that they thought the problem has become worse, think it was a few days ago but now cannot find the thread. Anyhow...

I removed the IE 10 Preview tonight and rolled back to IE 9, made sure I updated IE 9 from Windows Update, and guess what...
I'm still seeing on occasion while reading various sites the 'rainbow font' is still present. Not quite as bad as it was with IE 10 Pre installed, but definitely still happening.

Anyone know of any any changes recently that could affect page painting or could maybe help find a regressor ?
Or of a setting that maybe IE 10 Preview may have messed up ? I've made no tweaks to my Nightly profile in regards to graphics/paint issues that have not already been mentioned since accelerated rendering has landed.

This pref: gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode;2 is the only tweak and have been using it like I said above, basically since HWA landed.

I did have to restart the system once IE 10 Preview was removed, so I doubt another restart would help..may just try it in the morning, getting late here for me.
Ver Greeneyes
Posts: 1030
Joined: June 28th, 2008, 4:57 am

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by Ver Greeneyes »

It's not IE10 that causes the issue, it's one of the platform updates it came with (KB2670838). See also bug#812695. That doesn't explain why it's gotten worse recently, but it probably explains why you still see it after going back to IE9.
Last edited by James on March 4th, 2013, 8:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: bug was getting spammed with "Me too" comments.
dbcooper.dk
Posts: 895
Joined: March 14th, 2010, 3:44 am

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by dbcooper.dk »

The only solution is to disable azure for content in about:config. :(
nicolaos
Posts: 82
Joined: December 5th, 2012, 2:57 am
Location: Macedonia, Greece

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by nicolaos »

I have installed only the platform update, and no problem so far.

Is this problem on Firefox only when you combine the platform update WITH IE10? I mean, is the IE10 that messes the things up?

Incidentally, why HWA on Fx is so fragile? It breaks easily so many times with even a slight change on Windows. I'm just wondering, I don't blame Fx or something. Certainly there's a good technical reason, but still it doesn't seem as solid. The quality of drivers is involved, likewise. By the way, did Mozilla unblock HWA on Windows 8 with 13.1 Catalyst ( D3D10 ) ?
TheVisitor
Posts: 5469
Joined: May 13th, 2012, 10:43 am

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by TheVisitor »

dbcooper.dk wrote:The only solution is to disable azure for content in about:config. :(


Yes, that seems to have eliminated the remaining graphics issues by turning azure.content :(

I assume there are bug(s) filed on this ?
Ver Greeneyes
Posts: 1030
Joined: June 28th, 2008, 4:57 am

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by Ver Greeneyes »

nicolaos wrote:Is this problem on Firefox only when you combine the platform update WITH IE10? I mean, is the IE10 that messes the things up?

I can only speak from my own experience (my laptop's GPU has problems with the update), and in my case the problems went away after rolling back the platform update, without ever touching IE10 (that is, it's still on my laptop although I don't know if it works).
dbcooper.dk
Posts: 895
Joined: March 14th, 2010, 3:44 am

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by dbcooper.dk »

TheVisitor wrote:
dbcooper.dk wrote:The only solution is to disable azure for content in about:config. :(


Yes, that seems to have eliminated the remaining graphics issues by turning azure.content :(

I assume there are bug(s) filed on this ?


Here's the bug:

bug#812695
nicolaos
Posts: 82
Joined: December 5th, 2012, 2:57 am
Location: Macedonia, Greece

Re: Rainbow fonts in Firefox with IE 10 Preview

Post by nicolaos »

dbcooper.dk wrote:Here's the bug:

bug#812695


Now I understand and remembered... Indeed, as I said, I've installed only the Platform update and some times I'm losing the GPU acceleration completely.

The D3D10 goes from 1/1 to 0/1 and the fonts become ugly. A browser-restart corrects the situation. 2-3 times happened while I was playing Skyrim having Firefox open in the background; after the alt-tab switches.

But mostly it's O.K. Does not happen often and D3D10/Directwrite remain "true".

If I had to blindly guess, I'd say it's one of the Mozilla's sloppy jobs again.
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