Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

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kimi85
Posts: 67
Joined: December 1st, 2008, 2:55 am

Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by kimi85 »

Hello,
I'm using FF 52.5.33 on my old Vista SP2 machine but i'm UNABLE to find "gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled" in about:config settings.

Is that setting removed and why is it missing?

Thanks a lot!

Edit: I found out that the setting may be hidden due to having an old machine with old graphics card / driver.

(Please ref; this old thread.)
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 7&start=15
kimi85
Posts: 67
Joined: December 1st, 2008, 2:55 am

Possibility of enabling D2D/DirectWrite on old PC?

Post by kimi85 »

Hi folks,
I have two and really old Vista SP2 and Windows 7 SP1 machines with quite recent Firefox releases installed (52.x branch for Vista and 55 for Win7). For a long time, i noticed very distorted and jagged font rendering on these machines occuring on some websites such as Reddit, Freelancer and CSS3-powered modern websites. I found out that the ugly view is because Direct2D and DirectWrite are both disabled internally by Firefox due to not having up-to-date graphics card, and another reason is absence of Platform Update package (eg: for Win7 SP1, KB2670838) installation on those machines due to my system-wide preference.

Now for example, if use Firefox 44 and above on my Win7 SP1 machine, the fonts are very ugly and jagged on sites i told above (and there are many), but if i stick with older releases like 42, 35 and etc, they're rendered fine and smooth, and "about:support" shows Direct2D and DirectWrite are really enabled on older releases, but not on newest releases. I found out that Direct2D 1.0 support was dropped since FF 44 and users should upgrade to D2D 1.1 library.

TL;DR - My question is, how can enable and really force Direct2D / DirectWrite feature on machines that do not have Platform Update, at least on Windows 7, without being obliged to stick with older Firefox versions?

Note that forcing these features to "true" through "about:config" did not help, and not reliable of course.
gfx.direct2d.force-enabled = true
gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.force-enabled = true


Thanks for reading, best regards!

EDIT and Note to moderators: I'm not sure why my "new" topic was merged with "topic review" of older topic?
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LIMPET235
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Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by LIMPET235 »

Kimi85,
It was merged because you started a new thread on the same subject.
I added the ref; to the old thread.
Please stay with this thread.
Thank you.
[Ancient Amateur Astronomer.]
Win-10-H/64 bit/500G SSD/16 Gig Ram/450Watt PSU/350WattUPS/Firefox-115.0.2/T-bird-115.3.2./SnagIt-v10.0.1/MWP-7.12.125.

(Always choose the "Custom" Install.)
Brummelchen
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Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by Brummelchen »

If your OS and drivers have been phased out or are not supported from firefox you have to deal with it. Esr has reached EOL, vista one year ago, drivers also. Why should mozilla saddle on dead horses?
kimi85
Posts: 67
Joined: December 1st, 2008, 2:55 am

Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by kimi85 »

Brummelchen wrote:If your OS and drivers have been phased out or are not supported from firefox you have to deal with it. Esr has reached EOL, vista one year ago, drivers also. Why should mozilla saddle on dead horses?
I just wanted to know whether it's possible to enable D2D 1.0 and Directwrite on newer versions which makes fonts smoother. Most of CSS3 fonts are rendered incorrectly and very ugly on Windows without Directwrite enabled. However there are notable sites still supporting non-DW requiring fonts like Facebook.

I wish we still could use D2D 1.0 even with new versions of Firefox that are higher than v44, which appears to drop D2D 1.0 support and forcing 1.1, also killing existing DirectWrite feature for smooth font rendering (eg: I wish; FF 5x could run with D2D/DW enabled on Windows 7 w/o Platform Update like old days).

Now it seems that i have 3 choices;
1) Buying a new PC with newer Windows.
2) Sticking with old Firefox versions that support D2D/DW on older OSes.
3) Using newest and more secure (but slow) Firefox with GDI+ with seeing ugly fonts...

Sad.
kimi85
Posts: 67
Joined: December 1st, 2008, 2:55 am

Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by kimi85 »

I'm still seeking a solid information on why i couldn't manage to get smooth fonts eventhough i tried tweaking almost all the about:config settings mostly gfx.xxx ones. I am really disappointed.

Old FF versions running side by side on the same system render fonts just fine, such as FF 35. Probably they are taking advantage of DirectWrite but i couldn't make new Firefox versions force using legacy GDI font rendering or Direct2D 1.0 version. Fonts are very ugly and jagged right now started since late 4x and 5x versions.
atlanto
Posts: 97
Joined: March 7th, 2015, 4:19 pm
Location: Japan

Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by atlanto »

Did you try this?
gfx.canvas.azure.backends = direct2d
gfx.content.azure.backends = direct2d
Though I have no idea what will happen with this settings on your machine.
Support code was *removed* long ago.
Bug 1247775 - Remove Direct2D 1.0 code
(it seems not whole code but I don't know its range and why "direct2d" is still available)

--
You know well official statement.
Firefox 44.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes
Support for Direct2D 1.0 has been dropped. Windows 7 users can install the Platform Update to re-enable Direct2D support (to fix font rendering issues)
Platform Update(KB2670838) is the only solution, maybe. Since there is a solution(from Microsoft) and firefox is following it, no one care about 1.0, IMHO.
kimi85
Posts: 67
Joined: December 1st, 2008, 2:55 am

Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by kimi85 »

atlanto wrote:Did you try this?
gfx.canvas.azure.backends = direct2d
gfx.content.azure.backends = direct2d
Though I have no idea what will happen with this settings on your machine.
Support code was *removed* long ago.
Bug 1247775 - Remove Direct2D 1.0 code
(it seems not whole code but I don't know its range and why "direct2d" is still available)

--
You know well official statement.
Firefox 44.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes
Support for Direct2D 1.0 has been dropped. Windows 7 users can install the Platform Update to re-enable Direct2D support (to fix font rendering issues)
Platform Update(KB2670838) is the only solution, maybe. Since there is a solution(from Microsoft) and firefox is following it, no one care about 1.0, IMHO.
Hi mate, i tried the tweak above and did not help unfortunately. The whole page is rendered bold than ever, and ugly rendering hasn't been fixed. So the only chance is sticking to the EVIL update (Platform Update) which is more problematic around OS-wide that it has many reports on the net. So it's a paradox right know.
Kenosis
Posts: 77
Joined: November 11th, 2011, 5:43 am

Re: Topic Review: Ugly, Jagged fonts etc., etc. Part 2.

Post by Kenosis »

One of my main reason to stick to FF 52 ESR as long as I could was because fonts look horrible in all newer FF versions. And no matter what I tried within FF or Windows helped. Same happened to the Chrome Browers months ago btw. Unfortunately most just blame Windows 7 for it because, although supported till 2020, we have basicly become free to make fun of targets. But that's another topic.

What helps me to survive was to disable ""Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selection above". Pages are still not 100% looking like before and it causes problems here and there if a page uses custom symbols instead of fonts for example but it helps me a lot
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