I noticed that Firefox3 Beta 3 was out a day or two ago. I was eager to try it out since one of the features mentioned was improved font rendering in Linux. It’s always been surprising to me that font rendering differs between Firefox and Flock since they’re both based on the same engine (I think). I’ve always found Flock’s rendering of fonts to be much more pleasing than that of Firefox.
So after downloading FF3 Beta3 tonight I was really hoping for an improvement. Sadly I didn’t see it. Maybe it’s just me and my tastes, but across all sites, Flock’s display of fonts is still much better. I’ve got both browsers set up with exactly the same settings for fonts and display settings. Below are some comparison screenshots. On all of them, FF3Beta3 is on the left and Flock is on the right. Have a look and tell me if you understand what I’m on about here. Maybe there is some setting in Flock (or FF) that I’m missing or don’t understand. I’d like to use Firefox sometimes, but the fonts just look generally anemic to me. Also interesting is that FF3 seems to render the small round ball icon on Earl’s site (Meandering Passage) - the one within the post - a lot more crisply than Flock, so maybe it is improved. I just don’t any improvement in the font rendering.
That’s why I’ll just wait ‘till final.
Wierd. Interestingly, in the ‘I love Typography’ shot, I think FF does a better job with the big title.
But clearly, the body text looks craptastic.
FF’s text looks like almost all my text in Linux (on my laptop) — crappy. How does the rest of the OS-rendered text compare to Flock (which looks rather Mac-esque to me, in those screen shots).
You guys seriously like those blurred out fat looking fonts better than this:
http://www.oakpatch.com/betterfonts.png
?????
(yes, that’s on linux)
@Jake - I’ll have to take a look how the fonts are rendered elsewhere on my system. Doing some searching in the ubuntuforums leads me to believe that some of it might be down to font display settings but also there was mention of adding the line “MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0” to the /etc/environment file. Seems that a lot of people did not like the way FF2 rendered fonts as compared to prior versions I guess. Maybe I’m not alone in this. I’ll have to try it tonight.
@Brian - Of course this is only my taste. But the sample you showed looks so thin and light to me. Very weak in some way. I know it is arguable sharper, but readability is not all about sharpness, it’s about comfort too. I’m already using the dimestore reading glasses so anything that makes my reading easier is helpful. I like something a little darker and smoother - like my beer
I know that in some respects it might look too fuzzy for certain tastes, but please don’t go looking at Safari or Konqueror rendering of text because on my machine it possibly goes too far the other way (Safari in an XP VM session that is).
I’m wondering if Earl Moore (who runs a Mac) could take a screenshot or two of the same sites and provide a link to them so we could take a look at what he’s seeing.
@Richard:
Late yesterday I emailed you six screen shots of both my site and yours using the following Mac browsers FireFox 3b3, Flock 1.0.9, Safari 3.0.4.
Let me know if you didn’t receive them and I’ll either try again or post them on Meandering Passage.
Sorry Earl, I just haven’t responded yet, but yes, I did get them.
It’s nice that they all look pretty much the same on the Mac. And they all render quite nicely (for my tastes). I know the Mac has a good reputation for rendering text quite nicely (although maybe too soft for some tastes) - but I’ve been able to get Ubuntu pretty much where I want it with regards to text rendering system-wide, except for Firefox. That’s what puzzles me.
Thanks for sending the screenshots. It’s nice to see how other people see your site. With all the inconsistencies between OS’s and between browsers, I guess screenshots are still the only way to really compare.
I’m using Ubuntu Gutsy and Firefox 2 works fine, but Firefox 3 beta goes back to bad font rendering again. I hope this is just a beta issue.
I’m mad at Firefox for this (and at OpenOffice.org too, BTW). Do you guys know if there’s any explanation anywhere about this? Why does Firefox (and OOo) not use the system font rendering settings as it does in Windows or Mac? What’s the logic behind using a “proprietary” font rendering???
@Brian: that font rendering is simply terrible. It’s obvious that you don’t like anti-aliasing. It’s easy to turn it off. There’s nothing “fat” in anti-aliased fonts. “Crispiness” is subjective. I just find those fonts in your picture “low-res”.
Can you post the mac versions?
On a related note, I did a website mockup the other day for a friend, in Inkscape (on Linux) and then dumped it to .png.
The way the fonts were rendered in the .png looked rather Mac-esque to me. Is Linux’s font renderer more Mac-y? or more clear-typey?
@JakeT,
I will do up a new post with comparison shots including the mac ones as well. Look for it in the next couple of days.
I find font rendering in Linux to be more Mac-like, but I’m no expert. If you do some searching on the topic, you see all kinds of views like ‘Linux rendering sucks’ all the way to ‘Linux font rendering is perfect’. It’s very subjective as you can tell from Brian’s earlier comments.
A lot of people like ClearType the best, and others hate it. I like that Ubuntu (and likely lots of other distros too) lets me play around with font rendering using a few more switches than just turning it off and on. My problem is that Flock behaves differently than Firefox and web page rendering seems largely unaffected by these settings!
Try opening up a page and then play with the advanced font rendering settings in the gnome-appearance-properties panel. I see the fonts in terminals change drastically, and UI font elements change, but web page rendering seems largely unaffected. To me anyway. Let me know if it’s the same for you.
Somebody has explained at the forums why Firefox 3 font rendering sucks. They’re using a different library afraid of infringing some patents. You can find how to work around this by compiling Firefox yourself here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=665486
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=619955
Or just wait for Ubuntu to release FF3 officially compiled with the proper libraries.
I have to say that Firefox 3 beta 3 on my machine renders fonts better than any Firefox ever.
But, about those problems you have, I’ve only seen them on Ubuntu machines. I guess Ubuntu has some really weird modifications to FreeType or something. Note: I am not certain about this so don’t yell.
But, about why Flock renders fonts nicely, I think I have the answer: Flock changes the font configuration in FreeType. Simple as that… Of course, I’m not certain at this too, but it seems as the only thing that an application can do to change font rendering on Linux.
BTW, if you installed FF3b3 from the repos (if you are on Ubuntu…), try running it from the Mozilla-supplied binaries… it may just work!
[…] in Flock are now rendering identically to the ones rendered in FF3, beta2. As you may recall in my post a while back, I was confused (and still am) as to why Flock rendered fonts so differently from Firefox even […]
[…] that I can now complete the trilogy of posts on browser font rendering on an upbeat note. After complaining about Firefox’s font rendering on my Ubuntu Linux machine, and the magical disappearance of […]
Been checking out Safari for a bit and the font rendering is AMAZING. Firefox is such a pain to use now.