Firefox 4 and font rendering

TheOneBobbyGunn · 12 Oct 2010

So I was giving Beta 6 a try, and all my fonts seemed really bad, like they were squished together, and some I couldn't even read. I started playing around with the settings, and once I unchecked the "Use hardware acceleration when available" box, and restarted FF, everything became clear and readable. I though hardware acceleration was suppose to help? If you look at the images you can see the blue boxes with, and without it enabled. With it enabled the text is almost unreadable. I did it a couple of times, and that is what is causing it. Hmmmm

yowanvista · 12 Oct 2010

This is normal. It is a bug which will be fixed in beta 7

TheOneBobbyGunn · 12 Oct 2010

Ah, ok. Thanks for the quick response. I was going crazy. I tried it on all my computers, and thought there was something wrong with them, and not FF.

TheOneBobbyGunn · 12 Nov 2010

So I updated to B7, and tried HA again, but the fonts are still like that, so I did some research, and it turns out it's not a FF problem, but a Windows problem. The fonts are actually suppose to look like that because it's the true look of the fonts, but I still don't like it. I found a way around it. I can still use hardware acceleration, but WITH readable fonts. If anyone wants to know (or am I late to this trick?) here is what you do: Make sure you have the hardware acceleration box checked then go to about:config, and toggle the value of property "gfx.direct2d.disabled” to true. That's it. Restart your browser, and you're good to go.

Wii Master 64 · 12 Nov 2010

Dude, thanks so much for that! I had learned to just get used to the fonts, but now that I can keep hardware acceleration and use good looking fonts, well, that's just awesome!

mitchell64 · 12 Nov 2010

I had a look at this can you guys confirm that hardware acceleration is still on under the advanced tab.

The fix seems to be disabling hardware acceleration for me

Wii Master 64 · 13 Nov 2010

Yeah, it's still under "Advanced." I don't really know how you can tell a difference between it being on or off though.

mitchell64 · 13 Nov 2010

Wii Master 64 said:

Yeah, it's still under "Advanced." I don't really know how you can tell a difference between it being on or off though.

I was just wondering if the box is still ticked or not after doing the fix.

When i did it & went back to the advanced tab & the fix had unchecked "use hardware acceleration when available"

In other words the fix had disabled hardware acceleration, just wondering if it is just happening to me so i can explore the problem further

EDIT: just re run the process & Hardware acceleration remained checked this time (must have botched something first time around)

Airbot · 13 Nov 2010

What other hardware acceleration settings does it cover with it on besides Direct2D? Yeah you can disable direct2d in about:config and it fixes the font blurriness, but unless I'm missing other settings, only difference I see that's set differently with hardware acceleration off or on is the direct2d string.

With Hardware acceleration setting off from the options menu in FF.

Firefox 4 and font rendering-capture.jpg

With Hardware acceleration setting back on from options menu, and with direct2d string manually set by me to True to fix the font.

Firefox 4 and font rendering-capture2.jpg

Now the Hardware acceleration option is still ticked on from the options menu, but the font is normal now with the direct2d string set to True. But I don't see anything else that was set differently from either having Hardware acceleration setting On or Off. For example the gfx.3d_video.enabled is still set to False with HA on or off. So is the gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled set to false with either on or off. Am I missing something?

mitchell64 · 13 Nov 2010

Hopefully the poster can link the source when they come back ?? (Please)