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Can someone explain the difference between XP and 7 font rendering?
I recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate N x64 on my XP machine (dual boot, so exact same hardware for both versions of Windows), and the way fonts are rendered in web browsers in Windows 7 is driving me nuts.
I have Windows font smoothing turned off in both XP and 7, because I hate the way it makes the default Windows dialog box and menu fonts look. Turning it on is not an option; it bothers my eyes.
In Windows XP things are perfect. Both Firefox and Chrome only apply a smoothing effect to certain fonts, i.e., the ones that need it. It doesn't do anything to ordinary fonts like you'd find on a Wikipedia, Craigslist, or Google search page. Internet Explorer 8 on the other hand (which I don't use), doesn't apply smoothing to any fonts at all though, so the ones that need it look ugly (random letters appear bold, and all of them are crude/jagged appearing).
Here is a screenshot from XP illustrating what I'm talking about. In that screenshot, I have two instances of Firefox open at the same time; one of them is on the Mozilla Support forum page (so far, they don't seem to know the answer to this), and the other is on a Wikipedia page. I also superimposed zoomed-in views of the text to show clearly that the font on the forum page is being smoothed/antialiased by Firefox (which is good, because it needs it), while the font on Wikipedia isn't being smoothed at all (which is also good, because it doesn't need it). This is perfect behavior.
In Windows 7, both Firefox and Chrome have the same font-rendering behavior that Internet Explorer 8 has in XP, i.e., they don't smooth any fonts at all. So while pages like Wikipedia, Craigslist, or Google look fine, pages with fonts like on the Mozilla Forum and plenty of other sites look horrible. Here is a screenshot showing what I mean (be sure to view the screenshot fullsize; if your image viewer is e.g., resizing it to fit your screen, it will somewhat hide the problem). Internet Explorer 11 on the other hand, simply applies a smoothing effect to all fonts, which is even worse behavior than not applying it to any fonts at all.
To sum up:
This seems to be an underlying Windows issue, given that I'm using the same newest versions of Firefox and Chrome in both XP and 7, yet they deal with fonts differently. Is there any solution to this? I want the same perfect Firefox and Chrome font rendering in Windows 7 that they have in XP.Windows XP
Firefox & Chrome - only smooths fonts which need it (good)
Internet Explorer 8 - doesn't smooth any fonts (bad)
Windows 7
Firefox & Chrome - doesn't smooth any fonts (bad)
Internet Explorer 11 - smooths all fonts (worse)
Last edited by MaximRecoil; 05 Aug 2015 at 03:47.