typographical pain

[egypturnash]

So yeah, at work I finally got Parallels installed for purposes of screaming at IE's rendering bugs. I'm still trying to tell my imaginary Windows XP box to look at the Mac's localhost, so I'm browsing stuff on Safari, then occasionally having to open the same page on IE to actually download something. Which made me notice...



Holy shit, you Windows people still live in the fucking eighties in terms of text rendering. I mean, what the fuck? Look, I know this virtual machine probably has no idea what kind of LCD monitor it's displaying on, but this default text is about as pretty as what I was greeted with when I turned on my Amiga. There's supposedly that 'Cleartype' thing in WIndows but I sure as hell can't find a switch to turn it on in the system prefs. Even in a shitty jpeg the Mac's out-of-the-box text rendering kicks Windows' text's ass.

(And I just managed to get it to see my localhost. Turns out Bonjour doesn't want to advertise the existence of my alternate Apache under MAMP unless I have the built-in Apache turned on.)

edit: Thanks to everyone who told me that system-wide text anti-aliasing is controlled by a defaults-to-off switch hidden in the 'effects' section of the 'display' prefs. "Effects"? Sheesh. Why isn't this on by default? Windows. Feh.

Comments

Well, there's your problem

[glashund.livejournal.com]

Your screenshot suggests IE6; Cleartype's in IE7.

Re: Well, there's your problem

[protocat.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that's simply not correct. IE6 will use whatever antialiasing that the system is set to. Cleartype/IE6 has its own set of known annoyances.

Re: Well, there's your problem

[glashund.livejournal.com]

Yeah, brain farted, was thinking the browser-specific tick.

[protocat.livejournal.com]

Right click the desktop, select Properties, then go to the Appearance tab, click the Effects button or Advanced (I forget), there should be a dropdown box for font smoothing that lets you turn on Cleartype across the board.

[tilton.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. I do a lot of debugging under IE running in a VMware instance.

Cleartype is conveniently hidden away in the Display Properties control panel. Display Properties → Appearance → Effects..., because apparently text rendering is an “effect”.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

It's got to be your window emulator. My window looks a very similar to the one on the bottom when I pull it up... it's even a bit tighter in the bullet points, but that might be my resolution.

So unless it's something that isn't on the web page that you are complaining about, I suggest you replace your Window emulator. That's what's causing the problem.

If you wish, I'll send desktop snapshot so you can compare.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Others have said it before me, but I'll still note that Mac has anti-aliasing turned on by default, while Windows doesn't (unless that was enabled in Vista).

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

I'm on XP running Firefox, text looks just fine!

[waterotter.livejournal.com]

Some installs of window have it on by default, some don't, and hell if I've ever been able to tell why.

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's on by default on Vista, and XP has it hidden away you-now-know-where. Just to mix things up, IE7 on XP renders text with cleartype by default, whatever the system setting is. Innit wonderful? I kinda view running bootcamp or vmware fusion as a retro experience. "And this is how we used to do it in the 90s" :)