Ubuntu – Weird font hinting in Firefox 4

firefoxfont-renderingfonts

I know this a recurrent topic but I just can't find a decent solution–although I found one for Chrome.

Just take look at the following screenshots:

  • Chrome 9

    alt text

  • Firefox 4

    alt text

See the slight difference? I can't identify the exact difference but I can tell fonts in Chrome look smoother.

Here are my system preferences (prefer to show a screenshot as I don't know the exact translations in English):

alt text

Anyone got a solution? Thanks.

Update: from my point of view, it doesn't seem to actually be a hinting problem. I'd say Firefox uses subpixel rendering instead of grayscale rendering. (yet I can't find the setting in fontconfig) But this is a subjective opinion, can you confirm?

Best Answer

I realized this problem too; but instead of solving it only for Firefox, I generally turned off the Subpixel rendering. Read more about it at:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/02/the-ails-of-typographic-anti-aliasing/ .

You can make the changes here (System > Preferences > Appearance):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3008404/Font_settings_v2.png

With this setting you can avoid the ugly color deformations at the edges of characters (it used to annoy me a lot after I realized them). In the other end - you'll pay with the legibility of those really tiny characters (Font Hinting helps at this point).

To me, this seemed to be the only possible way; i can't stand those color-misbehaviours.

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