Better Firefox fonts?

[Alex]

Hi,

Quite often the fonts in a web page, or printing something from within
Firefox looks blurred. Here is a sample screenshot:

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/7923/loc.png

It's a random page I chose to exhibit the problem. Printing web pages
also looks like crap, but perhaps that's something to do with the
printing system?

Is it possible this is instead the driver for my video card? I'm using
a dual-head HD5700:

[    35.548] (--) PCI:*(0:6:0:0) 1002:68b8:174b:e147 ATI Technologies
Inc Juniper [Radeon HD 5700 Series] rev 0, Mem @ 0xd0000000/268435456,
0xfe9e0000/131072, I/O @ 0x0000e000/256, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
[112179.601] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1680x1050"x0.0  146.25  1680
1784 1960 2240  1050 1053 1059 1089 -hsync +vsync (65.3 kHz)

Are there other driver choices for this card with FC13, like perhaps
one that supports the 3D acceleration?

In any case, I recall seeing a doc that described how to install the
Windows TT fonts, but can't find it now. I believe it was also for an
older version.

Thanks,
Alex

[Tim]

Tim:
> > If you have the liberation fonts installed, they do a good job
> of
> > replacing the usual Windows-expected fonts, and freely.  Your
> > computer's much more likely to substitute a good choice of font,
> > rather than a bad one, when you don't have the Windows font that the
> > author wanted to use.
>   
Alex:
>  I do have the liberation fonts installed: 
In this case, I don't think they'd help, because I don't think they have
a replacement for Verdana.

Find us a few more problem pages, and we'll see if the cause is down to
the same issues, or something else.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
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Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.

[Ed Greshko]

 On 08/31/2010 09:07 PM, Steve Underwood wrote:
>  He's probably seeing that, but he's probably also seeing
>
>  color: #333333
>  color: rgb(51, 51, 51)
>  background-color: transparent
>
>  which makes the text grey, and lacking contrast. Its not fuzzy. Its just 
>  an odd choice of colour. A lot of sites make their main text grey in 
>  this way, making it look like your eyes have misted over. 
Well, I'm seeing that as well so I don't think that is the issue. 

The image he has pointed to looks much different than what I am seeing
from a font perspective.

-- 
In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are
consequences. -- R.G. Ingersoll 葛斯克 愛德華 / 台北市八德路四段

[Steve Underwood]

  On 08/31/2010 08:53 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
>    On 08/31/2010 08:49 PM, Tim wrote:
> > Ed Greshko:
> >> I wonder...is there a simply way to determine what fonts are being
> >> used/displayed?  I've never looked into it or thought much about it.
> > By the way, about the thing I mentioned in my prior message, I just
> > googled for:  firefox font identify
> >
> > There's probably a few other search keywords that fit the bill, but
> > that's the only one I can think of at the moment.
> >
>  That addon you referred to seems to be a good choice.  When I highlight
>  a portion of the text that looks fine to me...but bad to the OP it shows...
>
>  font-family (stack): verdana,helvetica,sans-serif
>  Font being rendered: verdana
>  font-size: 10.3667px
>
>  I wonder what he is seeing?
>  
He's probably seeing that, but he's probably also seeing

color: #333333
color: rgb(51, 51, 51)
background-color: transparent

which makes the text grey, and lacking contrast. Its not fuzzy. Its just 
an odd choice of colour. A lot of sites make their main text grey in 
this way, making it look like your eyes have misted over.

Steve

[Tim]

On Mon, 2010-08-30 at 16:12 -0400, Alex wrote:

>  Quite often the fonts in a web page, or printing something from
> within
>  Firefox looks blurred. Here is a sample screenshot:
>  
>  http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/7923/loc.png 
In this case, according to the plug-in I mentioned on another email in
this thread, the "abstract" section of text is:

Asking to use Verdana, then several other alternatives (Helvetica, then
a generic sans-serif).  Verdana's a pet hate of many, as it's bigger
than normal, so many page authors reduce the size (as that page has
done).  Of course, if you don't have Verdana, you get the alternative
fonts, at too damn SMALLER THAN NORMAL.

That explains why it can look bad on screen.  

Now, as far as it looking bad on print, that's usually a different
reason, as printers usually have much better resolution than on-screen,
and can still produce small fonts neatly.  A problem most printers have,
is that they can only print black text well, anything else has to be
dithered, and that means a fuzzy appearance.  This page is one of them,
it's specified dark grey text.

The author could have made life easier for you, and provided style rules
that set printing as black, even if the screen image is not.  But many
don't.  Your print driver may have a print text as black option, or even
your web browser.  If so, it might be something you want to leave
enabled all the time.

One of these days, if it's not already done, someone's going to make a
proxy filter that replaces the combination of Verdana font family with a
small font size, to something else at normal size.  A brute force and
ignorance method is to use a user stylesheet that overrides all site
styling, with your preferred font face and size.  But, that doesn't
always fit into the rest of the page, particularly when authors force
text into specific spaces.  And Firefox doesn't make it easy to toggle
user styles on and off, like Opera does.

I've taken the easy route, though.  Installed a Firefox plug-in that
lets me toggle use website styling, or not, with a gadget sitting on the
status bar.  It should really be on the tool bar, but the author has
other ideas.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.

[Ed Greshko]

 On 08/31/2010 08:49 PM, Tim wrote:
>  Ed Greshko:
> > I wonder...is there a simply way to determine what fonts are being
> > used/displayed?  I've never looked into it or thought much about it.
>  By the way, about the thing I mentioned in my prior message, I just
>  googled for:  firefox font identify
>
>  There's probably a few other search keywords that fit the bill, but
>  that's the only one I can think of at the moment.
>  
That addon you referred to seems to be a good choice.  When I highlight
a portion of the text that looks fine to me...but bad to the OP it shows...

font-family (stack): verdana,helvetica,sans-serif
Font being rendered: verdana
font-size: 10.3667px

I wonder what he is seeing?

-- 
Clones are people two. 葛斯克 愛德華 / 台北市八德路四段

[Tim]

Ed Greshko:
>  I wonder...is there a simply way to determine what fonts are being
>  used/displayed?  I've never looked into it or thought much about it. 
By the way, about the thing I mentioned in my prior message, I just
googled for:  firefox font identify

There's probably a few other search keywords that fit the bill, but
that's the only one I can think of at the moment.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.

[Tim]

On Tue, 2010-08-31 at 20:19 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
>  FWIW, I find it helpful that when an image is posted that the actual
>  link also be posted so that folks looking at it can compare what they
>  see on their system alongside of what the OP is seeing. 
I concur.

>  In my case my display looks just fine compared with the image.  It
>  seems my system is picking a different font to use as to what the OP's
>  system is using.  
On mine, it looks reasonable.  The chosen font size is a bit on the
small side, actually quite a bit on the small side, so it's not going to
look the greatest.

For what it's worth, I'm using a laptop with an LCD screen, and the
appropriate subpixel smoothing for LCDs option is chosen.

Grumble:  I hate web incompetents who cluelessly think that its a good
idea to specify *smaller* *than* *normal* font sizes for main body text.

>  I wonder...is there a simply way to determine what fonts are being
>  used/displayed?  I've never looked into it or thought much about it. 
I've wished that a few times, too.  I seem to recall that there was a
way of doing it (without going into something gory like stracing, or
something similar, while Firefox was browsing the page).  Perhaps this
browser plugin:  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4415/

And a link in a comment on this page offers something for Google Chrome:
http://forum.weborum.com/index.php?showtopic=4134

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.

[Ed Greshko]

 On 08/31/2010 07:45 PM, Tim wrote:
>  On Mon, 2010-08-30 at 16:12 -0400, Alex wrote:
> > Quite often the fonts in a web page, or printing something from within
> > Firefox looks blurred. Here is a sample screenshot:
> >  
> > http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/7923/loc.png
>  I'd concur with Athmane Madjoudj, you might have a bad anti-aliasing
>  option picked for your system.  And some fonts do that better than
>  others. 
FWIW, I find it helpful that when an image is posted that the actual
link also be posted so that folks looking at it can compare what they
see on their system alongside of what the OP is seeing.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.scdb.200033625/default.html

will show the same page as the image.

In my case my display looks just fine compared with the image.  It seems
my system is picking a different font to use as to what the OP's system
is using. 

I wonder...is there a simply way to determine what fonts are being
used/displayed?  I've never looked into it or thought much about it.


-- 
I'm not even going to *______bother* comparing C to BASIC or
FORTRAN. -- L. Zolman, creator of BDS C 葛斯克 愛德華 / 台北市八德路四段

[Tim]

On Mon, 2010-08-30 at 16:12 -0400, Alex wrote:
>  Quite often the fonts in a web page, or printing something from
> within
>  Firefox looks blurred. Here is a sample screenshot:
>   
>  http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/7923/loc.png 
I'd concur with Athmane Madjoudj, you might have a bad anti-aliasing
option picked for your system.  And some fonts do that better than
others.

If you have the liberation fonts installed, they do a good job of
replacing the usual Windows-expected fonts, and freely.  Your computer's
much more likely to substitute a good choice of font, rather than a bad
one, when you don't have the Windows font that the author wanted to use.


-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.

[Athmane Madjoudj]

On 08/30/2010 09:12 PM, Alex wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  Quite often the fonts in a web page, or printing something from within
>  Firefox looks blurred. Here is a sample screenshot:
>
>  http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/7923/loc.png
>
>  It's a random page I chose to exhibit the problem. Printing web pages
>  also looks like crap, but perhaps that's something to do with the
>  printing system?
>  
Tray to choose another rendering in

System > Preferences > Appearance: Fonts tab > Rendering.

HTH

-- 
Athmane Madjoudj

[Alex]

Hi,

>  I'd concur with Athmane Madjoudj, you might have a bad
> anti-aliasing
>  option picked for your system.  And some fonts do that better than
>  others.
>
>  If you have the liberation fonts installed, they do a good job of
>  replacing the usual Windows-expected fonts, and freely.  Your computer's
>  much more likely to substitute a good choice of font, rather than a bad
>  one, when you don't have the Windows font that the author wanted to use. 
I do have the liberation fonts installed:

# rpm -qva|grep -i liberation
liberation-serif-fonts-1.06.0.20100721-1.fc13.noarch
liberation-sans-fonts-1.06.0.20100721-1.fc13.noarch
liberation-fonts-common-1.06.0.20100721-1.fc13.noarch
liberation-mono-fonts-1.06.0.20100721-1.fc13.noarch

I've also tried to change the anti-aliasing options to a few of the
others, but the page still mostly looks the same.

>  FWIW, I find it helpful that when an image is posted that the actual
>  link also be posted so that folks looking at it can compare what they
>  see on their system alongside of what the OP is seeing. 
Yes, should have thought of this. This was really just an example --
for the most part, fonts in the browser look blurry.

Other ideas greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex