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
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
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:
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
-
Alex -
Athmane Madjoudj -
Ed Greshko -
Steve Underwood -
Tim