From 4 feet away, the top one looks better. Can't read it, but it looks better. Nobody does that though, so this is a clear case of Apple getting it wrong, which is a rare thing indeed. I just wanted to make the point that Apple's decision isn't *always* worse... just worse in the average use case.

"just worse in the average use case" - Your clearly apple fanboy material. Its clearly horrible on my LCD and my CRTs. I like crisp and clear fonts that take minimal eye strain to preceive. Anything else is likely to get my boos.

If you sit really close to the monitor, then the Windows way is better. However, if you move back a couple of feet (3 feet or so from the screen to your eyes), then the Apple way seems more readable. The Apple rendering is definitely darker.

I never liked Apple's font rendering -- not on OSX and not in the Safari 3 beta on Windows. I've always felt that Apple's looks blurry.

On all LCD displays I have used (ranging from 1024x768 laptop screens to 20" widescreen displays) I feel that Windows' ClearType is so much better. It might not make your text beautiful to look at, but its readability is miles ahead of Apple's. Again, in my opinion. :-)

We were just discussing this at work...their font rendering is giving me a headache. Safari is getting a thumbs down from me for now.

This reminded me of an old Channel 9 interview with Bill Hill:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=957

Somewhere he describes how Apple does font rendering. I think he said that they just take the text and blur it a little.

Top looks and reads better to me in pretty much every way.

Look at the GRC in both, geez...

I actually much prefer the Apple/Safari rendering of these two examples; to my eyes--at the distance from which I'm looking at my monitor--the Mac rendering seems to be closer to the actual letter-forms of the typeface, whereas the Windows rendering looks stepped.

Maybe it's because I'm used to it; maybe it's because I'm using a correctly calibrated LCD; or maybe it's just because on a purely numbers level I fall within the range of users Apple uses to 'test' their output.

I guess it all comes down to subjective choice and allowing control within the OS/App.

"The Apple rendering is definitely darker. "

That could be it. When I look at my IE 7 and FireFox browser windows, with ClearType turned on, they look too light and the slight difference in contrast makes it harder for me to read.

I *think* it may also have to do with the font you are using. OS X uses a different default font than Windows does. But Honestly, by the time the light gets from my broke-ass LCD, through the finger smudges and dust on my glasses, and into my 36 year old eyes... I'm just glad to be able to read anything at all. But it is weird that it would render worse. I wonder if it will get better with Leopard?

I too downloaded the Safari 3 beta for Windows and found the fonts blurry - however if you go into Preferences and then to Appearance you can turn the font smoothing down to "Light" and it then gets much clearer from close up!!

I noticed the same thing with Safari:

http://blog.hanfordlemoore.com/2007/06/11/safari-for-windows-apple-doing-unto-others

Looks awful on my LCD as well.

Yeah, I'm not sure you could say one way is absolutely better than the other. I prefer Apple's font rendering, but I don't think the other viewpoint is invalid.

I'm sure it has a lot to do with how far your eyes are from the screen. I usually have my laptop hooked up to a 23" Cinema Display and have 3-4 feet between my eyes and the monitor. The ClearType text /is/ more crisp looking if I move closer to the display -- but putting your face that close to the display is going to do way more to strain your eyes than either version of the sub-pixel smoothing will be able to compensate for.

I also noticed that if I increase the font size, Apple style anti-aliasing becomes tolerable.

I'm beginning to think that the differences are..

1) Apple doesn't hand-tune the font aliasing hints for smaller font sizes.
2) Apple chose a much, much darker contrast level for its anti-aliasing algorithm.

In Safari, go to Edit/Preferences... and then select the Appearance tab. For "Font smoothing", choose Light (the default is Medium). Much better now. Not perfect, mind you, but much better.

> I'm curious why Apple's default font rendering strategies,
> to my eye -- and to the eyes of at least two other people
> -- are visibly inferior to Microsoft's on typical LCD displays.

Perhaps that's half the story: to your eyes.

I think that much of this is down to familiarity as anything else, the Microsoft rendering looks thin and gangly to me. For example, the text you blew up, the d in "render" looks off balance to me, the weight of the vertical bar is much heavier than the curve on the left hand side. But if you're used to that, it probably looks "correct". (Make the text on the page larger, and you'll see that if anything, the curve should be thicker than the vertical bar.)

Do you wear glasses?

I prefer the Apple fonts and I do not wear glasses. I did an informal survey. With glasses, 100% prefered ClearType. Without glasses, 100% preferred Apple fonts. Sample size was only 6, but I've had this exact same argument with PDF vs Word documents and it trends the same way.

Apple fonts seem to come across as blurry to people with glasses.

Since I don't wear glasses, I'm siding with Apple with this one. Apple's core kernel is called Darwin. It seems they prefer the genetically superior. :)

Hmmm, under OS X the font smoothing properties are located globally in the System Preferences -> Appearance prefpane. I wonder why they don't tie into the global settings under Windows? Willfully or is the Windows API difficult/hidden?

Also, you have the option under OS X to turn off font smoothing for a user specified point size. The default is off for 8 and smaller.

I just blasted a significant wedge of cash on a Macbook Pro, and the font difference smacked me in the face on my Dell 2405 monitor, unfortunately.

I wouldn't doubt that OSX/Safari font is probably closer to print - but default MS font settings, in combination with ClearType, just look a lot nice on the technology that facilitates the majority of my reading...

Ha! You just helped me understand something that has always pecked at the back of my brain.

Glancing at your screenshots I immediately thought "Did he have a typo? Is this supposed to be titled What's Wrong with Vista's Font Rendering?"

'Cause the Safari version looks exactly right to my Apple-trained eye, and much more satisfying. The IE version looks "broken" to me.

In fact, I have always had the same reaction to Windows aliasing that your peer had: "Microsoft has some room to improve in this area".

I never realized it was simply a matter of both platforms are choosing a different approach that they think is right--and we're conditioned to see our main platform as the correct way. :)

I wonder if it could be as simple as the fact that MS holds patents on some of the Cleartype tech (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeFAQ.mspx), and Apple can't get too close without violating the patents or at least getting into a costly fight over them (or knuckling under and licensing them)? Just a theory as to your "Why didn't they do this right when they usually do UI stuff well" question.

Parveen - I don't wear glasses, and I prefer the windows font rendering.
CrackpotTheory.Dispose();

I once read an article where Steve Jobs was explaining why he thought Microsoft "didn't get user interfaces" (perhaps not a direct quote but close enough). In the article he explained that Mac Fonts are rendered to look like traditional print (magazine, newspaper, etc.). At this I think they succeeded. To those who use Windows Mac fonts appear blurry because you're used to the decidedly pixely, crisp edges used in Windows font rendering. When I switched from Windows to OS X I wasn't crazy about it what I thought were 'blurry' OS X font, but now when I look at Windows I think the pixely fonts look bad.

The point is it's absolutely a user preference. One that by the way is probably pretty clearly split down Graphic Designer and Software Developer lines.

I think the key here is "rendering". The Apple fonts are "rendered" - they're properly displayed as typefaces. The Windows fonts are really just "anti-aliased" - they're basically the same as the non-smoothed versions, but with the pixels smoothed out.

I wear glasses, and prefer the Apple version. It takes getting used to, but it's definitely more "correct" to my eyes.

Just stop making your website text so goddamn small ;-)

I always find OS X's font rendering much better than Windows' traditional stuff, and thought Joel's article was really weird. Cleartype is better, but still very thin. I have terrible sight in one eye and am not wearing my glasses.

It works much better for black text; on this site I can see color fringing on the edges from the subpixel stuff.

Most of how it works involves ignoring the font hinting, but I think it might use it for subtle effects.

Oh, I meant this article - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000041.html
which is about how antialiasing is bad because Corel is bad at antialiasing.

Looks like this links to a different one.

Interesting article by John Gruber discussing the way that font are(were?) rendered in OS X Panther.
http://daringfireball.net/2003/11/panther_text_rendering

I also prefer Apple's font rendering. It looks more like a what you'd see on a piece of paper.
The Windows method looks like a "computer" display.

Obviously, Apple and Microsoft's definition of "right" is different. Otherwise, we'd be running the same OS.

For some reason the Apple renderer is using subpixel anti-aliasing along the straight lines, which seems unnecessary to me

Guys, surely this has something to do with it;

- Macs use 72dpi
- PCs *generally* use 96dpi

Apple can afford to (and possibly even needs to) blur out fonts to make them legible at the view distances incurred from using 72dpi.

I hated the OSX font rendering when I switched over from Windows. I found it blurry and annoying.

Now I can't imagine what I was thinking. The Windows fonts look skinny, gangly, and illegible.

It's all what you're used to...

Bear in mind we are seeing two different fonts in the comparison (Colibri in IE, Helvetica in Safari), which may muddle the issue a bit.

Once you scale up the font, the Apple method looks quite a bit better. But at small point sizes, Apple's choice of font anti-aliasing looks just plain flat-out *bad*-- blurry and indistinct. That's why I strongly suspect Apple isn't hand-hinting the font aliasing for smaller point sizes, as Microsoft clearly is. At small point sizes, it's no contest.

After switching back and forth quite a bit, I'll agree that it's basically a choice between sharpness and softness. Well, minus the small font deficiency...

Hostile Monkey has it right. Microsoft makes more aggressive use of hinting at lower point sizes.

Technical explanation: Microsoft's approach reduces anti-aliasing artifacts which makes the typeface more readable on monitors. However, this is done using hinting, which distorts the typeface's natural dimensions due to the forced alignment to pixel boundaries. Microsoft's approach would be considered more "correct" for people who require non-blurry, easier-to-read type at smaller point sizes, and who value practicality over accuracy.

Apple's approach more accurately reflects the natural dimensions and spacing of the typeface, but uses significantly more anti-aliasing to accomplish this - thus making the font appear noticeably "blurrier." Apple's approach may be considered more "correct" by graphic artists who would probably be more interested in experiencing the true shape and design of the typeface. Apple's approach would be preferred by people who prefer purity of form over absolute readability.

The approach that users prefer will depend on the DPI resolution of their monitor, their eyesight, the distance from their monitor, and their priorities. My guess is that "general" users would prefer Microsoft's approach most of the time as they are more concerned about readability than form, though Apple's approach could give their OS a classier and more "designed" look.

I just upped my DPI to 120 and WOW, I can certainly see a difference now.

Astrange, that Spolsky link is funny. Old Spolsky hates ClearType; New Spolsky likes it!

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000041.html
--
Somebody didn't notice this: the Microsoft Reader group, which is using a form of antialiasing they call "ClearType" designed for color LCD screens, which, I'm sorry, still looks blurry, even on a color LCD screen.
--

To be fair, I had the same love-hate relationship with the RGB aliasing of ClearType [on low-DPI displays where you can see the pixels], until I bowed to its inevitability.

Did Apple tune down the rendering engine for the pure speed?

@N.Cauldwell

Macs generally use around 100dpi, higher for laptops.

http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/high_res_macbook_pro

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, in your example, IE isn't displaying Colibri. Both are using Arial (as opposed to Helvetica, which you can distinguish by looking at the uppercase "G" -- but that's just nitpicking).

When I first tried a Mac, after years on Windows, the font rendering seemed a bit "off" to me as well, but I soon came to greatly prefer it -- ESPECIALLY in the small sizes, in which the Mac much more accurately displays the structure of the font. Windows/ClearType appears to try to move all the stems, legs, and space between letters to as close to on-the-pixel values as it can in order to cut down on the amount of aliasing it has to do, but in doing so creates distortions of form and spacing, making for a much more "jittery" and poorly kerned body of text, not to mention a font that, at least in the above example, looks nothing like Arial.

Neither are terrible, of course, but from the standpoint of typographic tradition and print, the Mac's rendering is far superior. I'd say give it more time.

Oops; Daniel beat me to it, and much more eloquently.

Until you zoomed in, both looked fine to me.

I just had a post in my blog after installing Safari browser. It's really a coincidence that you blogged the same about font rendering. With the Safari installed in my Windows XP PC, the font rendering it really bad even after setting the "Font Smoothing" to "Light". Hmm apple need to go much further to reach microsoft to render font in a better way.

Also the safari browser has no support for blogging (I only tried with my wordpress blog). It was quite desperating. Finally I specified the HTML formatting manually :(

W.r.t what Daniel Robbins said, it's worth noting that the pixel densities of apple's screens are a fair bit higher than average.

The above comments should make it clear: Apple's font rendering is clearly inferior, to your eye, because your eye is used to Microsoft's font rendering.

Microsoft's font rendering, to my eye, is clearly inferior. By a strange coincidence, my eye is used to Apple's rendering.

The Windows rendering seems full of jaggies. Sorry, hands down, the Apple sub-pixel rendering, to this eye, appears better.

Re: Daniel Robbins:
Amazing, how far Mac fans will go to prove their point. This discussion just went along the line of Mac vs. PC commercials.

"Apple's approach would be preferred by people who prefer purity of form over absolute readability."

What people? For all the people reading news, blogs etc. on the Web, or writing code, or using, hmm, spreadsheets -- readability is an absolute priority.
I'm not gonna stare at "a body of perfectly kerned text, with correctly rendered typeface" - I'm interested in actually READING words and trying to extract some meaning from it.
Graphic designers, on the other hand, use "greek text below Xpt.", that it choose not to render fonts at all when it doesn't make sense. But this is a tiny minority of mere mortals using computers in their daily lives.

I switched to a Mac recently, going on 4-5 months now, after...when did the 2.11 come out? A long time on Windows. When I first started with the Mac, I HATED the fonts. I fought with the system preferences bitterly, realized there was nothing I could do about it, and gave up. Funny thing - now when I go back to Windows, I find the text just barely readable. I guess I've been assimilated.

This might sound silly, but font rendering on the Mac is one of the reasons I switched to OS X. Its that much better to me.

There's something just not right with the Vista rendering. It's too tight, and the white/black balance is off to me. My eyes hurt from reading it, so much that I turned aliasing off on my ClearType-enabled PC at work.

At home with OSX on an LCD, it just feels right. Maybe that's an edge Apple has here over Mac: they looked beyond the technology and how tightly they could compress text on the screen. Maybe it's just what you're used to over time.

I'm sorry, my Re: was incorrectly addressed.

Daniel actually said the same thing as myself, that people interested in readability would prefer Microsoft's ClearType (I actually don't use it either, just get by with MS Verdana and Tahoma, which look good without any anti-aliasing).

Statements like "...Apple's font rendering... looks more like a what you'd see on a piece of paper. The Windows method looks like a "computer" display." strike me as odd. An LCD is nothing like a piece of paper. The printed fonts are not anti-aliased, unless we're talking about cheap newspaper print. For the purpose of displaying characters in 8pt size, 96dpi is nothing like 300dpi.

So the bottom one clearly displays a different page, right? I mean, it refers to some company names Juiusoft, whereas the top one refers to Jujusoft.

OK, I'm being snarky, but seriously, is it more readable when you can't even see the curved letter in an underlined "j"? That immediately leaped out at me.

I'm tempted to say "Well, it's just what you're used to," except my clients will never let me use CSS to style text for main navigation on web pages. They insist on graphics because the "fonts look better"--meaning rendered by something other than Windows. Then they see it on the Mac and suddenly they get why I'm OK with the more accessible styled text.

And if you're talking about any non-roman script, like Arabic, it's not even close.

wow, i never thought anyone thought the windows font rendering was good, but i guess i was wrong. to me, the one on top looks about 10x better, and i would always choose it over the IE example.

Excuses for the "me too" reply, I'll post this for statistical reasons. At first I thought "was that a typo or did he accidentally switch the images?" - to my eye, the Apple rendering clearly looks better. I wonder if there's any research that could explain why some people prefer the Apple rendering while others like the Windows engine better.

(for the record: I'm using Mac OS X and Kubuntu on a daily basis and I never use Windows).

Parveen Said:
Since I don't wear glasses, I'm siding with Apple with this one. Apple's core kernel is called Darwin. It seems they prefer the genetically superior. :)

I say:
If you don't wear glasses, it's only because you haven't spent enough time looking at computer screens. (Old man voice) "When I was your age, the world was green and black and dot matrix..."

The IE version is not even close to accurate. To me it's obvious that OS X renders better, in the bigs and the smalls. I can't believe this is even being discussed.

Interesting. When I first switched to a MacBook 6 months ago, I found the font rendering quite blurry. I did my best to make it look like ClearType, but then gave up and forgot all about it after a week. It no longer looks blurry, and after reading some comments here and taking a second look at the ClearType example, I now think that ClearType looks thin but somehow confused (the 'i' and 'l' are all squashed together, whereas in OS X they have much better spacing around them).

So my conclusion is, it all depends on what you're used to. I know a lot of people hate ClearType in XP and leave it turned off, although myself I liked it. Now I'm used to Apple, and while I THINK it looks blurry, its clearly just as readable, if not more readable, than ClearType. By the way, I wear glasses.

Completely agree with shiza. The Microsoft method is just what you're used to. It is, however, /horribly inaccurate/. Show the fonts to anyone with any knowledge of typography. There's no chance they'd prefer the cleartype.

The MS type is obviously more "crisp" but the mac type is by far more readable IMO unless I stick my face less than a foot from the screen. I do wear glasses w/ a good prescription (not old) so that really has nothing to do with it.

Fonts are built very carefully (well, the good ones) to balance white space, serifs (when used), the curving of letters, etc. to increase readability and allow a readers eyes to naturally flow through the text without effort. The MS way of rendering it completely ruins this and makes my eye have to strain more to read it. If you just look at the type and say "hey, this one is crisper therefore better" of course you like the MS type, if you sit back and actually try to read a paragraph the Mac type is MUCH easier to read.

As a note, I am a Mac user but not what you'd call a "fanboy", whenever there are new advancements on any platform I thoroughly check into them and if MS came out with something I thought was better I would definitely switch w/ out a problem.

I agree that ClearType is superior to Tiger's but, to me, the difference is noticeable only when they are side-by-side as it is shown in this post. It's unfortunate that Apple neglected to use ClearType in Safari for Windows.

On both my laptops and my home CRT and work LCD Mac fonts just look like JUNK no matter the px or if I have my glasses on or not. The Mac just hurts my eyes.

Who cares if a font is "correct" design wise if it looks like crap and hurts your eyes to read? READABILITY thats ALL that matters in fonts.

This certainly eye opening. To me the Mac font rendering is superior by a order of magnitude... like not even close. To be ClearType looks like absolute garbage.

I am really quite stunned that something that seemed so absolute and unequivocal to me can actually be so subjective. Wow.

The Mac's font rendering was actually one of the things that made me decide to stop using Windows at home.

I don't use Safari on the Mac - I prefer Firefox - but I might use it on Windows if it renders fonts the way I like them.

While Safari's rendering is certainly smoother, it's too heavy and even has uneven weight... The capital T's are glaringly heavier than the surrounding text. Lower case r's and f's look top-heavy because they're not even between the stem and the top. I'm sure I could get used to either, but Microsoft's rendering just looks cleaner because the letters don't bleed together. (and FWIW, I do not wear glasses)

Those from the Windows platform are definitely having problems with the type rendering because it's a shift from what they're used to.

Putting aside a Mac vs. PC debate, from a purely typographical standpoint OS X is clearly the superior platform in this regard. The reason being is that Apple has chosen to maintain the integrity of the typeface rather than distort it. Why? Well, why do you think type designers spend so much time over seemingly insignificant details? It has a direct impact on the legibility of the type. Shape and form matter immensely.

Those without a background in graphic design or typography will have a hard time with this, but rest assured the details certainly do matter, much more than simply the "crispness" of the type. From what I saw above, Microsoft's ClearType distorts type so the legibility of the individual characters are worse and the kerning is sacrificed--breaking the flow from letter to letter and word to word.

Compare a serifed typeface like Garamond (not Georgia, as it makes specific concessions to a computer display) on a Mac vs a PC and the details become even more important. The weight of the individual serifs aid legibility, but not unless the form of the type is preserved.

Apple, in my opinion is going the right direction with this. The only reason Microsoft's ClearType is the way it is is because of the relatively low resolution of screen displays compared to print. Print is often at 200 to 300 dpi, while a 130 is considered excellent on a computer screen. As dpi gets better on computer screens, the difference--and superiority--of Apple's technique will be clearer (forgive the pun) and clearer.

I'm with Dan. Safari's font rendering looks better on my display too (a 30" Apple Cinema). Aside from the obvious and unaccountable subjective factor, I think display dot pitch may be the biggest determinant of which looks better to you. High density displays look better with more aggressive smoothing. The only final answer is resolution independence, which is supposedly coming in Leopard.

Under Edit > Preferences > Appearance in Safari, there's a setting which you can use to lighten up the rendering a bit. I still prefer ClearType, but it's not as jarring.

Sergio,

I really am not a Mac zealot, and I was not suggesting that the Mac's approach was inherently better.

In general, I prefer the Windows font rendering, since I have good eyesight and can usually make out individual pixels. The Mac style (FreeType on Linux works similarly in most configurations) is great at first since the fonts look like they do on paper but it kind of wears on me after a while due to blurriness issues.

If the DPI is high enough so that you can't make out individual pixels - or, in other words, if your eyesight is bad enough relative to the resolution of your display - then you will not get very much benefit from aggressive hinting and the Mac method will probably look better nearly all the time, and the fonts will look "truer."

On another sub-topic - Some people have mentioned that Macs generally have a higher DPI setting - hasn't the Mac always religiously used 72 DPI, or was this just back in the early days and they've moved to a higher DPI setting with OS X? Windows XP defaults to 96 DPI.

Don't worry Geoff, soon Windows will have font rendering that is just as bad as Applies, thanks to WPF:

http://paulstovell.net/blog/index.php/wpf-why-is-my-text-so-blurry/

Paul

Having used Safari as my primary browser for a while, the top screenshot looks "right" to me, and while I think there's an aesthetic case to be made for that point of view, it's obvious that if you're used to ClearType, suddenly your Google results will look very "wrong" in Safari. It is quite subjective, and like Dan I never realized that it was so. Very interesting post.

Re: Keith Schwerin

"Who cares if a font is 'correct' design wise if it looks like crap and hurts your eyes to read? READABILITY thats ALL that matters in fonts."

I think the implication of those writing that the Mac OS X fonts are closer to "correct" is that correctly rendered fonts tend to be more readable and, if the page is thoughtfully designed, more aesthetically pleasing.

We should also be careful about making universal judgments in readability. Typographic experts have been studying readibility for a long time and still there is no consensus. I don't think you can make a sweeping statement based on one look that the Mac's rendering is less readable than ClearType, or vice versa.

Along those lines, I'm surprised by the remarks that say the rendering breaks down at the small point sizes. I find the "Advanced Search" and "Preferences" text in the screenshots marginally more readable than the (relatively) squashed text in the IE screenshot, but I think they're both fine. Viewing this site on Mac Safari, I also have no trouble reading the small copyright notice at the bottom right of the page. It looks quite good to me.

I'm also surprised to learn that this issue is new to so many people. Anybody who has designed websites for both platforms in the last three years or so ought to have viewed their pages in Safari as well as Windows IE. (Not to mention Firefox, etc.) I've always found that Windows IE reliably renders fonts larger, thinner, and with less accuracy. "Less accuracy" doesn't necessarily equal "bad," but it is the truth as far as the font's original design. In addition, as others have mentioned tangentially, a website printed out from Safari will look almost exactly like what you saw on the screen. The browser seems to aspire to WYSIWYG in that respect.

I completely disagree with this comparison, and I think the top anti-aliasing is far superior to Windows' shitty ClearType. ClearType text always looks like it was printed with a clogged nozzle (excuse the print analogy) and is far too light when staring at tiny pixels on a screen. Plus, welcome to how the typeface is supposed to look - if you view the vector version of these typeface characters you'll see Safari's version is spot-on whereas ClearType takes "liberties" with the actual vector version. I prefer the original, thankyouverymuch.

As a Mac user, I would be quite angry if Microsoft developed a Macintosh application using ClearType to display text, as I am quite happily accustomed to the Mac's font rendering and anti-aliasing (and find the IE text to be a bit rough and less welcoming to read). Clearly, Apple does not have this respect in developing for Windows. It's less an issue of which is better, and more an issue of consistency and what you're used to.

Here's an interesting point that a US-centric audience will miss.

Japanese and Chinese in IE are hideous. Windows doesn't anti-alias those scripts for some reason, so they're jagged and nearly impossible to read.

Safari 3, with its terrific font smoothing (particularly for Asian languages), just might make those languages *usable* in Windows for the first time ever.

I used to use a Mac for a few days and I liked the way of font smoothing there (fwiw, cleartype is far from perfect), however on windows it just looks waaaay out of the place. As does the UI.

Well, IE didn't have decent fonts as of Beta 2 of their IE7: http://elliottback.com/wp/archives/2006/01/31/ie-7-beta-2-fonts/

I think the current version is ok. Firefox has always been the king here.

I recently jumped ship to OSX (I was a .net developer since beta 2). I use XP and OSX at the same time via Parallels and VMWare Fusion. When you work with both at the same time, it becomes painfully apparent how crappy Windows font smoothing is compared to Apple. In fact, it's easy to see how crappy Windows looks in general compared to Apple.

Not a fanboy, btw. I appreciate both platforms, but you clearly missed the mark on this one.

"Joel Spolsky himself"?

You want to aspire to a guy whose FogBugz product is so inanely designed it doesn't even have bottom margin padding on the main entry form? And you want to trust him for UI insight?

Come on, you can do better.

I tried using a Mac for almost a month, and I really gave it a fair shot. I transfered my whole computing life over to it for a bit. It turned out there were a bunch of things I didn't like, and the anti-aliasing of small fonts was one of the worst. I actually set it to disable anti-aliasing for fonts lower than 12 points, but then Firefox always got the kerning wrong, and it still looked terrible. Add to that the fact that you can't just maximize a window (zoom doesn't always work), along with other things, and I just had to switch back. Sorry Apple. I gave it my best shot. Love the hardware though (Mac Pro). Running Vista x64 on it as we speak.

I totally agrees with Noah. Apple seems to ignore all design elements of Windows thinking, they can improve it. Fact is, they can't. OS X looks nice (although I like Vista more), but the individual UI elements doesn't work integrated into a Vista environment. In addition hereto, applications should look the same on each platform. This is the only way, the user are able to change all interfaces at a time by configuration the OS. That applies to anti-aliasing too. It will probably never happend, but for the best result, iTunes, QuickTime and Safari should - on Windows - apply to Windows design elements and guidelines. The features - if good enough - will still sell the software, but the design has to be consistent with the platform.

I don't understand why one rendering is called "wrong" and other "right". Indeed, there's no best way to render. That is only a matter of your habits.
As for me, Safari text is more readable. By the way, text is more readable on all Mac OS X screenshots I've seen than on any Windows ones. Font is usually larger/heavier there and it is more friendly to eyes, especially with 20" LCD I'm using now.

Safari is unapologetically a Mac app and does almost nothing the "Windows way", with the possible exception of maximizing behavior.

I think this is absolutely by design. You have to understand that Safari isn't so much a pretender to the IE/Firefox throne as it is a *Mac Emulator*. It's intended to facilitate development of Safari compatible web apps (and technically iPhone apps) by making them dead simple to test. You no longer even have to beg, borrow, or steal a Mac to see if your web app behaves under Safari. Just download and go.

So from that perspective-- and I can't think of any others that make any business sense-- the closer Safari's behavior is to the Mac version, the better.

It doesn't really matter which is "better", what's odd is that Safari on Windows is so different from every other Windows app on my desktop that it sticks out as the one that appears to have "broken" fonts.

On the plus side, it might mean that people actually test their websites with Safari now!

Regards,

Rob...

Jeff, I still think it is a terrible try.

- Look at selections. Do you really select all layout blocks and so on in Mac applications? I want to select text easy, simple and highlight only the selection - not spacers and so on.

- All design elements is different. Look at the "icon" of a dropdown box in Safari. It equals the Windows one for a numeric selector. How can this difference be any good? Why bother implementing their own design for the scrollbar, when Windows offers these elements?

- I want Safari to comply to my - the users - rules and settings; not their. It is so 90'ies to create such lock-ins and to decide for the user while also eliminating a free choice.

- Font blending, as your post. Make it a choice. Use the operating system features by default; I can't imagine, that it would be less optimized by using those things heavily supported by the OS.

On the Steve Jobs keynode, one of the highlights for next OS X is "consistent window design". Guess they could apply that to their Windows offers.

If Mac was integrated in Windows, I would use it. They would still be able to show off with some nice effects and custom layout elements, where it would apply. Now I may have to use it for development, but then again - I nearly won't have to bother, if noone are going to use it. There has to be someone to test for (I know there is, but I hope my point is clear).

ClearType looks much more "computer-y" to me, while Apple's subpixel rendering looks more like real type. I think part of the difference is that Microsoft tries to make everything fit the pixels. Most vertical lines are pretty much 1 pixel wide and smack dab in the middle of a pixel. I wonder whether they change the kerning slightly to get the letters to the right place...

I use both Macs and Windows, but I actually prefer Apple's font rendering. It's less harsh - of course, that's a subjective view. Some people might call the Mac's rendering "less crisp" :-)

By the way, on Macs, there's a setting where you can make your subpixel rendering more or less crisp, and there's also a setting for people with CRTs which seems to turn subpixel rendering off completely, using normal font interpolation.
Finally, if it's true that Apple's rendering is closer to the final output, then it obviously makes sense for Macs - which are often used in publishing - to use this rendering style. Otherwise, printers would be surprised if text suddenly looked much darker or much lighter when printed out, and did not match the greys used anymore :-)

I think Apple's font rendering looks a lot better. Windows looks very thin & light. I prefer the darker, thicker appearance.

God. I *loathe* OSX's font rendering. It's one of the major contributing factors to my Mac ownership experiment ending and me going back to windows full time.

Aesthetically, The OSX rendering looks better, no doubt. But in clarity and readability, ClearType destroys it (on an LCD only). OSX feels like my eyes are melting, but ClearType is, as the name implies, crystal clear.

That said, I'm glad they used the OSX rendering in the PC safari. Now you can test almost *exactly* how your web pages will look on a Mac, without having to use one.

What is wrong with the top picture? The lines are a little thicker and rounder? It looks nice an warm to me. IE 7 looks very cold and aloof in comparison. I can't wait to surf the web with Safari at work tomorrow if this is what it is going to look like.

I'm surprised no other Linux/GNOME users have spoken up. It seems pretty clear that the difference between the two is the extent of hinting; GNOME offers four levels of hinting from "None" to "Full". "None" looks like the Safari example, while "Full" looks like IE. I prefer the "Medium" setting to either; there is lots wrong with Linux for everyday users but the font rendering is second to none.

As resolutions get higher, hinting will come to matter less.

Reading text consists basically in recognizing lines and curves that build the shapes of the letters.
The Safari text may look better, because the vertical and horizontal lines are as blurred as the curves, but it's where it stops. Nice homogenic blur doesn't improve readability. Sharp corners do.
Other than that, you can't compare screen font display to paper print - the only point where paper is superior is that you can have it almost any size you like, and that you can hold it with your hands and adjust the reading distance. That's it. Trying to render fonts on screen to make them look like paper would be more close to a cargo cult than to a usability improvement.

Firstly, to my mind the jokes about Juisoft are slightly out of sorts. It's just the unlucky placement of the underlining. Okay, it should have been accommodated for better, but if the underline happened to be a couple of pixels down (as I've noticed several applications do for some reason - I don't actually know how that side of font rendering happens :S) then you would get the same problem with the MacOS font.

I've always seen the MacOS font as more stylyed, but as many people have said that's just because of what I am used to.

I don't understand how someone can think an emphasis on correctness over readability can be a good thing. Then again that's not to say that Microsofts offering is more readible than Apple's.

What is interesting, though, is that all the posts are "I think this is better" and "Now I'm used to this, it looks better". I'm struggling to find any studies on which is more readable. I do know that Microsoft did a lot of testing with people, but I don't know how much Apple did (that's a sincere "I don't know", not a snarky one).

Compelling...(yawn)

I use Mac's exclusively at home and I agree with you about OS X's font rendering.

I read an article yesterday by a 'Softie that touched on the differences between OS X and Windows font rendering - http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/5049 (via http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2007/06/11/the-technology-of-text.aspx). The implication is that Adobe and Apple use the same approach, of making the font rendering faithful to printed text, whereas Microsoft try to make on-screen text easier to read...on-screen. Yeah, I think Apple and Adobe are wrong if that's what they're doing.

1 out of 10 Windows users know that ClearType even exists. The 1 that discovers it is always gloating how much better Windows is at font rendering compared to, what, the Apple Newton?

How quickly we forget about IE 6, sans ClearType. (Today's "leading" combo, no?) Imagine, now that you actually can, what it has been like to design a website with Safari as your main dev browser, using fonts for your h1-h5 to save bytes, and then check it in IE 6. Ouch. A thing of beatuty totally wasted.

Yeah. Good title.

I'm down with the argument that it's dependent on usage.

If I'm reading text for the information contained within, readability at smaller point sizes is often an issue. For that purpose, hinting such as ClearType can be beneficial.

If I'm producing graphical work, or reading something which has aesthetic value as well as content value, I'd like to see the fonts as they were intended - and in those circumstances it's a constant frustration to me that Windows just doesn't do that: small fonts simply look nothing like they should.

On balance, I'd rather have Apple's faithful rendering, and pick my fonts carefully for "readability-priority" functions such as a default browser font.

And I say that as a lifelong Windows user :)

I've just discovered that, in OS X, you can turn off smoothing for fonts under a certain (user defined) size. Also, OS X tends to use both sub-pixel rendering AND anti-aliasing in order to try and diminish the visual noise incurred by the sub-pixel rendering.

First of all, I'd like to point out that unless you bother to tune ClearType to your individual monitor, it's not going to look good so go do that first.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/tune.aspx

Another reason that people have trouble with ClearType is that if the display resolution of Windows isn't set to match the native resolution of the LCD monitor it isn't going to look good (generally I find that nothing else looks right either).

Second, with all of these opinions flying around, did nobody bother to do any research? Let me help:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=cleartype+readability+study&form=QBRE

For those who don't trust Microsoft:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cleartype+readability+study

Meh, Apple could stick an icepick in peoples' eyes and kill their grandma and they would still rave about how much better OS X is.

I don't have a problem with either Windows or Mac font rendering. They both look great in my estimation. By contrast, font rendering on Linux is absolutely horrendous. Hinting is poorly implemented -- stroke widths tend to be somewhat uneven -- and colour fringing with sub pixel rendering is painful. It even manages to make the Windows core fonts look ugly.

I'm surprised that Safari looks so wrong under windows, as it looks correct on a Mac. Hopefully by the time it comes out of beta they will have sorted the rendering issues. I'm convinced that Safari must be using some different method of rendering compared with iTunes under windows.

I'm not convinced that even altering the appearances under preferences makes it any better. It's slightly easier on the eye but you can see where the characters look thicker than they should.

I'm really surprised that nobody has mentioned that clear type is not anti-aliasing in the traditional sense. It only works on flat panels, and is optimised for the positioning of the diodes that make up a single pixel.

James McKay, you don't say whether it is KDE or GNOME you are using. I prefer the look of Firefox under GNOME to both ClearType and the Mac method. It certainly doesn't look uneven to me.

Cleartype alone is hideous, it leaves horizontal strips without any anti-aliasing at all. Its a complete disaster and can really strain my eyes after long periods. I'm ecstatic that I can now enjoy decent text when browsing on windows.

Most windows users complaining are too used to no-antialias or Cleartype which could hardly be considered antialais

The Safari text rendering has higher production values. I make site designs in Photoshop and the text ends up looking basically the same once the Web site is created if you look at it in Safari there is never any need to make an image. The Windows text rendering looks like a computer. Also the Mac rendering looks the same on screen or in print or on tomorrow's 300 dpi display.

How you view this has a lot to do with what you're used to. When I see a site in Explorer I always think WTF is wrong with this PC? So I guess here we're seeing someone go the other way, looking at Safari.

Also someone told me once that Windows has to be "extra clear" because there are a lot of analog displays on PC's. Even many LCD's (digital displays) are hooked up with VGA (analog cable) just to save the cost of the digital cable. This adds a lot of blur, it makes an LCD into a CRT, if you are working with that then you are not even in the digital universe yet, you are watching it on TV.

A "200% exact pixel resize" doesn't make any sense in a subpixel font rendering context.

To my eye, ClearType is better than the Apple rendering. Apples looks, well, just blurred, out of focus. Apple's fonts may be 'truer' - and they do look more 'beautiful' - but they aren't as readable.

That said, it's hard to be sure what's better. Look at the factors - screen type (CRT? LCD?) and resolution, distance from screen, text size, font used, colours, eyeballs, possibly colour-blindness, maybe glasses or contacts - you're never going to have a definite answer for all people. A survey is your best hope...

But for me, on this machine, the way I work - ClearType. Readability is king.

The primary difference is that Microsoft try to align everything to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally.

Apple just scale the font naturally - sometimes it fits into whole pixels other times it doesn't.

This means Windows looks sharper at the expense of not actually being a very accurate representation of the text. The Mac with it's design/DTP background is a much more accurate representation and scales more naturally than Windows which consequently jumps around a lot vertically.

[)amien

It is all a matter of choice and learned beahviour

Looks like Apple have borrowed a page from Microsoft's book and simply ported their whole graphics engine (MS did something similar with IE4 for Solaris). They're probably using DirectX to blit the resulting bitmap to the screen, much as Sun's Java VM does. That's why fiddling with Windows' settings makes no difference.

As someone who spends 95% of his time on a PC (I own a MacBook but I use it primarily when I am not at home or work), I actually prefer the way Safari for Windows renders fonts. I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I noticed that everything had that rich Mac look to them. I think this is just one of those "eye of the beholder moments."

I've always preferred the Mac's rendering. But it's perfectly understandable that most Windows users would, at least initially, find Apple's method hard to get used to. I'd give it a bit of time before judging too harshly. Everyone gets use to what they use every day. I find both a equally legible, but that as a graphic designer, Apple's rendering is WAY MORE ACCURATE to the actual font design. It's a little heavier than the printed page, but that's understandable, as even at 100dpi or so, a good screen is still much lower DPI than print. It definately better honours contrasts in weight and subtle letterforms. I've often been suprised designing a page in a layout program, moving to HTML - all faithful - then viewing it Windows to see the whole thing become spindly and bland. I was also shocked how many of my clients were not even using Cleartype, which practically removes all character from a font onscreen.

Were splitting hairs here folks, both systems are light years ahead of what was available in the past.

I cut my font teeth on the ole black screen with the 5 x 7 pixel matrix green letters.

The first machine I ever used that was capable of rendering fonts was an old disk typesetter that used rotating disks with fonts on them, (point source light would shine through the font and image the galley onto film.) driven by a monster wire wrapped Sperry/UNIVAC computer that used drum storage. It was so primitive that a boot strap had to be loaded through the front panel just to make it smart enough to read a paper tape.

The first machine capable of rendering fonts on the screen that I used was a UNIX based Interleaf publishing system. When the Mac came out I was floored. It had better font rendering that the Interleaf's and it didn't cost $50,000.

As far as this comparison goes, I give it to Apple, splitting hairs on resolution is one thing, getting it to print at much higher resolution on a laser printer or typesetter and matching what's on the screen is another. I'll go for matching the screen every time. When I print my documents I want them to print out exactly as they look.

Oh, by the way, did you know that in the early days of the Mac there was a movement to put Postscript on the screen? Sure was, Apple squashed it because they did not own Postscript, even though they funded the majority of its development.

Too bad, it would have been awesome. Just think, a standardized rendering system that doesn't care what machine it runs on, it just scales up the resolution. A true what you see is what you get display.

But for the best laid plans of men and mice and billionaires...

and speaking of rendering fonts, safari for XP can't render international characters like in french, dutch or italian. i think it's the worst product Apple has released in a couple of years. (although it renders ok if you have a US/English OS)

some screenshots here

http://heri.madmedia.ca/articles/2007/06/11/new-safari-for-windows-full-of-bugs

I didn't realise it was so subjectice, for me ClearType wins hands down. Interesting discussion!

My eyes seem to prefer reading Safari on Windows with glasses on, otherwise it looks pretty horrible. That said, admittedly WinXP ClearType is not very good, and Vista seems to make font rendering worse, not better.

I wonder why only one person has mentioned FreeType (on Linux) because it's **new** way of font rendering (for my eyes anyway) beats both Safari and Windows ClearType hands down. Here's an example: https://boniek.homelinux.org/~boniek/desktop/green.png

Now is that still blurry?

I don't think the way their font is rendered is their biggest concern right now.

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2007/06/niiiice.html

Isn't funny. Apple fans like apples font style. Windows fans like windows style. Linux fans say, hey Linux is better.

My view when I work on an macs I like the mac style better. When I am on Vista, I rather use Vista's style. Finally when I am using Ubuntu, I rather see Ubuntu's.

Well, I prefer Apple's font rendering, because I'm used to it. That's it. Just like T3Logic says, you prefer the rendering you're used to.

The IE-style looks more 'fragile' to me, too light, while the Apple style is softer, 'friendlier'.

I just like being able to adjust the way ClearType looks on any particular machine. When some application comes along and decides to throw that out the window and render the fonts however it feels like doing so, that tends to be jarring.

For me, the image of the Safari rendering looks bad, but I can see how it would look better to other people (and I could adjust ClearType so that it looked much closer, if I wanted to). The situation doesn't change if I take my glasses off (and wait a while for my eyes to adjust), probably because I don't need my glasses for reading anything within the walls of my cubicle.

If my eyes could somehow adjust to fonts looking like that all the time (at the moment I think it would give me a headache, but perhaps not), maybe I could find it to look better than the ClearType, but as it stands it just doesn't work for me.

Then again, I have issues with the interface for Safari on Windows, it's exactly the kind of thing Mac users screamed about when Microsoft released a version of Office that had the same interface on both platforms. People defended iTunes and Quicktime because they were applications in which most of the competition did not have a common interface, and perhaps you could say the same with internet browsers, but at least in every other case you could skin the competing applications to either get an interface you like or get an interface that is closer to the platform on which it is running.

I'm also siding with the camp that thinks the Apple font rendering looks better, and I say this as a Windows user who has never owned a Mac. The light contrast version looks great if you're meticulously examining the crispness and evenness of the font edges, but the high-contrast Apple font is much easier to read. Could Apple be working in some school of thought that comes more from ye old typesetters instead of the new wave of hand-tweaked font rendering?

I prefer Apple's font rendering and it's the first thing I noticed when I installed Safari on a Windows box. I think Apple's AA really shines on a high resolution display - 1600x1200 or higher. I'm looking at an H2 tag on CNN now and Safari looks smooth like Photoshop rendered text - ClearType text looks jagged. I don't like jagged.

For anyone who uses Photoshop all day - you know there are different AA modes there, and different ones look better depending on font and size. Still, IMHO, Apple has made the best choice for the "one size fits all" AA scheme.

Just to bring more balance into this discussion

Worth noting that Cleartype does NO antialiasing, it is just very good sub-pixel rendering (which basically means your vertical resolution gets trippled). Apple on the other hand uses sub-pixel rendering AND antialiasing (which many people will find "blurry"). Both approaches have their advantages:

- Cleartype is more readable at small point sizes, while Apple's approach gets subjectively more blurry

- Quartz (Apple) uses correct typographic spacing while Cleartype can take better advantage of hinting (while losing some typographic accuracy)

These are two different philosophies regarding on-screen type. Apple's approach pays off on larger type and higher resolution monitors (though ironically antialiasing is less needed there) and Cleartype results in, well, "clearer" type when dealing with small sizes.

PS: The OS dpi (72dpi vs 96dpi) has NOTHING to do with it, it's just a "virtual value that defines how "points" will be translated into "pixels". But in the case of websites a 12px font will be twelve pixels high, on Windows and on the Mac.

There is nothing wrong with Apple's font rendering.

My son was asking me the other day if Safari is one of the few browsers that are really 100% compatible with the Web standards, why does it have so many problems rendering webpages. There are certain webpages where on a Mac you have to switch from Safari to Firefox because Safari doesn't seem capable of displaying that webpage correctly.

I explained to him there are the "actual" standards that committees of people sit around and discuss. Then there are the "real" standards that everyone actually uses. Safari uses the first set of standards, it does a beautiful job with the Acid2 test. However, all the other browsers use the real standards in order to render webpages as the author actually wanted them rendered.

How many of you remember when Netscape came out with the "center" tag? The uproar that followed was intense. It wasn't following the standards laid down by the world wide web consortium. It was a rouge tag. It shouldn't be allowed! Unfortunately, at that time, Netscape had 90% of the browser market, and people liked the "center" tag because it made their pages look better. Yes, it was against how HTML was suppose to be used. HTML was suppose to be format nutural and the "center" tag told the browser actual formatting instructions.

In the end, it didn't matter what the official standards board decreed, it was what

In my subjective opinion both look bad, the distorted pixelated MS rendering and the blurry unsharp Apple rendering.

Both need significant fine-tuning. They should probably look at Freetype, these guys seem to do it just right.
Fonts rendered with Freetype don't look as distorted as the MS rendering and not as blurry as Apple's rendering. In fact it hurts trying to read a text on Windows/Mac, after using Freetype (on Linux for example) for a while. The font rendering just looks horrible elsewhere.

The apple one looks wonkitated, no doubt. that's the first thing I thought too. However, it's beta, right? Isn't the purpose of betas to give teams time to do thinks like tweak the contrast level setting on the sub-pixel font rendering algo?

Now that we're talking about font rendering, I'd like to reiterate that the font used by this site sucks horribly on my browser. I generally enjoy this blog, but I'm not happy about the font choice. Yes, I've been to the download for the font, it hasn't helped. Please consider letting the browser choose the font, and specifying only the family, size and style.

Also, to all you guys who say "it looks better", download it and run it for an hour. It looks like ass. And believe me, I'm an apple fanboy of the highest order, but it looks like ass.

"Apple Safari On Windows Broken On First Day"
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/12/0120230

I wear glasses and would prefer to look at the apple text all day.

Rasterizing type involves a trade-off between preserving shapes and distorting them to move horizontal and vertical inflexion points neatly on to pixel boundaries. I remember working with METAFONT font descriptions, where a lot of time was spent munging co-ordinates to whole numbers of pixels. There are also trade-offs between using grey levels that accurately represent the amount of the pixel that should be filled in, and munging the grey levels to give a crisper, less blurred appearance.

On my own site I have specified High Tower Text as the text font on Windows (since there is no Hoefler Text on Windows). With Windows's anti-aliasing it looks thin and highly aliased. With Safari's anti-aliasing it looks smooth and much prettier.

I suspect that Apple hasn't included a way to change the anti-aliasing prefs yet. The apple rendering looks suspiciously like the "Best for CRT" anti-aliasing setting.

I'm curious if you go over to a mac and set it to CRT text anti-aliasing, will it look similar?

Meh.
I don't like Mac, I never have. Where I work, Mac is the unloved stepchild that we have to support, but nobody uses it so issues come up so rarely, nobody can remember how to work the stupid things.

Still, I gotta say, I don't see any difference between the two examples, Safari looks just as good as IE.

Cooltype, Cleartype and Quartz are lousy at rendering fonts (each in their own special way).
If you want to learn more about screen fonts and readability, check out David Berlow's posts over at RogerBlack.com:

http://www.rogerblack.com/blog/authors/david_berlow

You couldn't PAY me to use Windows with ClearType turned on!

That said, Apple's version isn't much better at all.

For the Safari beta, I set the anti-alias on the "light" setting, only because there was no way to turn it off.

I hate IE7 with a passion, but at least it gives the user the ability to turn off ClearType.

Isn't it ADOBE's ClearType?

I love your blog and hate to be critical, but speaking of fonts... why do you assume that readers of your website have font smoothing turned on? Have you tried to see how it reads under XP without ClearType turned on?

I'm not sure how the statistics are about who uses font smoothing, and what type, but there are at least several workmates that don't have ClearType turned on, so the only way we can read the blog is by increasing the font size, or getting a headache. Is there another font/size you can use that looks good for all readers?

You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to...

Screen type on Windows has always looked spindly and weak to my Mac-trained (been using Macs since Macs existed, though I use both now regularly) and heavily-corrected eyes (-4.5 w/progressive bifocal). The Safari sample looks normal to me, and the IE looks weak and thin.

and in both OSs, you can turn off font smoothing, so this is kind of a specious complaint. I have smoothing/Cleartype turned on on both my Mac and PC, because type looks like ass without it.

The top screenshot looks way better to my (Mac-using) eyes. It looks like a printed page of Helvetica. Who cares what the pixels look like at 200%? It's definitely very readable at actual size. This is not an "oversight" by Apple; I'm sure it would have been much easier for them to using Windows' default text-rendering algorithms.

Presumably, Apple is using Mac-style antialiasing so that web pages will look the same across both platforms. Developers testing their sites in Safari on Windows will be able to see exactly what it looks like on a Mac.

No no, you don't get it ... this is SUPPOSED to be this way so that your vision becomes accustomed to seeing things in the Jobs reality distortion field ... save yourself ... giant apples are cominNO CARRIER

Apple is all about their 'human interface guidelines,' and yet break Window's interface standard with their browser. That's the real WTF ... er, wrong site.

So, you're comparing different fonts, with different hints, on different OSes, using different rendering technologies, at (possibly) different screen DPI settings. Um, and what exactly are we supposed to infer from this comparison...?

My first impression is that the font designers who crafted this particular implementation of Helvetica chose to emphasize consistent stroke thicknesses at all point sizes, whereas the font designers who crafted this particular implementation of Colibri preferred to sacrifice their stroke consistency in favor of cleaner pixel edges at very small point sizes. (This is most easily seen in the small "o" which is both unbolded and bolded in each example. The Helvetica "o" appearance remains rounder with consistent stroke thickness, while the Colibri "o" has flatter extremes and bolds horizontally but not vertically.)

But these are font designer choices, and have little or nothing to do with Mac vs. PC, Safari vs. IE, or even ClearType. Even on the same computer with the same display, the same browser and the same font rendering technology, there will still be people who prefer Ariel to Helvetica or vice versa. And, as an earlier comment pointed out, 90% of users don't even know the difference or would care if they did. (I pity them, of course, but what can you do?)

Not a fair comparison: the example screenshots show a page that uses Microsoft's ugly-duckling Helvetica clone, Arial. With ClearType's heavy hinting, it would probably be difficult to tell Arial apart from Helvetica, while Mac OS-style antialiasing would let the design of the original typeface design shine through (while in the example, Arial's kludginess shines in Safari, while automatic font-hinting is all I see in IE).

This is part of the whole point.

Yes, it probably takes anyone a little while to get used to a new font rendering method. And the Mac-style method probably looks better on higher-resolution displays, but we are probably all using higher-res displays then ever. Give it a chance.

Oops, no links. For Arial vs Helvetica, see http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html. Cheers.

There's a trick used in some font renderers that aligns vertical and horizontal strokes with pixel boundaries to avoid anti-aliasing them. It looks like Apple does not use that.

It's a tradeoff between individual letter contrast and spacing between letters. Apple has always been consistent in retaining spacing as close to what it would be on print, and the anti-aliasing has always been quite strong. Microsoft decided to use ClearType to its maximum, trying to emphasize letter contrast at the expense of spacing. ClearType screws up spacing on a sentence- and paragraph level quite badly.

I posted an example of what modern Linux desktops (well, Fedora 7 at least) do for a third viewpoint.

Er, I guess the link didn't make my comment: http://www.fishpool.org/post/2007/06/12/Font-rendering-Mac-OS-X-vs-Windows-vs-Linux

Look at the capital G and capital S in both images. Look at the way Safari renders the underline for links, and how 'j's, 'g's and 'y's are handled. Look at the punctuation: full stops, commas and colons.
Apple's rendering is much better, and IMO much easier to read.

Having bitched and moaned (with no effect) several times on this blog about the horrible font, I've gone ahead and tried turning on ClearType.

Amazingly enough, the font now looks like a completely different font, and I'm no longer seeing alternating dark and light letters. Why it should look so different boggles my mind and leads me to believe that something is fundamentally broken somewhere. The font now looks like, for want of a better word, a "normal," "sensible" font, something like maybe Verdana. BUT EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER LOOKS BLURRY TO ME NOW! This anti-aliasing shit makes the text look like a newspaper that's been sitting in the rain too long. None of the letters are really crisp black any more, they've all got mushy gray borders. Like text typewritten with a fading cloth ribbon. The text looks to me like I need glasses, and will probably give me a headache if I leave ClearType on for much longer.

I agree with a previous poster: YOU COULDN'T PAY ME TO USE CLEARTYPE! If ClearType is what it takes to make this site's font look at least similar to a legible font, then please shove the font into the same orifice as the one ClearType belongs in, IMHO.

At home, I can ask Platypus/GreaseMonkey to clean this mess up. At work, I don't have the option of loading these addons. I'm beginning to hate Jeff for his attitude of "you'll either view my page under Windows, with Windows' idea of how fonts should be rendered, or put up with my shitty looking font. This is the way I like it, and I don't give a damn if you do." The Windows way or go away. And people wonder why so many developers hate Microsoft.

I'm kinda all over the place on this. I use both Mac's and PC's, but for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with fonts, I prefer my Mac. That said... for the text in the search field, I like IE better. For the headers for the search returns, I think Safari is more readable. For the text description undeer the headers, I think that Safari's darker text is more readable. But for the "Web" header at the top of the results, IE wins hands down. I think I like IE for the text on the search button, but Safari for the Advanced Search text.
So to me, it's clear that there is no best way to render fonts. And it's also clear that neither one is "horrible". Just because something doesn't fit within your preferences does not make it horrible. In fact, I suspect that the reason there is a heading above each image is because most people would not know which image came from which browser otherwise. If it were horrible, just looking at the poorer image would make me cringe.

People haven't commented on why Safari on Windows does this. The whole point of releasing Safari for Windows is to aid development for the Mac and iPhone. The whole point is that it is meant to render identically on Windows and OS X. What is the point of releasing something to allow you to check your site displays correctly if different versions of it display the site differently

As for which I prefer, it has to be the Mac's rendering. I've always found font rendering on Windows to be scrawny and hard to read.

IE7 version looks terrible to my eye. Weight is unevenly distributed across the words - cleartype appears to value pixel alignment far too much and correct kerning far too little. Apple might go a little too far the other way, but the result on Safari is much more readable for me.

It boggles my mind that someone could prefer the IE7 version, but preference is preference.

Maybe I'm crazy, but from the screenshots in the post I actually *prefer* the Safari one.

(And I'm looking at this on a laptop running WindowsXP.)

"Firstly, to my mind the jokes about Juisoft are slightly out of sorts. It's just the unlucky placement of the underlining. Okay, it should have been accommodated for better, but if the underline happened to be a couple of pixels down (as I've noticed several applications do for some reason - I don't actually know how that side of font rendering happens :S) then you would get the same problem with the MacOS font."

So, in other words, if the font rendering on Safari were as broken in the same way it is on Windows, it would also be broken in this case. Well, yes, but that's the whole point. They don't allow underlining to obscure the plunger of the j. There's nothing "unlucky" about the placement of the underlining.

Yes, Apple text (Safari or otherwise) is a lot more akin to actual typography -- something I have been involved with professionally for well over 20 years. Microsoft typography (if you can call it that) in much more akin to an untrained person making type selections. It is random, awkward and cold. Not very inviting or engaging. Certainly not refined.

That said, Safari on the Mac has (in my learned opinion) the most elegant, accomplished and mature text rendering of the whole group of browsers -- BUT -- they went a little over the top on the anti-aliasing with this Safari Beta. And to be fair it is a Beta. I trust it will become refined in the next version. Safari for Windows is now my default on my IBM ThinkPad, and has been on my Mac PowerBooks for some time now.

I'm very surprised to read these comments. Microsoft's typoography rendering, even w/ cleartype, has always been so incorrect. It's a jagged, misshaped rendering that butchers most typefaces.

I suspect that the Safari rendering seems strange because its different than everything you're used to seeing. But the good news is now you can see what you've been missing.

This is interesting, because I downloaded and installed the Safari beta yesterday and for me, the fonts don't render *AT ALL*. I get absolutely no text in the browser window, or in the status bar, or under the navigation items. Nothing.

My thoughts are, the Microsoft ClearType one is *clearer*, but it is not easier to read.. (Although, I'm on an old CRT, that makes a big difference.)

If you do want a clearer font, than by all means ClearType is the winner, but keep in mind, Apple targets their font rendering for properly calibrated Apple displays.

Personally I find Apples rendering easier to read because it is a tiny bit larger and darker. However ClearType has a little bit of stepping and is very narrow.

It depends on your eyesight, monitor, and other factors I suppose.

consider, please, the optical illusion of staring at a fixed point on an inverse american flag, and after a minute looking at a white wall. You will see a short lived impression of a correctly colored flag on the wall. This happens because the eye is constantly vibrating, causing the edges of a scene be able to be detected by the neurons of the eye, and this is natural.

I submit to you, that the clear type rendering on a computer screen is too harsh physiologically, and that - because the edges of the fonts are so abrupt, can cause strain on the eye as it works to define those edges.

What i mean here, is that i would be open to discovering that apple's choices on their platform and in this regard are due once again to psychology factors, and that in prolonged use are easier on *the eye itself*

quote: When observing a static scene, the eyes perform small repetitive motions called saccades that move edges past receptors. If an image is stabilized on the retina, it soon darkens and disappears, since a motion detector responds only to motion.

from http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/optics/colour.htm

i think i might be on to something here.

The ClearType rendering makes normal text at moderate point sizes too light and bold text look too bold. This can be seen in the screenshot comparisons. The problem with Arial is that it looks too bold to begin with.

Then again, Comic Sans looks terrible with any version of anti-aliasing.

This isn't just with apple safari, in Fire Fox under Ubuntu with KDE, the fonts are also display in a very dark and blury contrast. I think it has to do with a poorly written font layer.

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~ct/

Here's a link to a study done in UT-Austin called Measuring User Response to ClearType. They concluded:
"We found that people selected text with ClearType 80% of the time."
"When ClearType was present, participants read from a computer screen
approximately 30 seconds faster."
"In this report, we find continued support that on average, users perform tasks faster with ClearType."

I wonder if they'd conduct a similar study using Apple's antialiasing

iirc Apple uses the same rendering method as Adobe use for their PDFs.

And personally, I think someone nailed it earlier by saying:
+ Cleartype is clearer at typical dpi levels.
+ Apple's method is more accurate.

Assuming we eventually have access to higher resolution displays across the board, and don't need to make sacrifices for clarity, Apple's approach probably wins.

Hmmm. When you put them side by side like that and I'm viewing this on a PC, the PC one looks easier for me to read. I'll have to look at this page again at home on my Mac and see if the opposite is true. I'm thinking this is a matter of what you're used to looking at. When I first started using OS X I didn't like the aliasing and liked going back into OS 9 for web browsing. That habit has died and I prefer the OS X look.

Amusing responses. Will Apple sheep ever admit fault, at any time, under any circumstances?

A lot of the comments seem to center around the notion that Apple's font rendering is closer to print. Guys - that's not a good thing. The final output of the vast majority of computer applications is not the printer. Certainly not the output of a web browser!

It must be nice being in Steve's chair - Apple releases an ugly, buggy, insecure, flagrantly standards-violating application for Windows, far worse than any of Microsoft's *alpha* or *preview* releases, and gets free PR and a pat on the back for it.

Try examinging the small text to the left of the Search-button

"Advanced Search
Preferences
Language Tools"

This is much better an accurately displayed via Apples method than the standard Windows way.

The "ce"-letters look like an "æ" instead of ce on Windows.

At small sizes the letters also seem too thin on Windows.

This article actually looks quite funny on my screen, since the text in both screenshots looks very blurry and indistinct to me, especially compared to the adjacent body text of the article which is rendered in Lucida (or Lucida Typewriter for monospace) on my web browser.

Yes, I mean those old freeware X11 bitmap fonts that the browser won't scale--the browser picks the nearest integer point size and renders that, with a minimum size of 8 points. This breaks some web pages which for some reason think that some text should be rendered too small to read comfortably--I feel no loss for having such breakage, zero, none, nada. I don't let web pages choose fonts either, other than monospace and non-monospace.

(pause for "web designer" people in the audience to run screaming from the room ;-)

If you're going to design a readable font to be rendered on a computer screen, design it from the start on a grid of large pixels, and redesign it for every size in pixels that it's ever going to be rendered with. The Lucida letter forms consist of emphasized horizontal, vertical, and diagonal shapes (e.g. "o" is an octagon) and each available rendering size is hand-tuned, which is just what you want if you're building letters out of Lego for a computer screen. These particular fonts also avoid the enormous amount of white space between lines that is typical of the default fonts on so many operating systems, and which steals something like 30% of the already constrained vertical screen area on conventional computer displays. Lucida and LucidaTypewriter are identical except for horizontal spacing, so monospace text doesn't leap painfully out of the page like it does on the typical Arial/Courier or Times/Courier mixture that seems to be the default on so many browsers.

To use a font designed for rendering at 300+DPI on a 100DPI display is like running a digital simulation of printing your web page on paper, scanning it in on a flatbed scanner, and reading it in MS Paint (or, if you have antialiasing turned off, like faxing the printed page to yourself in "normal quality" mode). Yes, it looks very similar to what it would look like if you printed it and scanned it back into the computer, but really, why would you want it to, except in the rare special case when you actually intend to print it?

I do wear glasses from time to time, but I'm nearsighted, so as long as I'm close enough to a screen I can do without the glasses, and generally prefer to do so. I read text from computer screens in a variety of environments and at a variety of times of day. After several hours of reading, I'll generally increase the font size by about 40%. I suspect, if I were forced to choose between only those alternatives, that I'd start the day marginally prefering the IE7 rendering (it's a lot clearer which text is bold and which is not), then gradually prefer the Safari rendering (it degrades less when it is slightly out of focus).

I suspect if I had a 300DPI computer display (a real one, not a 100DPI display with image processing) I'd probably switch to a vector font--if I could find another widely available pair of sans-serif fonts which were identical except for monospacing.

The origins of Cleartype-like fontsmoothing:

http://www.grc.com/ctwho.htm

lol
The first thing I noticed was the text in Safari. A snip from my Facebook posting: "One of my biggest thorns in using Windows is text looks like jaggy, fresh out of the 1995 time capsule crap." And that's even with ClearType turned on. Now, I know I've overstated my position on ClearType. :)

What's hilarious about this is that I had always taken Apple's rendering of text as being clearly better - anybody would notice that. What is clear, once again, is that style is a personal thing. We can look at the same graphic sample and come up with opposite conclusions.

Anyone who thinks that the OS X rendering looks best is just being stubborn....It's blury and they know it as well as everyone else. So apple has one thing that's not perfect...deal with it... Just ask windows users we deal with all kinds of imperfections lol.

I hope the apple users can even read my above comment through the blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

My font smoother design is far superior to microsofts.

Anyone who disagrees with me is just not a visionary.

PS. Buy an iPhone.

My machine (XP/20" LCD @ 1600x1200) doesn't have the Calibri font, so I get your site rendered in Tahoma. I have to say that your site looks decidedly better to me in Safari, while Google (Arial) looks slightly better in IE. Overall, I think I like the slight blurriness of Safari over the angularity of IE.

Look at the lower-case 'e' in "Advanced Search" to the right of the Google search box. The letterform is so different you might think they aren't using the same type face: in Safari the bowl of the 'e' curves back up on the right-hand side, while in IE the bowl of the e ends with a straight horizontal line.

Looking at the 'e' in larger point sizes, it's clear that the bowl is curved in the pure (unrendered) letterform.

As many have said, which you prefer depends on who you are. But I can see why type designers or graphics layout people would like the Apple approach.

I think the fonts are not the problem with Safari. I prefer them, in fact.

*Here's the real story* of where Apple's beta falls short:

Their browser launches in a window that doesn't play well with Windows standards. I can't, for example, resize it except by using the Apple resize triangle in the lower right corner (and the ability to resize windows from any edge or corner is one place where Windows totally has it right compared to OS X). Nor can I control-select, say, the IE and Safari apps in my system tray and right click to display them side-by-side onscreen. XP just thinks that IE is running.

*This* is where Apple is acting with hubris....Just because windows work one way on the Mac, doesn't make it a good idea to break the Windows paradigm (i.e., override the behavior that the user expects).

>Macs generally use around 100dpi, higher for laptops.

That's _physically_ 100dpi, but the software in Mac OS X 10.4 and earlier still thinks in 72dpi. So currently on a Mac, the higher the physical resolution, the smaller stuff (a letter, an icon, etc.) appears.

If the Mac thinks the icon is an inch wide, it uses 72 pixels across to draw that icon. On a high-rez Mac Pro screen, if you hold a ruler up to the screen, that icon might measure only 0.6 inches (or some such number).

This will change in Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" with the software drawing at any resolution you choose. If you want, you can use more physical pixels to draw the same letter with more smoothing or the same icon with more detail, but fewer of those letters & icons can appear on screen.

Apple's approach to font smoothing will really pay off then, as text on future high density monitors will appear more and more like ink on paper. But Microsoft rendering will look more and more goofy and "computer-like".

The Apple fonts are blurry, period. Admit it, for God's sake. The "rendering" is inferior and everybody knows it. Also, who cares if it's "truer to print"? Most people use a computer to read information on the computer, not to print out accurate typefaces on pages. At least now with the release of Safari 3 for Win the world can see the Apple scam with their own eyes.

suddenly everybody has an opinion!!

On the "72 dpi" thing.

This was so back in the days of the 9" display compact Mac; 72dpi to match typesetter's points.

Hasn't been true on screen for a while; actual display DPI is identical to a PC with the same resolution and physical size (obviously).

(BooBoo: Aren't many/most things at the software level spec'd as pixels rather than notional inches, anyway?

Certainly it ought to be possible, if Apple's APIs are anything like everyone else's, even though they allow device-independent sizing. I don't do OSX development, so I can't speak from experience as far as OSX implementation.

The issue is, at any rate, no different on a Windows-running PC; the PC doesn't know what your physical DPI might be; Windows only has 96 and 120 options unless you do a custom one, and nobody does that [figurative nobody, of course].

Given the variations in resolution and physical size, that's all going to be a crapshoot on screen until either people actually set their OS DPI level correctly, or it's clever enough [using DCC and a table of monitor physical sizes/layouts and the known resolution] to calculate a DPI value and apply it ... and that only even matters if the software is doing its drawing by notional size rather than by pixel.

"Best practice" these days leans to the former, but people often don't follow notional best practices.)

I think it's hilarious, by the way, that PWH3Troll ignores all the data about conflicting opinions, all admitted by those proffering them to be subjective judgement, and just ignores the half that doesn't suit the troll. Bravo.

The Windows version is actually somewhat harder for me to read. It seems way too wispy/wiry, and almost like it's of less opacity. Factor in my slight astigmatism and it's even worse.

I mean, it's not too huge a difference either way, but the Apple version just seems generally easier to read, and more... there, I guess. More like text you'd read on paper.

I have been a mac user since 1984 but I am forced to use the old mac OS 9 (which has readable font rendering) because OSX gives me such bad eyestrain that I simply can't use it. If you can't actually read the screen because it gives you blurred vision and constant headaches even when you are not looking at the screen - what's the point? So who cares what the font looks like as long as you can read it.

Not everybody is affected by this problem but a significant number of people are. It's to do with the fact that with the different coloured pixels in each anti-aliased character or letter, some people's brains just don't know where to focus. If the character is composed of solid black or monochrome pixels no problem for the brain or vision. (To see the different coloured pixels in the font on OSX use the zoom tool).

I have lobbied Apple about this to no avail.

For an article and lots of comments by Apple users who have had the same problem as myself see http://www.atpm.com/12.01/paradigm.shtml

Apple's fonts look a lot more readable to me, a lot more like actual letters instead of digital interpretations of letters. :)

Then again, i use the native resolution on a properly calibrated LCD, sit back about 2 feet from the screen, and have been using macs for long enough for Apple's way to feel natural and MS's way to feel artificial.

"The 'rendering' is inferior and everybody knows it."

Clearly, "everybody" does not include me, and I am a Windows user who wears glasses and has no interest in Macs. This article was the only reason I gave Safari a try, and the font rendering is such a plea