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What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-f

What happened with font rendering? Fonts are rendered with thinner lines in new Edge (on the left): http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fonts.png http://terrainformatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IE-fo... Such rendering does not match rest of Windows... New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem.

dubcanada 7y ago
Chromium has font rendering built into it, I am guessing Microsoft didn't ripe it out and replace it with their own as it's not cross platform.
- c-smile 7y ago
  That's why I think having multiple browser implementations is beneficial. Proposal to Democrats: to unite with Republicans in one party as Republicans have "better development tools".
  - pizza 7y ago
    Although I don't think such a comment is appropriate for this thread, I'm curious as to what you mean.
    - jonny_eh 7y ago
      It's good to have alternatives.
      - jpadkins 7y ago
        do you believe Democrat and Republicans have significant policy differences?
        IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
        We’re getting far OT. But the two US parties being identical, policy-wise, may have been an insightful oberservation during, say, the Clinton adminstration. To repeat it today is just completely ridiculous.
  - mc32 7y ago
    I’d be afraid that they would cause politburo style politics wherein it’d be a pretty big umbrella but ultimately it’d result in the main faction always winning. At least with with Repub/Dem bipolarity there is room for movement and adjustment (to the right or to the left).
_bxg1 7y ago
I'll be honest, it took me a solid three minutes of looking back and forth between those pictures before I could see a difference
- spydum 7y ago
  really? it's quite stark, especially if you examine the "y"s
sgc 7y ago
It's more readable to me. Eye doctor always tells me to distinguish between darker/fatter and more focused.
raphlinus 7y ago
I'm going to take a guess that this is mostly due to the use of Skia. I think the problem is not so much with the rendering of fonts (which is still likely DWrite) but with the compositing of them onto the canvas. There, it's extremely difficult to get gamma right. I am sympathetic to this, as I've spent a lot of time at the low levels of this stuff. Unfortunately, one problem is that there is no one "right answer," and not really a lot of authoritative guidance on what's preferred. Some people prefer higher contrast, others prefer minimal distortion of the shapes and spacing. It's always a tradeoff.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Is there anyone who cares about "minimal distortion" except devs or other people working on UI-related stuff? I know I don't even know what the ground truth is supposed to look like, so I'm not even sure I can notice distortion. I certainly don't care.
  - raphlinus 7y ago
    Well, there are many forms of distortion. When it comes to spacing in particular, yes, there are many people who are quite sensitive to it, others less so. You can Google "keming" for more information on that.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      I can notice bad kerning, that's not what I thought we're talking about. We're just talking about the distortion difference between these renderers we have, not arbitrarily terrible distortion. And awful kerning is not the kind of distortion a renderer like Chrome's has.
      - p1necone 7y ago
        Are they really not noticeable to you? The one on the right has clear jagged edges to me.
mistersquid 7y ago
> New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem. The left render has less contrast but, to my eyes, is clearer. Look, for example, at the upvote and downvote buttons. The right image's buttons are faint and blurred (jaggy), while the left image's buttons are sharp.
herf 7y ago
Left one (Edge?) has Cleartype enabled - you can see RGB edges if you zoom in.
dataflow 7y ago
Left side is actually sharp, with subpixel smoothing. Right side is awful (just like many parts of post-Vista Windows) with apparent grayscale AA. This is something they actually got right; it's one thing that was terrible about IE and the old Edge, and that I'd bet was subconsciously turning many people off (in my case, consciously making me want to tear my eyes out). If you can't see the difference, open dev console on the screenshot and run: document.body.style.zoom = 1 / window.devicePixelRatio If this doesn't work in the new Edge, try in Chrome (not sure if Edge supports this zoom mechanism). You should definitely be able to see the difference in sharpness. Edit: Maybe also worth mentioning, Firefox's bold font rendering is one thing keeping me away from it. Lack of the above zoom mechanism is another. Not sure if I'm alone in these.
- dr_zoidberg 7y ago
  All in all, I'd say the one on the left is more pleasant to read and easier on the eyes, despite being "thinner". The jagged edges on the right feel on my eyes like the sound of relentless blackboard scratching.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    That's a really nice way to put it, I could never find a decent way to describe it until now!
- skybrian 7y ago
  Both sides of the screenshot are perfectly readable. Why make such a big deal about such a small difference?
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Well, to me it is a big deal. I'm not trying to make it one, it just is. Best analogy I can give you is probably the one in the sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057875
- noisem4ker 7y ago
HelloMcFly 7y ago
New Edge is more readable to me.
hobbes78 7y ago
I have the opposite experience! The image on the right is almost pixelated; the image on the left has almost perfect diagonal lines!
lostmsu 7y ago
This comparison is sort of meaningless, until you tuned Clear Type.
p1necone 7y ago
The one on the left looks much better on the whole to me. It does seem to be making the font a little thinner though.
chrismorgan 7y ago
It was my hope as part of Edge migrating to Chromium that they’d contribute proper native-appearance font rendering, just as they’ve been contributing a few other things now (“To date we’ve made more than 1900 contributions across areas like accessibility, modern input including touch, speech, digital inking, and many more.”). Chromium’s Windows font rendering is better than it was a few years ago (when it was really pretty awful), but as you say, it’s still not right. Firefox’s font rendering is much truer to the platform conventions. I hope that this is still on their radar as something to improve.

dubcanada 7y ago

Chromium has font rendering built into it, I am guessing Microsoft didn't ripe it out and replace it with their own as it's not cross platform.

c-smile 7y ago
That's why I think having multiple browser implementations is beneficial. Proposal to Democrats: to unite with Republicans in one party as Republicans have "better development tools".
- pizza 7y ago
  Although I don't think such a comment is appropriate for this thread, I'm curious as to what you mean.
  - jonny_eh 7y ago
    It's good to have alternatives.
    - jpadkins 7y ago
      do you believe Democrat and Republicans have significant policy differences?
      - IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
        We’re getting far OT. But the two US parties being identical, policy-wise, may have been an insightful oberservation during, say, the Clinton adminstration. To repeat it today is just completely ridiculous.
- mc32 7y ago
  I’d be afraid that they would cause politburo style politics wherein it’d be a pretty big umbrella but ultimately it’d result in the main faction always winning. At least with with Repub/Dem bipolarity there is room for movement and adjustment (to the right or to the left).

_bxg1 7y ago

I'll be honest, it took me a solid three minutes of looking back and forth between those pictures before I could see a difference

spydum 7y ago
really? it's quite stark, especially if you examine the "y"s

sgc 7y ago

It's more readable to me. Eye doctor always tells me to distinguish between darker/fatter and more focused.

raphlinus 7y ago

I'm going to take a guess that this is mostly due to the use of Skia. I think the problem is not so much with the rendering of fonts (which is still likely DWrite) but with the compositing of them onto the canvas. There, it's extremely difficult to get gamma right. I am sympathetic to this, as I've spent a lot of time at the low levels of this stuff. Unfortunately, one problem is that there is no one "right answer," and not really a lot of authoritative guidance on what's preferred. Some people prefer higher contrast, others prefer minimal distortion of the shapes and spacing. It's always a tradeoff.

mehrdadn 7y ago
Is there anyone who cares about "minimal distortion" except devs or other people working on UI-related stuff? I know I don't even know what the ground truth is supposed to look like, so I'm not even sure I can notice distortion. I certainly don't care.
- raphlinus 7y ago
  Well, there are many forms of distortion. When it comes to spacing in particular, yes, there are many people who are quite sensitive to it, others less so. You can Google "keming" for more information on that.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    I can notice bad kerning, that's not what I thought we're talking about. We're just talking about the distortion difference between these renderers we have, not arbitrarily terrible distortion. And awful kerning is not the kind of distortion a renderer like Chrome's has.
    - p1necone 7y ago
      Are they really not noticeable to you? The one on the right has clear jagged edges to me.

mistersquid 7y ago

> New Edge is definitely less readable, and Google Chrome exhibits the same problem. The left render has less contrast but, to my eyes, is clearer. Look, for example, at the upvote and downvote buttons. The right image's buttons are faint and blurred (jaggy), while the left image's buttons are sharp.

herf 7y ago

Left one (Edge?) has Cleartype enabled - you can see RGB edges if you zoom in.

dataflow 7y ago

Left side is actually sharp, with subpixel smoothing. Right side is awful (just like many parts of post-Vista Windows) with apparent grayscale AA. This is something they actually got right; it's one thing that was terrible about IE and the old Edge, and that I'd bet was subconsciously turning many people off (in my case, consciously making me want to tear my eyes out). If you can't see the difference, open dev console on the screenshot and run: document.body.style.zoom = 1 / window.devicePixelRatio If this doesn't work in the new Edge, try in Chrome (not sure if Edge supports this zoom mechanism). You should definitely be able to see the difference in sharpness. Edit: Maybe also worth mentioning, Firefox's bold font rendering is one thing keeping me away from it. Lack of the above zoom mechanism is another. Not sure if I'm alone in these.

dr_zoidberg 7y ago
All in all, I'd say the one on the left is more pleasant to read and easier on the eyes, despite being "thinner". The jagged edges on the right feel on my eyes like the sound of relentless blackboard scratching.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  That's a really nice way to put it, I could never find a decent way to describe it until now!
skybrian 7y ago
Both sides of the screenshot are perfectly readable. Why make such a big deal about such a small difference?
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Well, to me it is a big deal. I'm not trying to make it one, it just is. Best analogy I can give you is probably the one in the sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057875
noisem4ker 7y ago

HelloMcFly 7y ago

New Edge is more readable to me.

hobbes78 7y ago

I have the opposite experience! The image on the right is almost pixelated; the image on the left has almost perfect diagonal lines!

lostmsu 7y ago

This comparison is sort of meaningless, until you tuned Clear Type.

p1necone 7y ago

The one on the left looks much better on the whole to me. It does seem to be making the font a little thinner though.

chrismorgan 7y ago

It was my hope as part of Edge migrating to Chromium that they’d contribute proper native-appearance font rendering, just as they’ve been contributing a few other things now (“To date we’ve made more than 1900 contributions across areas like accessibility, modern input including touch, speech, digital inking, and many more.”). Chromium’s Windows font rendering is better than it was a few years ago (when it was really pretty awful), but as you say, it’s still not right. Firefox’s font rendering is much truer to the platform conventions. I hope that this is still on their radar as something to improve.