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Chrome 37 Beta: DirectWrite on Windows and the Dialog Element

63 points by frankacter 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zebracanevra 12y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure this has been in Chrome Beta for at least 2 or 3 months - it was hidden in chrome://flags
- rossy 12y ago
  This is true. I've been using it for a while, but it's great to see it switched on by default. Hopefully more designers will be able to use web fonts without having to worry about how it looks in Chrome/Windows (probably the most popular browser/operating system combination.)
- Semaphor 12y ago
  Yep, and I still get errors (letters completely disappearing every few days) with it turned on.
hayksaakian 12y ago
More interestingly for me, the web crypto api has been enabled by default.
- DCKing 12y ago
  It's nice for speed and the fact that you don't need to use a library any more, bit isn't more secure than JS Crypto was before.
  - acdha 12y ago
    > It's nice for speed and the fact that you don't need to use a library any more, bit isn't more secure than JS Crypto was before. It's a significant improvement in one area: the key storage API. If you use JavaScript crypto, your keys can be read by an attacker who can compromise that code in some way. WebCrypto can't stop that attacker from signing, encrypting or decrypting a message which the attacker has access to but it does prevent the key leaking out, which is often a far more catastrophic event.
rossy 12y ago
This is great. Finally web fonts and icon fonts don't look terrible on Windows/Chrome. I'm using Chrome Canary to test, and you can really see the difference on Google Fonts and the Font Awesome homepage. GDI with ClearType only does anti-aliasing in the x-direction, so the tops of letters like G and Q look pretty blocky in Chrome stable. With DirectWrite they look perfect.
- signal11 12y ago
  I've been using DirectWrite on Canary as well, and its a huge improvement. Some may even like Chrome's DirectWrite implementation over IE11's, which tends to produce really thick letters for some reason. Here's the same text rendered in IE11, Firefox and Chrome (on Windows 7) -- http://i.imgur.com/pOUJlHE.png http://i.imgur.com/pOUJlHE.png
  - swah 12y ago
    And Firefox rendering here seems kinda green, right?
  - rikkus 12y ago
    I can think of two possibilities: 1. IE is honouring the ClearType tuning settings. 2. The default gammas are different.
  - spyder 12y ago
    It looks like IE is using only greyscale anti-aliasing and not sub-pixel anti-aliasing like the others.
- swah 12y ago
  To me, HN looks better on the old one... why is this? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19746944/canary.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19746944/canary.png
pedrow 12y ago
I was surprised to see that DirectWrite was introduced to Firefox version 4 back in 2010 [0] - though the release notes don't seem to mention it explicitly [1] [0]:http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1775755 http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1775755 [1]:http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/4.0/releasenotes/ http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_r...
lcnmrn 12y ago
Chrome 38 release for Mac on dev channel is now 64-bit.
politician 12y ago
The support for the dialog element is great, but is it a bug that the scrolling example scrolls the entire page (and moves the dialog offscreen) when the inner scroll bar hits the bottom of the div? Or is that just a limitation of the polyfill?
- anon4 12y ago
  That's how scrolling inner elements works in all browsers.
  - politician 12y ago
    It sort of defeats the purpose of a centered modal dialog...
AjithAntony 12y ago
FWIW, This looks terrible for my jenkins logs: font-family: monospace; http://i.imgur.com/da3TbE8.png http://i.imgur.com/da3TbE8.png
- kuschku 12y ago
  That's because the font you're using is set to render without antialiasing – the old system just rendered everything larger and then scaled down (supersampling), while the new system actually uses real antialiasing and only when the flag is set.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  I thought they switched the default monospace font to Consolas at the same time? quote: "The default monospace font on Windows is now Consolas instead of Courier New." Ah, your screenshot is v36, not v37.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Is it me, or is the text using DirectWrite (in 37) much worse than the text using the manual renderer (in 36)? The harshness of the renderer is one reason I prefer Chrome over IE.
- ivanche 12y ago
  Oh no, it's not you. I say that without DirectWrite font looks nice and smooth. With DirectWrite it's broken, it looks like some Win 3.11 font without anti aliasing. Just look at letter w - you can see pixels forming diagonal lines. And bottom row with grey letters is almost unreadable. Edit: I was referring to screenshot shown in article, not to DirectWrite in general.
  - anon4 12y ago
    I think you can disable subpixel antialiasing and tweak sharpness for DirectWrite like you could for (Un)ClearType.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      I can't find the control panel item for that.
      - AjithAntony 12y ago
        Performance options ("Adjust the appeance and performance of Windows")->Smooth edges of screen fonts Or is it the "Adjust ClearType text"
        seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        DirectWrite isn't using ClearType, so no effect.
  - kuschku 12y ago
    If you look at the screenshot at 1:1 resolution http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4mueYYHRq8I/U8g3U-bk26I/AAAAAAAAAUM/4b50Cr2bgIA/s1600/directwrite-comparison.png http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4mueYYHRq8I/U8g3U-bk26I/AAAAAAAAAU... you can clearly see that the old renderer is blurry and hard to read, while the new one is crisp and looks much better.
rnnr 12y ago
The really great thing is that this ends the GDI exhaustion problem. Chrome in Windows could easily kneel systems of users who opened many tabs.
nanexcool 12y ago
Lately I've found myself using Firefox more and more. The last couple of weeks Chrome and Canary have been hanging a lot, especially when I want to download a file. Chrome will slow to a crawl, tabs will stop rendering and when I try to close it thinks it's still downloading something. As someone who's been using Chrome since the first public release I wish it were a bit more stable (for me at least).
- aen0 12y ago
  Check your antivirus.

63 points by frankacter 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure this has been in Chrome Beta for at least 2 or 3 months - it was hidden in chrome://flags

rossy 12y ago
This is true. I've been using it for a while, but it's great to see it switched on by default. Hopefully more designers will be able to use web fonts without having to worry about how it looks in Chrome/Windows (probably the most popular browser/operating system combination.)
Semaphor 12y ago
Yep, and I still get errors (letters completely disappearing every few days) with it turned on.

hayksaakian 12y ago

More interestingly for me, the web crypto api has been enabled by default.

DCKing 12y ago
It's nice for speed and the fact that you don't need to use a library any more, bit isn't more secure than JS Crypto was before.
- acdha 12y ago
  > It's nice for speed and the fact that you don't need to use a library any more, bit isn't more secure than JS Crypto was before. It's a significant improvement in one area: the key storage API. If you use JavaScript crypto, your keys can be read by an attacker who can compromise that code in some way. WebCrypto can't stop that attacker from signing, encrypting or decrypting a message which the attacker has access to but it does prevent the key leaking out, which is often a far more catastrophic event.

rossy 12y ago

This is great. Finally web fonts and icon fonts don't look terrible on Windows/Chrome. I'm using Chrome Canary to test, and you can really see the difference on Google Fonts and the Font Awesome homepage. GDI with ClearType only does anti-aliasing in the x-direction, so the tops of letters like G and Q look pretty blocky in Chrome stable. With DirectWrite they look perfect.

signal11 12y ago
I've been using DirectWrite on Canary as well, and its a huge improvement. Some may even like Chrome's DirectWrite implementation over IE11's, which tends to produce really thick letters for some reason. Here's the same text rendered in IE11, Firefox and Chrome (on Windows 7) -- http://i.imgur.com/pOUJlHE.png http://i.imgur.com/pOUJlHE.png
- swah 12y ago
  And Firefox rendering here seems kinda green, right?
- rikkus 12y ago
  I can think of two possibilities: 1. IE is honouring the ClearType tuning settings. 2. The default gammas are different.
- spyder 12y ago
  It looks like IE is using only greyscale anti-aliasing and not sub-pixel anti-aliasing like the others.
swah 12y ago
To me, HN looks better on the old one... why is this? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19746944/canary.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19746944/canary.png

pedrow 12y ago

I was surprised to see that DirectWrite was introduced to Firefox version 4 back in 2010 [0] - though the release notes don't seem to mention it explicitly [1] [0]:http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1775755 http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1775755 [1]:http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/4.0/releasenotes/ http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_r...

lcnmrn 12y ago

Chrome 38 release for Mac on dev channel is now 64-bit.

politician 12y ago

The support for the dialog element is great, but is it a bug that the scrolling example scrolls the entire page (and moves the dialog offscreen) when the inner scroll bar hits the bottom of the div? Or is that just a limitation of the polyfill?

anon4 12y ago
That's how scrolling inner elements works in all browsers.
- politician 12y ago
  It sort of defeats the purpose of a centered modal dialog...

AjithAntony 12y ago

FWIW, This looks terrible for my jenkins logs: font-family: monospace; http://i.imgur.com/da3TbE8.png http://i.imgur.com/da3TbE8.png

kuschku 12y ago
That's because the font you're using is set to render without antialiasing – the old system just rendered everything larger and then scaled down (supersampling), while the new system actually uses real antialiasing and only when the flag is set.
ZeroGravitas 12y ago
I thought they switched the default monospace font to Consolas at the same time? quote: "The default monospace font on Windows is now Consolas instead of Courier New." Ah, your screenshot is v36, not v37.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

Is it me, or is the text using DirectWrite (in 37) much worse than the text using the manual renderer (in 36)? The harshness of the renderer is one reason I prefer Chrome over IE.

ivanche 12y ago
Oh no, it's not you. I say that without DirectWrite font looks nice and smooth. With DirectWrite it's broken, it looks like some Win 3.11 font without anti aliasing. Just look at letter w - you can see pixels forming diagonal lines. And bottom row with grey letters is almost unreadable. Edit: I was referring to screenshot shown in article, not to DirectWrite in general.
- anon4 12y ago
  I think you can disable subpixel antialiasing and tweak sharpness for DirectWrite like you could for (Un)ClearType.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    I can't find the control panel item for that.
    - AjithAntony 12y ago
      Performance options ("Adjust the appeance and performance of Windows")->Smooth edges of screen fonts Or is it the "Adjust ClearType text"
      - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        DirectWrite isn't using ClearType, so no effect.
- kuschku 12y ago
  If you look at the screenshot at 1:1 resolution http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4mueYYHRq8I/U8g3U-bk26I/AAAAAAAAAUM/4b50Cr2bgIA/s1600/directwrite-comparison.png http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4mueYYHRq8I/U8g3U-bk26I/AAAAAAAAAU... you can clearly see that the old renderer is blurry and hard to read, while the new one is crisp and looks much better.

rnnr 12y ago

The really great thing is that this ends the GDI exhaustion problem. Chrome in Windows could easily kneel systems of users who opened many tabs.

nanexcool 12y ago

Lately I've found myself using Firefox more and more. The last couple of weeks Chrome and Canary have been hanging a lot, especially when I want to download a file. Chrome will slow to a crawl, tabs will stop rendering and when I try to close it thinks it's still downloading something. As someone who's been using Chrome since the first public release I wish it were a bit more stable (for me at least).

aen0 12y ago
Check your antivirus.