On 1 June 2011 22:33, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoe...@gmx.net> wrote: > * Hardie, Chris wrote: > >I have noticed that the quality of the rendering of many of these fonts > >is rather poor on my desktop browser. Different browsers render the font > >differently. We use a particular font family in our print product which > >looks crisp, and would like to use it on our web product for continuity, > >but it ends up looking ragged and weedy. >
Hi Chris, Björn's right about ClearType variations [1], but I suspect you are dismayed at your de facto brand font looking great on print and awful on screen. One major problem is that the vast majority of commercial fonts have not been digitized with to-the-pixel and sub-pixel rendering in mind — 'hinting' a digital font is a specification for governing how the letter forms compress when scaled down to different sizes: It's a huge undertaking and is rarely thrown into the deal. Another problem is that fonts render differently in different text rendering engines. As Björn pointed out, Microsoft systems rely on implementations of ClearType [2] which uses hints of red, green, and blue to create the impression of sub-pixel details (incidentally, the optical illusion can fail — at certain sizes, some fonts can appear with a distinctly visible garish multicolour halo) — while Mac uses full-pixel grey-scale hinting that relies on shades of the font's colour to produce the effect. One of my long-standing personal gripes is Mac-using designers not testing on PCs: Lucida Grande happens to look OK with grey-scale hinting, but looks absolutely awful at anything below 18px with ClearType or unhinted rendering on Windows [3]. The sad fact is that while the world and it's dog has gotten incredibly excited about the possibilities of cross-platform standards-compliant font-embedding, the number of fonts that are visually appealing and readable at small sizes on 96 or 120 pixel-per-inch displays with popular text-rendering methods is small: many people are still wary of using fonts other than Verdana. But this is changing: as the major foundries realise there is money to be made, web-optimised versions of established fonts are cropping up, and new fonts are being developed with the modern state of affairs comprehensively in mind. Futura PT and Myriad Web are pertinent examples of fonts with an established history of use for print that have recently been released as screen-use-focussed versions. [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms749295.aspx [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType [3] http://www.combustingboy.com/2008/05/22/attn-webmasters-stop-using-helvetica-and-lucida-grande/ Regards, Barney Carroll barney.carr...@gmail.com 07594 506 381 ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
