Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

Anonymous
2013-02-24T00:17:00+00:00

Apparently there is a huge problem with **** font rendering in Windows 8. Text appears very blurry. Programs affected by the new rendering are: Internet Explorer 10, the modern interface (start screen), Office 2013 and other 3rd party applications that rely on this rendering technology. There is no way to fix this problem, unless Microsoft recognizes it.

I 've gathered links bellow that refer to the same problem to highlight its importance and display the number of users that are affected:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/windows-8-blurryfuzzy-text-and-icons-on-menu-not/ef8945ff-9920-47b2-b4ec-db1c5fbab7de

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/windows-8-fonts-in-metro-ui-and-ie-10-blurry/3c29c415-54fd-44c8-b290-1c01dd05beaf

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/font-are-blurry-in-internet-explorer-10-windows-8/95fba606-5f45-43fa-bd96-413f6d9d9ad6

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/after-upgrading-to-windows-8-pro-my-fonts-in/210e46c9-4d16-4de7-8b59-2a1b0a7c738a

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/internet-explorer-10-windows-8-font-rendering-blur/f3b33400-bb95-450c-9587-68adbf298a2f

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_cp-winapps/blurry-text-windows-8/576183c0-e5e2-4916-8283-0a193d633018

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-hardware/blurry-text-problem/d07ac513-de07-49d9-8718-7fbb6d07b634

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/windows-8-browsers-font-rendering-issue-blocky/86139808-9c3f-48d9-bfa8-61afebd5761c

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10_cp-windows_cp/windows-8-preview-release-blurry-font-rendering/668f454e-012f-498f-a086-b550a96d47e1

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/horrible-windows-8-font-rendering/cc263629-f4c8-4653-af36-435f4e6b7d38

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_other-desktop/will-windows-8-have-better-fonts-or-at-least/ad35ce7b-45a9-44b4-83d9-aae34df8dd97

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/fonts-are-suddenly-ugly-why/ba024dcc-c143-4ede-8f04-27930527c5be

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10_cp-windows_cp/installation-of-windows-8-cp-causes-blurred-fonts/75352b20-cb08-4312-b7f3-6c38bb5f5f0a

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-desktop/monitor-fonts-windows-8-fuzzy-and-no-longer-crisp/052e7a57-79a7-49c5-93dc-bffb01969cbd

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie9-windows_vista/some-fonts-are-fuzzy-and-thicker-in-ie9-in/47f1846f-7817-464b-8121-d1ca02dbb71d

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/blurry-text-in-windows-8/ed053d17-b525-4e09-bdbc-de91114d975c

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/windows-8-has-made-my-text-blurry/7e9977e0-335f-4e8b-b321-eb2d156f36c1

Microsoft MSDN/TECHNET

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winappsuidesign/thread/4ddc57e1-de74-4044-940e-76e35a3e76b9

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-ZA/w8itprogeneral/thread/034ef255-40d5-41d5-9c58-841868326832

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/br/w8itprogeneral/thread/831ee84b-95a1-437a-b051-b7d51e13ba0f

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/d9c1ce96-58aa-401f-a5f4-1c62660077ca

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/W8ITProPreRel/thread/409d4e85-1124-4e1c-9cc0-3b2acfd519dd

External forums:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1120890-internet-explorer-10-fonts-fuzzy-in-windows-8/

http://www.eightforums.com/browsers-mail/5432-blurry-text-ie10-desktop.html

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f56/blurry-website-fonts-in-ie10-675564.html

http://www.techplex.net/postst78315_Text-in-Internet-Explorer-10-and-Metro-UI-is-blurry.aspx

http://superuser.com/questions/506192/disable-cleartype-blurry-fonts-in-internet-explorer-10-on-windows-7

http://bugsort.com/computer-users/computer-unclear-type-in-internet-explorer-on-windows-8/?PHPSESSID=10368ff87086c902a678043f63e39762

and there are lots of more...

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-07-13T06:42:28+00:00

    Moving to Chrome is not enough. Because Microsoft uses this ugly font rendering everywhere. Modern apps, Office, etc. Even the Windows desktop. On Windows 10, the desktop rightclick popup menus look the same.

    High dpi displays are also has problems, because regular windows desktop applications cannot be upscaled properly.

    Yes, I also will stay with win7, there are some issues win newer windows versions, which I cannot tolerate.

    Desktop can be fixed: Control Panel > System Security > System > Advanced settings > Performance (Visual effects...) : click "Settings..." Uncheck "Smooth edges of screen fonts". Might need to sign out/sign in (sometimes double sign out/sign in - really) to get Windows Explorer and context menu without font smooth.

    I use font substitution to replace Segoe UI with Tahoma, to avoid Segoe which looks ugly without smoothing.

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes]

    "Segoe UI"="Tahoma"

    Might need to set all variations of "Segoe UI..." to get what you want/need.

    In my eyes HiDPI is just a waste of energy - but hey that is how progress works, isn't it ;-)

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-07-13T06:27:55+00:00

    Moving to Chrome is not enough. Because Microsoft uses this ugly font rendering everywhere. Modern apps, Office, etc. Even the Windows desktop. On Windows 10, the desktop rightclick popup menus look the same.

    High dpi displays are also has problems, because regular windows desktop applications cannot be upscaled properly.

    Yes, I also will stay with win7, there are some issues win newer windows versions, which I cannot tolerate.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-07-13T06:00:31+00:00

    I gave up months ago.  I moved to Chrome, where the text is super sharp, and never looked back.

    Same for me - but I would give IE and Edge an immediate retry if they added an option to turn off all font smoothing *and* let me set an override font per web site as many web sites chose to use a font which only works with font smoothing and looks horrible without. Arial or Tahoma work very well without smoothing. That is why I use Chrome with the extension "Font Changer" ;-)

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-07-12T22:23:21+00:00

    I gave up months ago.  I moved to Chrome, where the text is super sharp, and never looked back.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-07-12T20:05:25+00:00

    After reading this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType

    • I came to a conclusion that Microsoft won't fix it. Especially the last sentence - And in future scenarios, screens will have sufficiently high resolution that gray-scale anti-aliasing should suffice.

    So far, I think that gray-scale rendering is just faster (that's why they force it - so it can be super fast on a mobile phone), and on high resolution display (mobile phone, 4K monitor) you won't notice it. I can notice it on 23" full HD monitor, but my colleague says it looks all right to him.

    I reckon this might be a thing which will prevent people upgrading from windows xp/7 to Windows 10 as those systems look good on full HD monitor. Microsoft should really realize that ordinary cheap PC is not having ultra HD resolutions.

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