Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

This is still so much an issue, because the main task is to read on a copmputer. It's a way bigger problem than any start button (not a problem for me in w8) could be.

I have the daily comparison between OSX, Win8 and Ubuntu on the desktop. Win8 is sadly the worst when it comes to font rendering e. In many cases the win8 font without clear typ looks really fuzzy without any sub pixel rendering the difference to the other OS is quite shocking.  I don't want to wait 5 years until we have high dpi screens for our desktop to read without problems again.

I also seem to remember various reports (here too, possibly) about changing specific graphics drivers options (AMD/NVIDIA). They mostly didn't solve the ModernUI problem, but in same cases helped alleviate it.

No, the problems are not connected.

For the issue affecting Microsoft products, Microsoft has intentionally hard-coded the applications to not use color sub-pixel antialiasing when applying ClearType settings.

Your Pale Moon issue, which is a legitimate issue, is a separate issue, that you should pursue with the graphics drivers manufacturer.

Thanks for the detailed reply, Jacob. Could it be that both problems are connected somehow? In the Windows 8 modern apps issue you describe (and I have experienced that, too), isn't hardware acceleration a factor at all? Doesn't MS force hw.accel. on Win8/Office2013/ModernUI? Maybe they also managed to somehow break the way video card drivers communicate with Windows, causing all these problems. It's not a browser issue, Pale Moon creator is aware of it.

Hi George,

I looked at your screenshots, using magnifier, at 600% zoom level.

For your Pale Moon problem, ClearType color antialiasing has been applied to both renderings of the fonts. The problem is that the ClearType settings are different. It's possible that one uses RGB cleartype subpixel antialiasing, while another uses BGR subpixel antialiasing. If you've already gone through the ClearType Text Tuner in Windows, and restarted the browser, and still have the problem... then I suggest it is a graphics driver problem in not honoring your tuner settings. It could also be a browser problem. Consider taking your screenshots to the forums of your graphics driver manufacturer, and also the Pale Moon creators.

The issue we've been discussing, regarding Windows 8 Modern Apps, modern versions of IE, and Office 2013, is a different issue altogether. The issue here is that Microsoft has decided to hard-code into the applications to not use any color sub-pixel antialiasing at all. Instead they use only greyscale sub-pixel antialiasing. This makes the font rendering harder to read on most modern computer monitors, which are fully capable of color anti-aliasing, and whose users were "used to" color anti-aliasing and have now been forced away from it.

Hopefully you understand the difference between these 2 separate issues.

Regards,

Jacob

Just a reminder this does not affect Microsoft applications only. Using Pale Moon x64 (Firefox-based browser) with an AMD 5670 card on Win 8 x64. When "use hardware acceleration when available" is enabled in the browser, it's unusable in most sites, and the text is a mess. The first image is obviously the "hardware-accelerated" disaster. 1680x1050 monitor, 125% DPI (problem remains on 100%).

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/8444/7lj.png

http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6984/pbpg.png