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
    2013-04-21T05:19:22+00:00

    Only thing i have tried out is to install chrome frame plugin for IE10.

    Which do help the font rendering correctly on most sites, but not all.

    http://www.google.com/chromeframe?quickenable=true

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-04-21T06:19:07+00:00

    Only thing i have tried out is to install chrome frame plugin for IE10.

    Which do help the font rendering correctly on most sites, but not all.

    http://www.google.com/chromeframe?quickenable=true

    That's a good suggestion for now.  You can force Chrome Frame to render pages even if the pages don't make use of CF through meta tags.

    You'll need to either preface urls with cf:  (like cf:http://foo.com/)  or make a change in the registry (not sure if Chrome Frame has a UI for the setting now).

    http://www.askvg.com/force-microsoft-internet-explorer-to-always-use-google-chrome-frame-to-open-urls/

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-04-22T14:31:00+00:00

    Interesting oddity:

    1. Open IE's Developer Tools from the menu or by pressing F12.
    2. Press CTRL-B or select the mouse pointer icon to select an element in the page.
    3. Notice that the font rendering corrects itself.
    4. Close Developer Tools.
    5. Notice that the font rendering reverts to ugly again.

    This is interesting! Fonts do temporarily appear better when following your instructions! I'm still not sure if they appear as sharp as they do on Chrome or Firefox, but still better. I agree you 're on to something.

    I don't know how can we point this any more to Microsoft. Let's hope they will pay attention and release an update - possibly including it within the Windows 8.1 or "blue" update rumored for this summer.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-04-23T02:01:25+00:00

    This is interesting! Fonts do temporarily appear better when following your instructions! I'm still not sure if they appear as sharp as they do on Chrome or Firefox, but still better. I agree you 're on to something.

    I don't know how can we point this any more to Microsoft. Let's hope they will pay attention and release an update - possibly including it within the Windows 8.1 or "blue" update rumored for this summer.

     

    I have found some things that at least help with this problem until MS (maybe) decides to fix it.  The first (and most helpful) thing is to make sure that you have all common "web fonts" installed. Windows includes most of them by default, but there are some Mac fonts that are used commonly around the web.  Fonts I have found to be helpful are:

    1. Helvetica (the most common Mac and Adobe core font)
    2. Lucida Grande (the Mac UI font)
    3. Helvetica Neue (the default iOS font)
    4. Roboto (Google's newer Android font)
    5. Droid (Google's original Android font)

    With these installed, Facebook shows HUGE improvement (it uses Lucida Grande) and Yahoo looks better (it uses Helvetica). I'm sure there are other major sites I will notice over time. 

    Finding fonts online is sometimes in a "gray area" depending on your local laws, so I will leave the searching up to you.  The following website lists most of the common "web fonts" but it excludes the mobile device ones I listed above:

    http://www.seoconsultants.com/fonts/web/

    If you have all of these plus Helvetica Neue, Roboto, and Droid you should be in pretty good shape.  Once you have found and downloaded your fonts, follow these instructions to install them:

    http://www.groovypost.com/howto/install-fonts-microsoft-windows-8/

    Hopefully this at least helps a little bit. At least Facebook is looking A LOT better for me.

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-04-23T09:48:09+00:00

    Just to reiterate what was already stated above, this is not just an IE problem. Seems like a lot of replies are focusing on IE. This a Windows 8 problem for PC's.

    Windows 8 uses the same font rendering that IE10 uses which is why everything looks bad. IE10 still looks awful on windows 7 compared to IE9.

    Here's a IE9/10 comparison on windows 7: (IE10 is the one with the black border)

    http://i.imgur.com/3ztWIhZ.gif

    Chrome used to have nice font rendering but now it too looks like IE10. Firefox seems fine still.

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