Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

Same problem here.

Portege z930, with S24B370 monitor.

Hey Microsoft - I don't want or need a tablet. I work on an external monitor. Fix the problem.

I did as you suggested, but the rendering is not better. Now Facebook is displayed with a different font, maybe because it loves Lucida the most... I don't mind but I don't see any improvement. The problem is just the rendering method, not the font shape.

It's true that this is a rendering problem and only MS can fix it. What I've noticed, however, is that certain fonts seem to render better with grayscale hinting than others. For example, Microsoft websites (MSN, Microsoft.com) use fonts that actually look decent in IE10. One of the WORST examples I've found is Yahoo Search, where everything (especially bold text) looks terrible.

 

If it is possible to do some "font tuning" and force IE10 to fall back to a default sans font and default serif font that renders better, you could at least mitigate the problem somewhat. I believe by default it falls back to Arial, which renders horribly. Firefox offers the option to change the default sans font and the default serif font in the preferences. If there is a similar option in IE10, I would be interested in trying it.

 

Keep in mind that this is essentially a "cheap hack" or workaround, not a true solution. It also doesn't fix the problem in Office 2013 or on Win8 in general. I'm just suggesting something to make life a little easier until MS (hopefully) gives us the option to enable/disable RGB hinting. This would allow it to be "off" on tablets by default, but desktop owners could turn it on to de-uglify things. It's the only REAL solution.

I like your thinking and you're right, some fonts have had much more effort poured into them to make them render nicely at different sizes on specific platforms. System fonts typically get a lot of hand-editing to add hinting, instead of relying on automatic hinting.  People will have mixed results though, since they won't know if the font has been optimized.

If you do find fonts that render decently, you could take advantage of user styles to force the use of your good fonts so that all websites look better.  You'll be altering the intended look of the page by overriding the font choice, but maybe that's ok for now.

Here's how to specify a user stylesheet in IE:

1. Open Internet Explorer and click on the Tools menu.
2. Go to Internet Options and click on Accessibility in the General tab.
3. Click the check box for "Format documents using my style sheet".
4. Browse to your stylesheet and choose it. Then click "OK" twice to get out of the Internet Options menu.
5. Close your browser and re-open it. Your styles will be applied to all pages you visit after that.

from: http://webdesign.about.com/od/css/ht/htcssuseriewin.htm

You'll need to know some basic CSS and unless you want to spend time creating specific styles for your favorite sites, you'll need to be ok with the same font for everything.  For example:

body, body * { font-family: Arial !important; }

What a boring Arial web you'll weave.  I guess you could spice it up by specifying different fonts for headings. :)  Anyhow, since you went down this road, I figure I'd drive off the cliff.

I did as you suggested, but the rendering is not better. Now Facebook is displayed with a different font, maybe because it loves Lucida the most... I don't mind but I don't see any improvement. The problem is just the rendering method, not the font shape.

It's true that this is a rendering problem and only MS can fix it. What I've noticed, however, is that certain fonts seem to render better with grayscale hinting than others. For example, Microsoft websites (MSN, Microsoft.com) use fonts that actually look decent in IE10. One of the WORST examples I've found is Yahoo Search, where everything (especially bold text) looks terrible.

If it is possible to do some "font tuning" and force IE10 to fall back to a default sans font and default serif font that renders better, you could at least mitigate the problem somewhat. I believe by default it falls back to Arial, which renders horribly. Firefox offers the option to change the default sans font and the default serif font in the preferences. If there is a similar option in IE10, I would be interested in trying it.

Keep in mind that this is essentially a "cheap hack" or workaround, not a true solution. It also doesn't fix the problem in Office 2013 or on Win8 in general. I'm just suggesting something to make life a little easier until MS (hopefully) gives us the option to enable/disable RGB hinting. This would allow it to be "off" on tablets by default, but desktop owners could turn it on to de-uglify things. It's the only REAL solution.