I have an – character that becomes invisible when the text is rendered at a smaller font size (the applicable font-size rule is 14px, at which it is invisible; if I zoom in one level in Firefox, it becomes visible.) I have only seen this behavior on Firefox on Windows. With Firefox on Linux, I see the character at all sizes. I believe that what happens is that at smaller sizes, the dash is allowed to render as a line of zero width. So the question is, how can I remedy this? Here's what I can think of -
Try a different dash character and hope for the best
wrap the dash in a span and force it to be bigger - seems clunky
maybe my font definition is broken - this is embedded Open Sans
any other approach I'm overlooking?
Don't use any of the legacy 90's Microsoft core fonts in Windows (Arial, Verdana, etc). They have very aggressive hints intended to prevent "fat" or "blurry" stems at all costs, that result in some of those stems disappearing at small sizes. Perpetuating the pixelated look Windows users were accustomed to was the only thing Microsoft cared about at the time (there are built-in workarounds in the Microsoft rendering stack to hide the bugs of those fonts, but they don't exist in third-party apps).
Have you tried a different font-family to see if it's showing the same problem?
This is a problem of fonts, not browser support. Try to use another font like "Times New Roman" to verify.
In the case of the small icons, the most reliable solution is to use the CSS #font-face rule to ask the browser to download a particular font. Then you'll know for sure that the user has an appropriate font installed. There are even some fonts designed specifically for this use, with extra icons built in: "Font Awesome" is a well-known example.
Please look here for more information: Does every browser support all unicode?
Related
See images:
Firefox on Mac:
Firefox on Chrome:
On chrome you can see that the same font using the same styling takes more room. What can I do so that all browsers will render the font the same way rather than adding more width to it?
I am using a font with #font-face property.
Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do about the way each browser renders your chosen typeface. Check out this article, it explains how different browsers and operating systems render different type face files:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-font-rendering/
In the meantime, you can do two things.
1.) There are many fonts that can be used that are effected by this rendering difference much less. Experiment with different fonts that hold the same esthetic value of the font that you are using, and try to find one that not only fits your typographic needs but also have a less distinctive difference between their individual renderings across different platforms.
2.) Create a script to sense the user's browser/OS and use that script to adjust your font-weight accordingly.
Best of luck.
You forgot to mention which of the two cases is the correct font rendering.
A few ideas that come to mind:
Since you mentioned using font-weight:600 I would try to replace it with normal/bold (depending which result you want) and check if it makes any difference. If the font file does not support a weight for 600 the browser will go on interpreting it by itself - sometimes it takes bold sometimes normal.
If the problematic browser is Chrome you can also try playing with font-smoothing - sometimes it helps improving the font rendering:
-webkit-font-smoothing: none || antialiased || subpixel-antialiased
Also I'm not sure how you are implementing the #font-face - if you wrote it yourself I suggest generating your #font-face rule trough some service like Fontsquirell since it will generate a crossbrowser compatible code which often eliminates a few problems.
For more help you will need to expand your question with a bit more data - add the #font-face code, font name and specify which is the correct font rendering. Poor questions get poor answers.
For some reason, the spaces between words on a font that I am using disappeared. See:
http://www.fantasynews.com/
I'm using Twitter Bootstrap slightly modified to use Google Web fonts. The font in question is Oswald served up by Google web fonts:
http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Oswald
And the spacing appears normal for me there.
I'm no CSS guru, but I have touched nothing in my code that should alter the way spaces are displayed. I don't know of anything that should target spaces in particular. I feel like this is some dumb mistake that I'm overlooking but I'm clueless. If I view the source, the spaces are clearly there as well as the spaces clearly being there when I inspect the element, in case some bit of javascript was playing a trick.
I am using the latest version of Chrome, although this also appears in Firefox.
I should say that the spacing problem appears specifically for the title in the boxes under latest player news
I forced it by adding word-spacing: 0.25em to my CSS, but I'm not yet 100% sure that fixed it in every browser. It's unfortunate that Google doesn't have an obvious way to link to a particular version of a font so you could be confident it won't change from under you.
Removing font-weight: normal; fixes the spacing (there are 2 instances being applied to it, Inspect Element and you will see them)
EDIT: This is a bad font, you should choose another one! It looks fine bold, but the normal version is awful.
Same problem here, i applied another font to the online website and pray for a solution :(
It may be a wrong encoded file on google's servers. Nobody's safe from minor issue like these, even the guy who encode typos in the webfont service.
I usually use Firefox(newest) for Ubuntu 12.10. Everything looks fine there. In Chrome however, your fonts are most definitely squished. I personally would choose a different font that renders more consistently. If you want to learn more check out Mozilla's MDC Kerning page to get started.
The main way that I use kerning is with the letter-spacing property.
h2 {
letter-spacing: -0.1em;
}
To say that this addresses "kerning" would be false. This actually affects "tracking". The only difference between the two is that kerning is the relationship between two character and tracking relates to a block of text.
I'm currently developing a site for my University's library, and a very strange issue came up. The font on the website, whether the live version or the one on my machine (not the server) is always smaller than it should be. This is only the case on two computers--my own, and my supervisor. It happens in all browsers. I'm pretty sure it's happening on both of ours because we've handled code, but I can't think of any CSS rules that would be affecting it. To make it worse, it's affecting two different CSSs--the old site (which I have not touched) and the new site which is intended to be rolled out tomorrow. I've tried fixing the way the computer displays fonts, the way browsers display fonts, changed the resolution, and tried zooming in. None of those methods worked. Also, other computers with the same resolution and monitors look at it just fine. No other websites that I visit have this issue. I'm stumped. Any ideas?
The site is here: http://library.uis.edu
Comparisons of the text can be seen here: http://imgur.com/a/Tb7Mv
I think this might be a font issue, rather then a font size issue. Myriad pro is not considered a websave font. As your machine and probabaly the one of your supervisor have probabaly Adobe installed, wich comes with Myriad, you are seeing the site in Myriad, while the other machines are seeing the site in Verdana. (not entirely sure though)
It looks like you are calling Myriad Pro as the first font. I have that font installed on my system, but you're calling the font size to be 75%, which on a font like Myriad Pro, will shrink it down considerably. If I clear the font-size, and font-family to just Verdana, it renders okay, but some of your elements such as the tabbed nav, would need to be addressed.
I'd stay away from fonts like that unless you are using #font-face and a web generated font pack. By choosing Myriad Pro as your font, you will only render that font on computers that also have the font. Consider using something like Google Web Fonts: http://www.google.com/webfonts/
Having fonts at the body level is fine, and cross fonts (headings versus paragraph) should be handled at a global level for those elements (not the body). Assume the body will take the bulk of the text in the body. You can define a standard font size such as 1.0em; at the body level if you wanted, and then define em sizes for other elements such as h1, h2 tags, and p tags if you don't want to use 1.0em from the body.
I've been wondering myself why on windows my font looks smaller, and much crappier than on OSX.
Screenshot Mac VS Windows : http://screencast.com/t/UUxqLRhM
Is that because i used "em" on some rules instead of "px" ?
Thanks.
(This is from a comment, but I'll post as an answer.)
This is nothing on your end, and the culprit is different font rendering engines. Mac OS X tries to render fonts exactly as they were designed, whereas Windows tries to alter them slightly to make them more readable. The problem is, with certain fonts and sizes, it actually makes them look worse. (This article is a good read on the subject.)
If you make the font bigger, it will probably make it look better on Windows. I would venture to say that if you removed the bold font-weight, it would also look cleaner. You could also try a different font.
Overall though, all you can do is just play with different settings and see what looks good and what doesn't; the actual rendering is out of your control.
Different browsers do have different standard font-sizes. Maybo other font-types and the different way to show fonts of the OS.
100% same look is... not possible
The way MAC and PC handle fonts is different, but that is not what is happening here. You have set a font that is not web-safe, "MyHelveticaBold", and the font windows is using is clearly not the same as the one on your Mac. If you don't want to use a web-safe font then you should use open source web fonts that you can serve to the user upon visiting.
There are some CSS properties that can adjust how a font is rendered such as -webkit-font-smoothing. Read more here: http://blog.typekit.com/2011/01/26/css-properties-that-affect-type-rendering/
I'm no designer, I can't understand it, I love code and code has been my life.
For a non designer, typography is a huge 7 head serpent, and I would like to know, if there is something I can do to make my typography on the web better.
This is what I can do:
witch is nothing more than Blueprint CSS and
h1 {
font-size: 2em;
}
But I'm hating the Aliasing on the Arial font, below it's a portion of the image above at 300% zooming
From a developer side, what can I do to make my web pages look better?
I have tried font-smooth: always; but without any luck.
Font rendering varies from browser to browser and OS to OS. You can adjust the letter spacing and sizes and things like that, but there's nothing you can do, in CSS or JS code, to change how the edges are rendered or how jaggy they are.
maybe change another font? http://www.google.com/webfonts
The rendering of the font depends on how the web browser is implemented. Either the browser handles the rendering with its own implementation, or the browser uses the operating system's native text rendering.
You'll notice that the text is rendered differently on Mac OS X, Ubuntu (Linux) as well as on Windows.
Here is a collection of links about font rendering on different OS's, if you wish to know more about it:
Windows uses something they call ClearType.
Font rasterization
Comparison between different OSs
Jeff Atwood has written about this as well, here too.
You should check out these resources:
http://2011.sf.wordcamp.org/session/web-fonts-for-developers/
http://speakerdeck.com/u/maratz/p/typography-for-developers
http://aceinfowayindia.com/blog/2010/02/10-useful-typography-tools-for-designers/