I don't like Microsoft's font rendering.
I've created a site for a client and the last unticked box on my debugging list is the biggest. (it's not 'live' yet btw so please ignore any other bugs - http://baked-beans.tv/bb)
I'm using font-family to import a non standard web font. It renders fine on Mac, but it looks like sick old man on its last legs on PC.
The biggest irony is that the font is actually ok to read in internet explorer 8. This is the first time I've EVER seen IE beat other browsers in anything. But anyway, the font doesn't look good in FF, Chrome, or Opera, on a PC.
So my solution is to serve different fonts to PC users. There are a lot of css hacks for different browsers, but not for different OS. the php OS detections are really really complex. I'm just looking for something simple like if(PC) do this; else do that;
Any advice would be immensely helpful
Just one other thing... Just wondering if there is a way I could prevent Windows from anti-aliasing type on the Internet? The reason why it looks so bad is because it's trying to anti-alias it, maybe if it left the poor font alone it wouldn't look so bad.
The CSS Browser Selector can target different OS's. :)
No, you can't "kill" anti-aliasing.
But, you could use http://www.stoimen.com/blog/2009/07/16/jquery-browser-and-os-detection-plugin/ for detection.
From what I saw only the headlines are crap so you could as well use http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/ for those and make your life easier.
My favorite article on this topic is here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/typekit/topics/typekit_fonts_rendering_horribly_on_windows_based_systems
There is a lot of good discussion including TypeKit developers on the reasoning behind that, and it has a link to an interesting article about using JavaScript to detect whether font smoothing is in use (you definitely can't do it with CSS alone).
http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2009/11/29/how-to-detect-font-smoothing-using-javascript/
Good luck.
Related
I'm working with some really great designers. In translating their design, they are asking me why sometimes we don't render non-system fonts exactly as depicted in their designs. A very recent example can be shown in the image attached to this question (ignore red annotations):
I'm using fonts from fonts.com via a javascript include, which allows me to utilize new font-family in my css. I want to draw your attention to two things:
a) On the left, notice the description text "In an effort to ..." is much bolder than "Lorem ipsum ...". Font is "Droid Serif W01 Italic".
b) On the right, notice "MEET ONE" is much bolder than "COMMERZBANK". The font family is "UniversLTW01-57Condense 723821".
I made sure font-weight:normal. And yet, things still look bold on some computers...and it seems to vary depending on which OS and browser you are on. It seems like the only way I can modify the weight of these fonts in an aesthetically pleasing way is by choosing another variation of the font family like the oblique or condensed version (if they exist). But often times, I still can't get the weight to render properly on all the different OS and browser combinations.
How do you guys address these issues? Are there techniques I can use to make the fonts render exactly as depicted in designs regardless of the viewers operating system and browser?
From my experience I always find that font-rendering on the web is nowhere near as good as it is in Photoshop or other design tools. This usually leads to problems like this.
In Photoshop, a designer can use "extra" settings like: "Sharp", "Crisp", "Smooth" and "Strong". All of these variants make the font rendering much nicer. These attributes are not available to us as developers though.
It all comes down to the anti-aliasing of the fonts which all browsers implement in different ways. It is impossible to get fonts to render in the same way across all browsers. This is a reason to use only fonts which are specifically created for the web since they are designed to have good anti-aliasing on screens in the most common sizes.
There are however, some tricks you can try. I have little to no experience with them but hopefully my background answer and these links will give you inspiration in where to find more information about this complex issue.
To me, the left image looks like a classic anti-alias problem. The right picture, I'm not so sure. It almost looks like another font and the size should be big enough for it to render properly.
Check these links out if you wish to read more, hopefully they can be helpful:
Does CSS support text anti-aliasing such as "crisp, sharp etc" yet?
How to do font antialiasing in web page?
Webfont Smoothing and Antialiasing in Firefox and Opera
http://blog.typekit.com/2010/10/21/type-rendering-web-browsers/
"The #font-face CSS at-rule allows authors to specify online fonts to display text on their web pages. By allowing authors to provide their own fonts, #font-face eliminates the need to depend on the limited number of fonts users have installed on their computers. The #font-face at-rule may be used not only at the top level of a CSS, but also inside any CSS conditional-group at-rule." -MDN
#font-face {
[font-family: <family-name>;]?
[src: [ <uri> [format(<string>#)]? | <font-face-name> ]#;]?
[unicode-range: <urange>#;]?
[font-variant: <font-variant>;]?
[font-feature-settings: normal|<feature-tag-value>#;]?
[font-stretch: <font-stretch>;]?
[font-weight: <weight>];
[font-style: <style>];
}
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/#font-face
Its not a perfect solution, but it may get you closer to where you want to be.
We face the same problems you raised and I won't duplicate the good information that's already been covered here. Anti aliasing and CSS are just a part of the picture. So I wanted to touch upon how the typeface foundries and licensing can figure into things.
On the PC side, the reality of webfont services like fonts.com and Typekit usually means results that are noticebly worse. That's regardless of browser.
When you're using a webfonts service you're at the mercy of how that service handles font embedding.
However, if you're using a font that's optimized for web usage and it's available for purchase where you can directly control the embedding of the font files yourself, this article has an good tip to improve rendering on Chrome for Windows.
Examples of foundries that sell (or Google Webfonts at no-cost) fonts for direct embedding are FontSpring, MyFonts, Commercial Type, etc.
Hoefler Type just debuted their own font service that renders beautifully on the PC. It's similar to fonts.com and Typekit in the sense you don't host or embed fonts directly. They've went to an unprecedented level to address all the common issues with webfonts. They adjusted the scale of their font weights and customized their deployment for individual browsers. The limitation is, like many other foundries, as of now you can only buy their typefaces.
Because of these complications we'll usually consider the options for web usage of individual typefaces early on in a project.
From personal experience and high-level research I found that you can come close to achieving a pleasant result using either sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) or pure javascript alternatives like Typeface (http://typeface.neocracy.org:81/) and Cufon (http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/). I have been using Cufon for a while and I find it the easiest and most effective way to get close to the results you are looking for at the moment. Hope that helps if you still havent come across those solutions yet.
This might be a stupid question, but I have a scenario where I fixed someone's webpage, and it is looking good on all major web browsers on my Windows machine. However, when I uploaded the website to Adobe BrowserLab, and when I looked at Safari and Firefox on a OS X, the footer is a bit off from Safari and FireFox on a Windows operating system.
My questions are:
Is there a way to target only Safari and Firefox on OS X and not touching those on a Windows? I mean, is there a way to create a stylesheet only for OS X?
Or are there any conditional comments (for example, ) that targets Mac OS X? If not, are there any other ways?
Or, am I F out of luck?
Thank you people!
Best practice: Try to fix it without doing user agent detection. Analyze the problem, you could try to ask specific advice on your problem here. Especially Gecko and WebKit rendering engines behave almost exactly the same on each platform, bugs should be easy to squash.
If you really can't fix it, you can do JS browser detection, and include a CSS dynamically.
detect: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html
insert css: http://www.hunlock.com/blogs/Howto_Dynamically_Insert_Javascript_And_CSS
This is a bad practice however: whenever you make changes, you need to change each css for each browser.
You can target browsers specifically normally firefox chrome etc work roughly the same and ie may work slightly differently.
A way to target browsers is described here
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/browser-specific_css_hacks/
http://reference.sitepoint.com/css/conditionalcomments
Yes, but this is rarely the right approach. I'd imagine that it's a font issue - perhaps you are using a font that is only on Windows, or one where the OSX version is slightly different.
If you did want to do this, you could either use a server side language (for instance, PHP) to check the user agent, then include an extra style sheet, or use JS to add the styles using the same technique.
When researching this, any info on CSS hacks should be avoided at all costs.
This is a good way to do this: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html as it avoids hacks, and produces an easy to use object containing the relevant information.
I would only use this technique in dire situations - in all the sites I've ever made, I've never had to do this, other than for old IE and iOS.
You can use JavaScript to target specific browsers but also operating systems for the browser.
http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/navigator.shtml
I have developed a site on my MAC. The footer looks good in IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome but when I look on to a PC it appears that the font is rendering differently and pushing information into the social icons I have placed.
I am using Verdana.
The site is: foodworkscolorado.org/donate
Ideas?
Fonts are going to render differently on any system you test it on. That is life on the web... as it should be. Websites aren't supposed to look identical... they are supposed to display in a variety of formats and ways.
Since you are using a web-safe font, I suspect the issue has to do with the difference between Microsoft's "ClearType" rendering and the anti-aliasing method on a Mac.
The best you can do is test using a service such as http://www.browsershots.org and be aware of the differences.
You may be tempted to use images for your text... don't do this.
Firefox's Latest version
IE7
IE6
IE 8
Which browser we should use to see HTML css rendering for always and why?
Edit:
My question is not on which browsers should i test site before go live. i will try to test on all possible.
My question is which browser should i choose during layout development process and why?
because while development it's not possible to see every step in all browser it will waste time. after making a layout we can test in all but during development one browser would be better.
Uhh... every one of them?
I personally develop with Firefox 3.6 for convenience and the availability of Firebug, header sniffers and other tools. I try to test in all the browsers you mention before anything goes out for anybody to see (a client for example). But I don't think there is a real "best" choice here because in the end, you will need to test for every browser you need to support anyway.
Use the most up-to-date css compliant browser with a good debugging tool e.g. Firefox 3.6 and the Firebug plug-in.
Then check in the other browsers you want to support for your users and backwards correct any errors.
Do not attempt to make the site look EXACTLY the same in all browsers, you will be wasting your time.
As long as the effect is similar in older/other browsers (for example you could use border-radius for Firefox/WebKit browsers and this will degrade nicely for browsers that don't support border-radius) and the site is usable and fulfills it's purpose, then your ok
DONT WASTE TONS OF TIME ON IE6. Use a conditional commented stylesheet and just get it usable...
In the head of the document
<!--[if IE 6]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="IE6.css"/>
<![endif]-->
It all depends on your target user group.
If you're working for customer that uses IE6, you will have to test for it. Sad, I know.
If you're designing a site for general public, then test for current versions of major browsers. Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari and Chrome(?).
Also: develop according to standards then fix whatever does not work in one browser or another. Not that you develop for IE, then trying to fix everything that suddenly falls apart on all other browsers.
During developing NOT testing I use this combo :
firefox
firebug extension
webdeveloper extension
live http headers extension
Give it a try, you won't regret it, you can make changes to your css IN BROWSER and then change your code (No more refresh needed for that one annoying one pixel offset), check to see where is the fault interface or code logic and plenty more.(Page Speed & YSlow to analize your page speed etc.)
I whole-heartedly agree with Pekka.
I develop everything within Firefox and use the excellent addons available during development (Firebug / Web Developer Toolbar / etc).
A suggestion would be to test often in other browsers as well....I would recommend every time you go to take a little break check it out in the other browsers to see if there are any issues, and then make a note to fix them and allow your website to be rendered properly in all browsers.
You really don't want to exclude any user based on his/her browser preference, so make sure
it works across the board!
edit
Also a good point from one of the other users...IE6 is in the process of being phased out, however if you are looking to have any users in a corporate environment you don't want to exclude testing this either!
You need to test your css in all the major browsers, that includes IE (6, 7 and 8), Firefox, Chrome and even Safari and Opera.
You can probably get away with just using the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome etc. as they auto-update and so users are less likely to be using older version (though it's not unknown).
IE is a problem because so many users - particularly corporate users - are running older versions.
Choose one, it doesn't really matter which as long as it has good development tool support, to develop in and get the site looking good in that. Then test in the others. Which order you do this and how much effort you want to expend will depend totally on your target audience. From my experience Firefox with Firebug and even (dare I say it) IE8 with it's built in developer tools are good choices. The advantage here is that you'll cover the majority of users with these. However as the browser market is getting more fragmented you will need to test in others.
This is an interesting question, I'm going to assume that you have a process that means that first you develop your page and then you do cross browser testing to make sure it works everywhere - so the question then becomes which one is going to get you to the best starting point for getting to working "everywhere" (definition of which will depend somewhat on your target audience).
This used to be easy - according to my (then) staff Firefox had good standards support and the best tools - so get it right in firefox first then adapt to cope with everything else, now its a lot less clear as IE8 has a very decent set of dev tools (and is better behaved than its predecessors) and Chrome is now getting into the act - again with a good set of tools and extensions.
My gut feeling is probably Firefox, Chrome, IE8 in that order - but I'm not doing anywhere near enough CSS work to assert that that's right.
You develop in Firefox (you have firebug to adjust things), you test in safari/chrome & opera (all of them is ok with standards so you have low chances to have bugs in those) and you debug in IE. Because is impossible to have a fully functional in ALL browser from one try :D
I use my main browser (Chrome) for basic progress, and frequently check all other browsers for bugs and layout problems.
I think If we choose firefox and IE 6.0 both for website design, the site will be look almost same for all browsers, because rest of IE 6 & 7 all browsers' HTML rendering pattern is almost same. So If we make css from start considering firefox and IE 6.0, bugs would be in less numbers and In this way we can make all browser compatible website.
Please give me feedback
I do it in ie6, the most primitive browser which is still in use.
I think any thing that will work on ie6 will work on any browser.
I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the recent Safari update, but I'm beginning to notice this a lot. There is a drastic difference in the way each browser is rendering fonts.
for instance, I took screenshots of what I am seeing here on stackoverflow...
http://twitpic.com/q43eh
I have verified that this is a trend via my co-workers machines.
has anyone noticed this or have any thoughts on non-hack solutions?
Font rendering isn't specified anywhere in the standards and therefore may (and will) vary between browsers and platforms.
In particular, Safari on Windows renders fonts like OS X does which tends to look weird to Windows users as Windows has quite a different take on how to render fonts than OS X.
You can definitely notice this, especially if you use Expression Web SuperPreview. This is just a general problem of the web, just like folks can hit Ctrl-+ and make your text bigger. Try not to use many absolute coordinates in CSS and the layout engine will ensure it's still readable
I first noticed this in OSX in October 2010. It is especially noticeable with Helvetica Neue. I suspect that an OSX update broke font anti-aliasing in font sizes above 12 pixels. I've posted an Apple Support message here.