When did browsers start anti-aliasing bold fonts?

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When did browsers start anti-aliasing bold fonts?

Just noticed that bold fonts have a blurred/anti alised look in IE and FF

jomoweb

12:45 am on Nov 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Ok, I don't know if I have been living on a different planet, drunk, hungover, or all of the above.

But today, I just noticed that both IE and Firefox appear to be anti-aliasing bold fonts. They seem to have a blurred look as if the browsers are attempting to remove that jaggy/clunky look with bold fonts.

Has this been happening for a while? I just noticed it today...and I know my weekend hangover has worn off.

Note: here and there I am still seeing the clunky bold characters, but most of them are blurred. Hit me up if you need a screen-shot.

encyclo

1:10 am on Nov 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Anti-aliasing isn't handled by the browser but by the operating system: are you running Windows XP? If so, have you enabled ClearType [microsoft.com]?

jomoweb

7:46 am on Nov 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

encyclo,

I noticed this on windows 2000. On my home machine I noticed no anti-aliasing, so it was definitely my work machine. I don't know what clear type is. Is it possible I enabled this by accident? How do you enable/disable it.

mattur

10:31 am on Nov 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

In w2k go into display properties and on the effects tab tick "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts".

Hester

11:14 am on Nov 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Windows does this on very small or quite large web fonts. They introduced it with XP I think. That has two modes of font smoothing - the built-in one, and ClearType, which is designed for LCD screens, which smooths everything.

You can set a header in a font like Georgia and it will not be smoothed until it goes over a certain size, then it will be! Something to bear in mind when designing a page.

I think Windows 98 can do this too, but it's not switched on by default. I certainly noticed the change when moving from 98 to XP.

So it's nothing to do with the browser.

jomoweb

4:47 pm on Nov 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

I can confirm that this feature is available in Windows 2000 Pro as well. I toggled it today, and that is exactly what was doing it. I don't see how I triggered it by accident. Perhaps there is a short-cut key.

This is definitely an improvement, but the text still looks more blurry than crisp. I will definitely keep this in mind when designing. One thing I notice right away is that it makes small bold characters run together.