Anti-aliased fonts

Are they possible?

[ffoeg]

We all know that anti-aliased fonts are used already. Just a quick use of photoshop or any other image-editing program will show you that. But the only problem remains is that these anti-aliased fonts can only be used in images.

What if you wanted to use an anti-aliased font in HTML? Without using an image, that is. Is this possible? Do you get any fonts that are aliased?

I remember reading somewhere that Opera or Safari anti-alias the fonts displayed in the browser. As cool as that is, it would be nice if that would only happen whenever you specified it to happen.

[encyclo]

Font anti-aliasing is dependent on the underlying operating system rather than something you can control via markup. For example, Windows XP is the first Windows OS with font anti-aliasing (called "ClearType") and it is not enabled by default.

Mac OSX and most Linux distributions have anti-aliasing enabled by default and have done for several years, so users of those OSs already see your site text with anti-aliased fonts.

[ffoeg]

You say that Windows XP has anti-aliasing, but its turned off?

How would you turn it on then?

[encyclo]

Go to:

[microsoft.com...]

Using Internet Explorer - it is a web interface which will enable anti-aliasing and let you tweak the settings. :)

More information about ClearType here:

[microsoft.com...]

Why MS didn't enable it by default is a mystery to me, it vastly improves screen rendering in almost all circumstances.

[Don_Hoagie]

Nice info encyclo... i'm a Mac guy so I didn't know XP had that capability... all I ever get to see is beautifully crafted fonts at any size.

@ffoeg: Luckily, CSS has brought about some nifty trends in making fonts pretty... google for "sifr" or "pcdtr", and you'll start to find techniques for dynamically replacing your text with image (or image-like) effects, without having to actually create the images yourself. Not only can you get yourself a nice anti-alias going, but these techniques also allow you to use any font you might have on your computer. I think you'll enjoy it.