How to smooth the edges of fonts in HTML?

How can I make the font edges smooth without relying on the user...

[jmh1970]

Hi there all,

In Windows there is a display setting to "smooth edges of screen fonts", which makes standard HTML text headings look great. My issue is that when peeps don't have this function turned on the larger point headings look jaggy.

Is there any way that anyone knows of to force this smoothing without making the headings graphics?

Cheers,
Ben.

[tedster]

Not as far as I know -- it's all up to the user's computer. Nothing you can do on the HTML page will change the end user's setup.

Font smoothing is not as simple as it might seem. Any program that generates this effect -- which essentially an optical illuson -- must know both the exact color of the text and the exact color of the background. Only then can the various transitional colors be calculated to be placed in various posiitons around the curves in the letter forms.

As you can see from that description, the entire effect is created locally.

[jmh1970]

Bugger. Oh well, thanks Ted :)

[IanKelley]

For what it's worth... Both IE 6 and Windows XP anti-alias fonts automatically. The user would have to go out of their way to have it turned off for it not to happen.

[ricfink]

Are you referring to the Cleartype option that's available in Windows for flat panel displays?

Or just the standard "font smoothing" that's been around for years?

[jmh1970]

...basically any way to make the fonts look nicer, not jagged, without using images...

Cheers,
Ben

[Farix]

AFAIK, this is something that has to be done on the users end. There is nothing you can do to automatically change the setting -- and frankly, this should be something you should be changing even if you can. The only alternatives are a link, like "Why does the text look jagged?", to a short tutorial about how to turn on "Smooth edges for screen fonts" or ignore it as a problem.