Meet Firefox 4.0.1

[dnast]

Yeah, I'm glad they didn't remove Panorama altogether. I've gotten quite used to quickly switching between tab groups with just a shortcut key.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

People having problems with DirectWrite, do you have ATI cards?

It seems Nvidia and ATI cards render the text differently, Nvidia cards have light sub-pixel colours while ATI cards have very strong colours, to the point where you get a very noticeable rainbow effect with a string of text like "llllllllllllllllllllllll"

Edit: And when you're taking screenshots of it, use PNG as the file format, JPEG destroys the colour info on purpose (The human eye can't see it very well, so no point trying hard to save it) unless you change settings in the encoder.

[Punio4]

I have problems with directwrite, and yes, I'm using an ATI card.

The colors are better in the latest nightly.

However, I don't see this as a D2D/DirectWrite/Microsoft/GPU problem, because of one fact, and that is that text looks great on IE9 which uses it aswell.

[alisalem]

I think sometimes IE9 uses ClearType instead of D2D, so you'd think it's rendering looks better.

[ViperAFK]

People having problems with DirectWrite, do you have ATI cards?

It seems Nvidia and ATI cards render the text differently, Nvidia cards have light sub-pixel colours while ATI cards have very strong colours, to the point where you get a very noticeable rainbow effect with a string of text like "llllllllllllllllllllllll"

Edit: And when you're taking screenshots of it, use PNG as the file format, JPEG destroys the colour info on purpose (The human eye can't see it very well, so no point trying hard to save it) unless you change settings in the encoder.

I don't see any colors or rainbow effect on my card, to mee the rendering is just way too blurry, especially with the lllllll example you posted. A lot of letters just look blurry/washed out compared to cleartype.

You notice in cleartype the rendering looks very consistent, in Directwrite some letters look alright and others look very faint and blurry.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I don't see any colors or rainbow effect on my card, to mee the rendering is just way too blurry, especially with the lllllll example you posted. A lot of letters just look blurry/washed out compared to cleartype.

You notice in cleartype the rendering looks very consistent, in Directwrite some letters look alright and others look very faint and blurry.

Yeah that's what I see too. Strange thing is, I don't have that issue at work on the same version of FF4 (which is running on XP). Could be a monitor/cleartype thing. :s

[ViperAFK]

Yeah that's what I see too. Strange thing is, I don't have that issue at work on the same version of FF4 (which is running on XP). Could be a monitor/cleartype thing. :s

That's because xp does not support directwrite

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I don't see any colors or rainbow effect on my card, to mee the rendering is just way too blurry, especially with the lllllll example you posted. A lot of letters just look blurry/washed out compared to cleartype.

...

You notice in cleartype the rendering looks very consistent, in Directwrite some letters look alright and others look very faint and blurry.

Yeah, that's the sub-pixel positioning causing that. GDI is designed to render text to CRT monitors (it's from Windows 3), while DirectWrite is designed for LCD displays and as such doesn't have a lot of the limitations GDI does (ClearType is bolted onto GDI, while DW is designed around it)

You get more accurate glyph rendering, more accurate inter-character spacing, and more accurate line lengths than you would with GDI (and it's much faster too). Compare this under GDI to DirectWrite, GDI simply can't scale and place the glyphs properly due to it's limitations.

[ViperAFK]

Yeah, that's the sub-pixel positioning causing that. GDI is designed to render text to CRT monitors (it's from Windows 3), while DirectWrite is designed for LCD displays and as such doesn't have a lot of the limitations GDI does (ClearType is bolted onto GDI, while DW is designed around it)

You get more accurate glyph rendering, more accurate inter-character spacing, and more accurate line lengths than you would with GDI (and it's much faster too). Compare this under GDI to DirectWrite, GDI simply can't scale and place the glyphs properly due to it's limitations.

Well I have and lcd and think it looks like crap, it may "technically" be better but most people seem to share my opinion that it looks pretty awful lol.

It does look better at large font sizes, but at normal font sizes it is pretty bad :/

[Denis W. Veteran]

Compare this under GDI to DirectWrite, GDI simply can't scale and place the glyphs properly due to it's limitations.

The rainbow effect is quite visible for Segoe UI:

[ViperAFK]

The rainbow effect is quite visible for Segoe UI:

Yeah just looking at that is hurting my eyes lol.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

The rainbow effect is quite visible for Segoe UI:

Let me guess, ATI card?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Let me guess, ATI card?

Nope, GeForce 8800 GT.

[Denis W. Veteran]

And here's an example from my laptop with Intel HD Graphics (also switched to the onboard discrete GeForce GT 335m and got almost identical results):

Clearly there's a contrast difference.

edit: The previous screenshot was captured on a machine without SP1, while this one does have SP1. Not sure if there might be a fix inside the service pack with regards to DirectWrite rendering.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

ugh, confusing.

I've always gotten the results shown in your second screenshot (pre-SP1 with an 8600GT), and I've only ever seen the results from the first screenshot on ATI cards (even a few Mozilla devs have the same issue). I wonder if it's due to the ClearType settings Windows use.

[Guest mattburles]

The plan is to release beta 10 the week of Jan 24. There will be a beta 11 the week of the 31st and RC to follow soon after. Got this from Mozilla. There are now 85 hard blockers :)

[alisalem]

This is what the toolbar looks like in Beta 10 pre:

[SoapyHamHocks Member]

This is what the toolbar looks like in Beta 10 pre:

Same :wacko: 8800GT

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, it's Bug 626293. It's because they're now doing the compositing manually (Since D2D/DW refuse to), but they're getting the gamma wrong.

[Guest xiphi]

The ClearType settings also has an effect on it. I've tuned CT and restarted programs, and have gotten worse/better results depending on how it's tuned.

[alisalem]

This problem is not related to the GPU manufacturer as I have an ATI HD 4890 myself.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

That's because xp does not support directwrite

Well I guess that'd be why then :p

The ClearType settings also has an effect on it. I've tuned CT and restarted programs, and have gotten worse/better results depending on how it's tuned.

I wonder if the people having the problem are the ones that have used the ClearType tuner in Win7?

[Kirkburn]

I should point out that |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| is not normal text. I don't think it's surprising that DirectWrite isn't designed around displaying those perfectly.

In the previous comparison, iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii was displayed next to it ... and it looked fine. It's still an unlikely collection of characters, but more realistic at least.

Of course it's not ideal that |||||||| can look odd, but it's not the end of the world.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

The font rendering for Firefox 4 Beta 9 hurts my eyes. :/

[ViperAFK]

Well I guess that'd be why then :p

I wonder if the people having the problem are the ones that have used the ClearType tuner in Win7?

I haven't used CT tuner at all.