fix text rednering in firefox 4 beta 4?


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As many of you may have noticed, firefox 4 does something goofy with text rendering and cleartype. I honestly don't understand it. It makes bold letters bold like they are on osx, but normal letters sometimes hard to read and look like crap.

I actually just uninstalled firefox 4 beta 4 and went back to firefox 3.6 just because of this problem. But i really liked firefox 4 overall much better than i do 3.6 so would like to go back, but the text rendering issues has caused me many problems with some sites that have tiny font and what now, which appear fine in 3.6, chrome, and Ie.

Does anyone know of a way to repair this? I want to keep cleartype enabled, but i want it to appear normal in firefox.

thanks

Enable directwrite.

Go to about:config and search for 'gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled' and set it to true.

It fixes a lot of the color fringe problems and gives a bit of a performance boost, though it makes the text slightly less appealing I guess.

I also seem to have this problem regarding text appearing to be slightly fuzzy, almost to the extent where if you took a picture of the text and it wasn't in perfect focus. I have got used to it mostly but it's not great. I also have that boolean set to true but it hasn't fixed it/reduced the problem.

i'll reinstall 4 beta again soon.

its just some text was so hard to read and looked like crap. For example "i"s were super faded.

was thinking cleartype in windows was messing yup and tinkered with it for a bit, but noticed it wasnt changing anything in firefox. then tested the sites in Ie and things looked fine. Then realized it was 4. Everything looks fine in 3.6

I'll take a screenshot if i still have the problem after i reinstall.

1. Enter 'about:config'
   2. Click through the warning, if necessary
   3. Enter gfx.font in the 'Filter' box
   4. Double-click on 'gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled' to set it to true
   5. Below this, right click and select New > Integer to add a pref setting
   6. Enter 'mozilla.widget.render-mode' for the preference name, 6 for the value
   7. Restart

Do the above and you should be fine.

i'll reinstall 4 beta again soon.

its just some text was so hard to read and looked like crap. For example "i"s were super faded.

was thinking cleartype in windows was messing yup and tinkered with it for a bit, but noticed it wasnt changing anything in firefox. then tested the sites in Ie and things looked fine. Then realized it was 4. Everything looks fine in 3.6

I'll take a screenshot if i still have the problem after i reinstall.

I really like your dark blue print on my black background... how do you like mine?

1. Enter 'about:config'
 2. Click through the warning, if necessary
 3. Enter gfx.font in the 'Filter' box
 4. Double-click on 'gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled' to set it to true
 5. Below this, right click and select New > Integer to add a pref setting
 6. Enter 'mozilla.widget.render-mode' for the preference name, 6 for the value
 7. Restart

Do the above and you should be fine.

I remember looking myself and i enabled the font rendering thing, which didnt resolve anything. Didn't even notice a difference after enabling it. But never messed with the render mode thing.

will try soon. thanks

  • 3 months later...

I noticed the same problem with the beta 7. I think, it's because I've tweaked the clear-type settings under win7 (you can adjust aspect of font), and firefox 4 is ignoring these settings.

The font look definitely worse in firefox 4 , I hope this will be soon fixed.

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