1083329 - text rendering issue with FF31 esr and below

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)

Description

[motz]

Attachment: fontrendering.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0
Build ID: 20141011074935

Steps to reproduce:

many web sites show poor text rendering in firefox (still with esr 31) while IE and chrome don't have the issue.
The problem exists on my Office Desktop, my home desktop and my notebook.
All are w7 x64 and I have disabled cleartype because I get a headache of those color seams.



Actual results:

I have never font problems except with firefox on certain pages.
Even this bugzilla page shows the problem.
I have attached screenshots to show the problem


Expected results:

I could play with firefox settings but because the problem exists only in firefox and not in other browsers by default I would rather see firefox to deal with the problem correctly right out the box.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Could you test with ClearType enabled in Win 7, please. Pretty sure it's an issue about DirectWrite.

In additin, test with HWA disabled to see if the font rendering is better.
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forum-response-disable-hardware-acceleration

Comment 2

[motz]

If I enable cleartype the issue is gone, disabling HWA does not improve things, i. e. with cleartype off and HWA off there is no difference.

But disabling cleartype is no solution to me because then black text gets those head aching (at least to me) brownish color seams.
As chrome and IE don't show the problem when cleartype is off there must be some other solution.
Is there a special reason why firefox has this directwrite issue?

Comment 3

[motz]

I found another workaround which is to unscheck all fonts except those set as defaults by going to
Options > Content > Fonts & Colours > Advanced > 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' 
But this is also no solution as it affects the display of all web pages even those which did not show the problem before.
Thus a better workaround for me would be to use another browser, which would be a shame.

Comment 4

[motz]

I found another workaround which is to disable all fonts except those set as defaults by going to
Options > Content > Fonts & Colours > Advanced and unchecking  'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' 
But this is also no solution as it affects the display of all web pages even those which did not show the problem before.
Thus a better workaround for me would be to use another browser, which would be a shame.

Comment 5

[Loic]

But what's the issue about ClearType? ClearType settings can be modified to adjust the rendering.

Comment 6

[Alice0775 White]

Could you try to set gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled = true in about:config?  (After you change the value, it is necessary to restart the browser)

Comment 7

[motz]

I did try the gfx.font_rendering  but it did not solve the problem.

The issue with cleartype is not alone with me.
Google for "disable font smoothing" or "disable cleartype" and you will find many people who are unhappy with it.
I have tried to configure font smoothing so that I can live with it since XP.
But font smoothing always "unsharpens" characters and to me the edges of characters appear blurred and get colored seams. 
I went through the cleartype tuner various times but the result was always unsatisfying.
If I work with a cleartype screen all day I am much more fatigued than without it.
Font smoothing may work better with large fonts but I prefer small and crisp fonts which give me more real estate on my screen.

But getting back to the issue which is not cleartype but that other browser than FF don't show the problem.

I am still wondering what is so different in firefox that the rendering problem is only prevalent it.
To show the issue I have uploaded an image to my dropbox at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57474582/rendering_problem.png