1197498 - Grayscale AA in the menus, context menus and tooltips

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)

Description

[Whtyger]

Attachment: Grayscale_AA_context_menu.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150806103657

Steps to reproduce:

I upgraded my Firefox 31 ESR to version 38 on Windows XP and noticed blurry fonts in the menus, tooltips, pop-ups. I have the same 38 ESR on my Linux machine and haven't noticed the same problem on it.


Actual results:

As far as I remember, when I upgraded my FF from 24 ESR to 31 ESR, I've already noticed the same issue, but I disabled hardware acceleration in the settings (found this advice somewhere) and the situation improved. Now, with 38 ESR nothing helps - nor HW acceleration switching, nor about:config settings tweaking.
After some search I found some info about grayscale AA problems with FF, made some screenshots and indeed, when I enlarge them to 200% grayscale AA is clearly seen. Tooltip bold text looks extremely ugly.
Moreover, some menus are OK, showing correct Cleartype AA, while the others are obviously grayscale antialiased.
I'm providing several screenshots: History menu with proper AA, File menu with grayscale AA and tooltip with grayscale AA.

Comment 1

[Whtyger]

Attachment: Grayscale_AA.png

Comment 2

[Whtyger]

Attachment: Cleartype_AA.png

Comment 3

[Whtyger]

Attachment: Grayscale_AA_dropdown_menu.png

Dropdown menu of the search field is also affected

Comment 4

[Whtyger]

Sorry, as I'm not natively speak English I used wrong term. I changed screenshot name, but I see no means to correct the original bugreport text. So the problem with the text can be observed in some menus (it seems to me in all except View and History), dropdown menu of the Search field, context menus. Tooltip is something different. I meant the little bar which appears in the lower left corner of the screen when I point at some hyperlink. How it is called correctly? Pop-up? It also has grayscale AA instead of subpixel AA. All other areas (including document area) have correct AA.

Comment 5

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Can you still reproduce the issue in latest stable Firefox version or in latest Nightly?

Comment 6

[Whtyger]

Yep, the same issue is observed in Firefox 45 ESR. Here and there I see interface elements with grayscale AA. I can post additional screenshots or provide the list of these elements.
Should I change the bug Branch tag from 38 to 45?

Comment 7

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

No need to, I will add that Firefox 45 ESR is also affected.

Could you try reproduce the issue with latest Nightly ( https://nightly.mozilla.org/ ) and see if it still happens,
as it could be fixed by recent fixes, like enabling by default Skia backend or fixing subpixel antialiasing.

Report back with attachment of your complete information from about:support

Comment 8

[Whtyger]

Will Nightly install into the separate folder and will it use a separate profile (I'd like to avoid breaking the existing installation)?
What's the proper way of "enabling by default Skia backend or fixing subpixel antialiasing", so I can check this also?

Comment 9

[Mason Chang [Inactive] [:mchang]]

(In reply to Whtyger from comment #8)
> Will Nightly install into the separate folder and will it use a separate
> profile (I'd like to avoid breaking the existing installation)?
> What's the proper way of "enabling by default Skia backend or fixing
> subpixel antialiasing", so I can check this also?

You can attach your about:support here and under "AzureContentBackend" we could see what you're getting.

Comment 10

[Whtyger]

Attachment: about:support report from Nightly 52.0a1

Comment 11

[Whtyger]

Wow, looks like this version fixed it completely. I checked top menu dropdown items like "File" and "Help" (I use menu bar), context menus, pop-up which appears in the bottom left corner - i.e. everywhere I got issues in 38 & 45 ESR - now they are displayed properly.
I attached about:support log, as you requested. Should I provide the same log for 45 ESR?

Comment 12

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Thank you very much for all the testing and reporting back.

It was probably fixed by bug #1007702,
so now you can go back to stable version of ESR and wait for fix,
as remember, staying on Nightly branch, which is alpha branch for testers could be not nice, because of new bugs, issues or crashes,
so if you don't mind them, you can stay on it.

Comment 13

[Whtyger]

Thanks for your attention to my pleas, as I thought that this bug is long forgotten. I'll wait for new ESR version with anticipation.