781096 - @font-face pixelated font on one laptop, but not the other

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Graphics: Text, defect)

Description

[robert.taylor]

Attachment: pixelated-fonts-in-firefox.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:14.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/14.0.1
Build ID: 20120713134347

Steps to reproduce:

I have two laptops that are identical, both are running: Windows 7, 64bit Service pack 1, clear type enabled. Both have FireFox 14.0.1 with firebug and web developer toolbar installed.




Actual results:

On one the @font-face font is pixelated and the other is displaying it fine. The font has no issues on any other browser or device and the fonts are being hosted and reference the same domain. 


Expected results:

It should render the WOFF file smoothly, not pixelated.

I have also tested it on other machines and it seems to work perfectly on all PC's and some laptops, but there are some that render the font pixelated (32bit & 64bit) This is a PC issue only as it renders fine on MAC's

Comment 1

[Loic]

Could you test with a new Firefox profile on the computer with this issue, please.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Can you please check that the state of the hardware acceleration is working on both systems ?
load about:support and scroll down to the graphic section.

Comment 3

[robert.taylor]

Loic - I tested it with a new profile and it still had the same issue.
Matthias - I think this may be the issue. The graphics card may need updating. Please see the results here https://support.mozilla.org/media/uploads/images/2012-08-08-17-24-54-73b047.png 

Would this be a firefox bug or a laptop issue, as many laptops have average graphics cards.

Comment 4

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Updating the graphic card driver on your system should fix this for you.
I'm not sure if we should do a better job without hwa - moving to core

Comment 5

[robert.taylor]

(In reply to Matthias Versen (Matti) from comment #4)
> Updating the graphic card driver on your system should fix this for you.
> I'm not sure if we should do a better job without hwa - moving to core

It looks like this is a FireFox setting where it blocks certain network cards. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers

This tells me that @font-face will pixelate in firefox on any computer that has a graphics card listed on the above link.

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please don't change the component/product

In most cases the graphic card isn't blocked, only the graphic card driver version.
Just update your installed driver to a newer version

Comment 7

[robert.taylor]

These are my test laptops, which I'm sure I can update.

My issue is when people view my website and see pixelated font. Is there anyway I can override Firefoxes settings to turn it on WebGL rendering or turn off the blacklist through javascript or a possible conditional comment for firefox?

Or does this pretty much rules out using @font-face for the web because Firefox blacklists certain graphic cards?

Comment 8

[Loic]

People visiting your website don't see automatically pixelated font, it depends on their Firefox client and if HWA is enabled/not blocked. And as webmaster, you can't fix client side. In addition, forcing Firefox to work with blacklisted grahic drivers may cause some real bad issues like crashes, so it's very not a good idea for the user experience.