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You're right, because Safari on OS X relies on the BSD/Unix/Next Security subsystems and obscurity to protect it. On Windows, it will be analyzed, prodded, poked and hacked to death. And I bet Vista will nullify a lot of those threats, so Apple can write a crappy browser without fear.

but why are fonts blurred?

They're not blurred, they just use a different rendering engine (the one in OS X).

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html

I just hope Apple enable ClearType there... It works much better (IMHO)... (The reason as there font rendering works "ok" in MacOS X are the fonts installed in the system designed for this system, but I don't think the result is quite up to the same final quality working on Windows).

...and yes, it's blurrier than CT... =] (may respect better some shapes, but I'd prefer easier reading)


...in other subject, the app still have some problems with 100% consuption on several sites, but it's MUCH better than 3.0.0 was! I hope they continue to improve like than, solve some plugins' performance problems and somehow add sessions to help saving your browsing with crashes and personal preferences.)

> The reason as there font rendering works "ok" in MacOS X are the fonts installed in the system designed for this system, but I don't think the result is quite up to the same final quality working on Windows

They work as OK (or as bad) in Mac OS X as they do in Safari for Windows. Windows renderer prefers sharpness by distorting fonts so as to make them stick to absolute pixel coordinates, at the expense of their original shape; Mac OS X (and Safari's) renderer prefers honoring the typeface original shape at the expense of having to antialias vertical and horizontal lines.

Fonts look the same in OS X as they look in Safari. I guess it is a matter of preference/getting used to.

Same fonts look the same, the thing is... MacOS X has original fonts optimized for its rendering engine and Windows has (newer) fonts optimized for its engine (and a engine that works well with older not designed to cleartype). One won't work 'well as' using the other fonts...

The type of font doesn't matter. Read Joel's article on font rendering and you'll understand the difference between rendering methods better.

Are all fonts on OS X that "blurry"? Seriously that looks terrible on my monitor. I tried out Safari last week and it worked fine but no matter what font smoothing setting I set in the preferences they looked too blurry.

I haven't really had a chance to use Safari on Windows, but I've never noticed fonts being blurry in OS X, let alone Safari. In fact, OS X's fonts look the cleanest out of any OS (Windows/Linux, etc..) - to me.

Now it's able to render HTML :o)

But this blurring of fonts is somewhat bewildering.

>but I've never noticed fonts being blurry in OS X

Different kind of technique. People used to Windows or X font rendering don't like the technique of MacOS X and vice versa.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/11.html

Most likely XP's Font Engine interpolates the result poorly.

The Fonts via OS X are very rich.

XP's font engine isn't used. That is the problem.

That's a pretty big assumption. Maybe OS X does it poorly, or the port of OS X's font smoothing technology doesn't work very well.

For me it looks blurred:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5632/untitled1mc7.gif

While this is ok when you try the browser every once in a while, I wouldn't work on a computer that has dirty fonts like that. Does Safari have cleaner fonts in OS X?

I hope they improve fonts rendering in the future.

For me it looks blurred

Fine, then they're blurred to you. But as Joel said in that blog post I linked you to, this "blurriness" (it's actually "fuzziness") is a trade-off which is made to please the print professionals who use the Mac.

The fonts in OSX are all like that, yes. I use OSX, Windows, and Linux. While I like OS X's fonts when using OS X, they look extremely crappy and out of place on my Vista box (when running Safari). I'm sure the same would be the case for Windows' fonts on OS X.

I hope they improve fonts rendering in the future.

OSX' font rendering will remain the way it is. Cleartype and Apple's method both serve a different purpose; in some cases, you want the fonts on your screen to look like how they are printed [OSX], and sometimes you want them to be best for readability [Cleartype].

Different ends, different means.

Cleartype and Apple's method both serve a different purpose; in some cases, you want the fonts on your screen to look like how they are printed [OSX], and sometimes you want them to be best for readability [Cleartype].

This is right. I do have a printer but I almost never use it; 99% of my computer usage is on screen. But this is a good thing to know that OS X is aimed at printing professionals. Their computers look good and I was thinking about buying an iMac in the end of the year. I think I'll buy a regular computer. Font rendering isn't the only problem. There's also software compatibility.

OSX's font rendering will pay off big time come high-DPI screens and resolution independence.

On a high-DPI screen, Mac users will have crisp perfectly rendered text that looks just like text on a page, with no blur because of the added resolution; and Vista will look like ass with the letters too thin and the shapes mangled to fit into a pixel grid.

On a high-DPI screen, Mac users will have crisp perfectly rendered text that looks just like text on a page, with no blur because of the added resolution; and Vista will look like ass with the letters too thin and the shapes mangled to fit into a pixel grid.

This is ridiculous. When you have a higher resolution, it's true for both systems, so fonts will look better on both OS X and Vista. On Vista you will hardly see a difference because pixels will be so small that nothing will have to be done to fit on the grid. It will be like printing on paper at 600 dpi.

Ah yes, buy yourself some 30 inch TFT and be happy to use MacOS? You have to be a real follower of Jobs to believe such things ...

I said nothing about screeen size, nor brand. I said about screen resolution. OS X's font rendering will look far superior on a high DPI screen than Windows Clear Type.

"On a high-DPI screen, Mac users will have crisp perfectly rendered text that looks just like text on a page, with no blur because of the added resolution; and Vista will look like ass with the letters too thin and the shapes mangled to fit into a pixel grid."

And why would that be? Clear-type and Vista's limited resolution Independence will make fonts look just fine, optimized for reading on the screen, not mimicking a sheet of paper, because your monitor will not mimic a piece of paper either.

If you think a little you will understand... may be because more dpis you have, thiner the pixels are... and if fonts using cleartype already look thin, they will practically be invisible in screen with high dpi. They already look very thin if you use Windows on a Apple Cinema Display 30" (102 dpi). And in the same screen, fonts in Mac OS X just look great...

By the way, there is a neat new WebInspector in Safari, just right click in an element of the page and select "Inspect Element".

Edited 2007-06-25 11:52

That's stupid. No one prints out web pages and read them. When you use a computer, you read on the screen and don't want blurry fonts.

If it's really that important, printing apps could enable blur while the rest of the system uses readable fonts. Should have been easy to implement.

The point is being missed...

While yes, as a side-effect, fonts look similar on screen as they will if they are printed, the main point is to preserve the shape of individual font characters. If a website designer specifies a specific font, it should look like that font, no matter the size.

On Windows, it just tries to match pixel boundaries, making all small fonts look very similar. If this was the intention, why didn't the website creator specify a font that already matches pixel boundaries at small sizes?

Edited 2007-06-23 23:27

If a web designer thinks that specifying a particular font will actually result in pixel-perfect output (as compared to whatever he uses for reference) in all but a handful of cases, he's deluded.

The web is (supposed to be) accessible to a wide range of devices, platforms and browsers. Web design is about making sure that sites are useable and at least aesthetically pleasing across as much of that range as you can reasonably manage, taking into account what you've learned about the fairly wide rendering gamut that exists.

If you want pixel-perfect, you distribute brochures.

Primarily, though, Safari/Windows uses the same font smoothing system (which I personally find a lot more readable than ClearType, but that's personal preference) as Mac OS X because that's what the iPhone uses and it's “the iPhone SDK” (in a manner of speaking).

"If a web designer thinks that specifying a particular font will actually result in pixel-perfect output (as compared to whatever he uses for reference) in all but a handful of cases, he's deluded."

Usually a web designer specifies a certain font family, the browser on the client's site selects the proper font according to set up preferences and system standards or recommendations. Rendering is done on client's site. Otherwise, maybe web pages should generate PostScript output (instead of displaying content on the screen) and mail it to the client in order to let him print it. :-)

"The web is (supposed to be) accessible to a wide range of devices, platforms and browsers. Web design is about making sure that sites are useable and at least aesthetically pleasing across as much of that range as you can reasonably manage, taking into account what you've learned about the fairly wide rendering gamut that exists."

You described very well what I personally think should be the goal of good web content and presentation development. But sadly, most web designers seem to have forgotten this goal. Today, many web pages are designed for one particular browser at one version, violating existing standards and recommendations nearly everywhere it is possible; and for disabled people (blind ones) there's no content, of course.

"If you want pixel-perfect, you distribute brochures."

But brochures don't have dancing elephants, don't play music and are not very interactive (except changing the content after turning the page over)... :-)

After pixel-perfect, just think about colour-perfect. :-)

If a website designer specifies a specific font, it should look like that font, no matter the size.

For me the most important is readibility rather than font recognition. And you don't print a web site, you read it on screen.

On Windows, it just tries to match pixel boundaries, making all small fonts look very similar. If this was the intention, why didn't the website creator specify a font that already matches pixel boundaries at small sizes?

Usually they do. Many web devs use Verdana and Georgia, that were designed for on-screen media.

The system Apple uses works just fine, the problem is that mixing and matching different font systems at the same time looks horrible. Just like running an X11 app on a Mac, they look fine by themselves but stick out and look ugly when they're mixed in with the native environment. Every app they have ported to Windows has the same problem, in that they look horrible because they don't blend in to Windows at all. It would be better for them to use the native font system, but Apple seems to prefer everything to be identical. This is nothing new and I don't see them changing their position for Safari.

Edited 2007-06-23 23:36

Does iTunes under Windows also use OSX font rendering technology? I haven't heard anything from Windows users about it being "blurry".

If the want to do something better than Microsoft they should let the decision to the users.

Unfortunately you can't improve fonts rendering in Safari because it's got its own fonts rendering engine. It's blurry because graphic designers prefer it this way.

it is called antialiasing.

It uses a different rendering engine, but you can make them a bit sharper:
Go to Edit > Preferences, select the Appereance section and in Font smoothing select "Light".
Close the window (there is no Apply button, changes are applied immediately).

----

About 3.0.2: it finally works! Menu text shows up correctly, clicking in bookmarks doesn't crash it anymore, dragging tabs down to a separate window works, and there is no missing text on any webpage. I used it continuously for a couple of hours on XP and everything seemed to work as expected, except for the mind-blowing number of ads on every website! I don't think I could browse the web on a daily basis without adblock on Firefox or the adblocking plugins available for the OS X version of Safari:
http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/?c=Adblocking

It's absolutely awful. I know it's a beta, but it's ugly and just generally crap. I'm surprised Mac users put up with it.

Not to mention that fact that they've forced that hideous metal skin on Windows users isn't going to go down well. It might work with iTunes, but there's no need to use Safari. Firefox, Opera and IE 6/7 all look nicer and function better.

Edited 2007-06-24 00:13

Well, it's a beta, you are "beta testing"

Did you tell Apple? There's a menu item under the Help menu called "Report Bugs to Apple". It's probably the best way to get something done about it.

I WAS beta testing, I dont mind the odd weird crashes, odd fonts.
But when a serious company cannot get the the fundamentals right like saving simple settings like bookmarks and pages where I can even begin to start testing the browser, I gave up.

Well, I don't have the problem so maybe it's something to do with your particular setup which may or may not apply to others, either way your feedback to Apple would have been useful.

What custom settings are you losing????

That's a personal preference. My order of preference in the way fonts are displayed goes like this:

1) GNOME
2) OS X
3) Windows.

For some weird reason, I find the fonts in a default GNOME install beautiful. They are dark and readable. OS X is a very close 2nd. Cleartype just rubs me the wrong way.

Thankfully, there is choice. Choice is good

I'm surprised you put Windows #3.
Fonts displayed in Gnome are similar to fonts displayed in Windows with ClearType.

Not really. Safari renders fonts in a similar way to freetype.

BTW - In my experience Safari is much slower than FF and Opera, maybe just as slow as IE7. Their benchmarks lie.

"What's the problem with metal brushed theme?"

It's not so much the theme (though it looks hideously out of place on Windows) as it is the fact that Apple doesn't follow Microsoft guidelines for menus, active vs inactive window highlighting, etc...they use their own in house paradigms which if you use a Mac, no problem, but I always have to tell newbies where to change Apple application options is (Edit/Preferences on Mac vs Tools/Options on Windows). The guidelines exist for a reason.

"if that's the case then I should be hating Microsoft right now because their WMP 11 is a themed-app."

It's themed for Vista, and IMO it's no less different looking than WMP 10. One of MS's new guidelines is no menu items, or menu items that only appear when you hit Alt (which is configurable in both IE 7 and WMP 11).