Screen Fonts: Shape Accuracy or On-Screen Readability?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 23rd Jun 2009 21:40 UTC
Graphics, User Interfaces The Engineering 7 weblog has an item about the improvements made in the ClearType font rendering technology which has been included in Windows since Windows XP. While I won't go too deeply into that post, I did figure it was a good opportunity to talk about font antialiasing in general; which type do you prefer?
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if not needed, no AA at all
by greygandalf on Thu 25th Jun 2009 08:25 UTC
greygandalf
Member since:
2008-04-07

For the UI elements I prefer no AA at all, provided a correct bitmapped font is available for the size needed. It is just more readable, has more contrast and is easy on the eyes after hours of usage.
So this is also very true for console, text editor for programming.
Of course, scalable fonts without bitmaps for screen display are horrendous without AA.

When working with fonts aimed for printing or anyway for the visualization of a graphic or DTP page (for exmaple also PDFs) I prefer clear, sharp Antialiasing, but I dislike subpixel rendering because it usually color fringes.

If you check photoshop, I like that you choose the smoothing needed for the font, I almost always put it sharp.

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