“Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays. Today, both companies are using sub-pixel rendering to coax sharper-looking fonts out of typical low resolution screens. Where they differ is in philosophy,” Joel Spolsky writes for Joel on Software.
“Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.
Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface,” Spolsky writes.
“Now that Safari for Windows is available, which goes to great trouble to use Apple’s rendering algorithms, you can actually compare the philosophies side-by-side on the very same monitor and see what I mean. I think you’ll notice the difference,” Spolsky writes.
“Typically, Apple chose the stylish route, putting art above practicality, because Steve Jobs has taste, while Microsoft chose the comfortable route, the measurably pragmatic way of doing things that completely lacks in panache,” Spolsky writes.
Spolsky writes, “When you ask people to choose a style or design that they prefer, unless they are trained, they will generally choose the one that looks most familiar… Which is why Apple engineers probably feel like they’re doing a huge service to the Windows community, bringing their ‘superior’ font rendering technology to the heathens, and it explains why Windows users are generally going to think that Safari’s font rendering is blurry and strange and they don’t know why, they just don’t like it.”
Full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: The end result is that Macs look sumptuous and gorgeous, displaying minute attention to detail and Windows looks chintzy and flimsy, displaying a marked lack of care. This is actually perfect, as these very differences permeate throughout all aspects of the platforms: Mac vs. Windows, what you see is what you get.
I really don’t understand this “blurriness” claim. One would think we’d see the same blurriness on a Mac, but fonts are soft and clear. There is no blurriness. I never noticed it in Safari for Windows either.
Can someone post a side-by-side comparison online? The article’s example doesn’t do justice. Let’s see a real-world example.
how pretentious.
Safari’s font-blurring is horrible. CONTENT is more important than style. If readability suffers, how is that a good thing?
Windoze on-screen text looks like what used to be on my Commodore 64. All jagged with sharp edges. yuk.
Whomever writes these MDN Takes is a fscking genius.
And now we have Dell’s at work, I can see more & more people having eye sight problems & this ain’t from old age. It’s the strain people are having to do, looking at PC monitors all day, made from hack companies.
what good will banging away at the subpixels mean when either
a) we’re all lookin at 300dpi screens?
b) we all start using uni-pixel screens (not r/g/b LCDs jammed up next to each other) – because you know, we’ll always be using the same technology with regard to displays. /sarcasm?
answer?
none.
and Apple’s method will look better in the long run.
magic word: long, as in, I’m Justin Long, and i’m a Mac.
alright, i’m a mac zealot ’til death but i CANNOT STAND FONT BLURRING. fonts should be legible, mathematical and precise above all else.
to put it another way, Safari’s colors bleed and look like a used Rear-projection 1980s television.
Note, Windows does have font smoothing, but Safari has chosen not to use it, resulting in text which plain and simply doesn’t look clear.
Those who are actually honest users of Safari, FF and IE in Windows will see it this way.
That means that 90% of those here won’t.
My Mac at home on the other hand looks gorgeous. It’s just Windows Safari that sucks.
coolfactor,
Windows boxes tend to be hooked up to crap quality monitors.
The silly suffferers, always trying to save a nickel shortsightedly and to their detriment, as usual.
that’s because you didn’t turn on ClearType. It’s not enabled by default on a PC. Try it, you might like it.
ok, fasten your seatbelts everybody. here come the Flame Wars Redux
In a related matter, folks are really noticing the blurryness/heavyness/boldness of fonts when using Safari for Windows. This is especially true if you have Cleartype turned on your windows system. One way to make this a step better when using Safari for Windows is to go into Edit/Preferences/Appearance/Font Smoothing and choose the Light option.
And it looks even worse on a high-quality monitor.
that’s because you didn’t turn on ClearType
Thanks, I’ll try it out next time.
That helps a bit, thanks.
alright, i’m a mac zealot ’til death but i CANNOT STAND FONT BLURRING. fonts should be legible, mathematical and precise above all else.
Being a Mac zealot AND graphic designer, I couldn’t disagree more. Font rending should be true to the font design.
That “art above practicality” comment shows a total lack of understanding of the mac aesthetic. It’s not about being “stylish” — it’s about the power of a design aesthetic to communicate. Beautiful, meticulous, and consistent design is as powerful a way to communicate a message as the text and images it includes, and when you combine the two, it’s extremely powerful. It’s why people have such an emotional response to the mac platform, because design communicates on an emotional and psychological level, while text communicates on a purely intellectual level. So when you are rigorous about upholding the design aesthetic, you are really choosing to be rigorous about the totality of your communication, not about making everything “pretty.”
huh? what font “blurring”?
I new there was something up with the clarity of winblows fonts and this clarifies everything. I prefer to see the trueness of the font, instead of chiseling away at it, otherwise, what’s the point of having different fonts.
A link showing the difference:
http://idisk.mac.com/wingsy/Public/ScreenShot001.bmp
On the left is FireFox, the middle is I.E. and the right is Safari. This is on a stock Windows XP Pro install with no modifications. It’s obvious why a lot of Windows users think Safari is blurry. When you get text that looks like it came right off a dot matrix printer, anything with rounded corners looks blurry I suppose. But it’s plain as the nose on your face which is easiest to read, even if you are so accustomed to reading with jaggies all your life.
(I wonder if giving out this link is going to eat up all my iDisk download allotment? It’s for a good cause, so why not.)
To rageous….Agreed. Changing typefaces that are in some cases hundreds of years old is horrible. I too am a designer, and that really pisses me off. Good for Apple for keeping these typefaces alive in their original style.
I’ve always felt that Macs, especially Safari, renders sites much more pleasing and easier to read. Not so clunky as IE and now I understand why. I think this will really come to a head in the next few years… and it is a battle MS has already lost with their current rendering philosophy. Apple is waiting for technology to catch up and once it does it will be all set.
This article states that Apple is rendering fonts and trying to keep the shape of the font. Maybe there is a bit of ‘blurring’, though I see it as softening and it looks great. This is on today’s monitors. Once 10.5 is out and about and resolution independence becomes mainstream monitors can start having greater density. Once a computer monitor with a density of 300 dpi (or even just 200 dpi) becomes available and even slightly affordable then the Apple way of rendering will look even better. The system will have even more pixels to render a font. The end result will be an even nicer looking, and easier to read screen.
Not all windows users like the way IE renders web sites. I’ve building web sites for years. I often have to send my mainly windows using clients screenshots. If I’m in ‘the mood’ I purposely send them a screen shot of their site as it looks on Safari for OS X. It always looks gorgeous. I especially do it if they’ve given me grief about using a Mac and they page I’m showing has a lot of bold titles and normal text.
Other times I show them screenshots of their sites in IE and Safari. The difference in visual appeal is obvious, especially if a page has bold text for titles instead of images.
Nine times out of ten they comment how great the site looks in the screenshot or video but wonder why can’t they see it looking like that live in IE? Dude… you know the drill.
Especially with small fonts <12 points I prefer sharpness over design.
This is another area in which Microsoft has gone down the wrong road…
Is it possible that if ClearType is on that it further smooths the text that Safari has already smoothed? If that’s what it is then my next question would be, can Apple get Safari to turn off Cleartype while it renders its pages?