ClearType Is A Good Thing, Right?
‘Cause I’m not convincedby j. brotherlove
Sparked by the comments to Zeldman’s claim that Safari better than Firefox, I realized that I’ve never enabled ClearType on my Windows XP laptop.
This discovery came about chiely because I hate how Lucida Sans is rendered on Windows. However, it’s a favorite font of the (mostly Mac) design crowd so I tried to find an alternative to my current tactic of removing Lucida Sans from my system.
Now I have ClearType enabled and I have to say… I don’t like it. Is this how you are viewing my website (and presumable, the rest of the web)? I like how my blog titles look in ClearType but I’m not digging the other content. I see how the text is supposedly sharper and yet, the anti-aliasing is too noticeable for me. More importantly, a lot of the text seems smaller.
No, I’m no liking this.
I love ClearType. I’m getting old, my eye sight ain’t what it used to be and I find ClearType text much, much easier to read without straining.
I’m trying to stick with it, Michelle. Vista ships with ClearType already enabled and I know (now) many Mac users are viewing sites in this manner.
In my opinion, clear-type looks better on large pixelated screens, documents, etc. It makes smaller fonts look too fuzzy.
I don’t like cleartype much. You CAN turn it off in IE7 in tool, Options, advanced, and then finding the box that says enable Cleartype in html. Also make sure that in windows XP display settings | Appearance | Effects that the option it turned off (not selecting it in the smooth edges of screen fonts).
But don’t forget there is a TUNER as well…both as a power-toy and as an online option if you use IE7 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx
personally, I still hated it even after trying the tuner and all the various settings, but that’s me. Others may find it beneficial.
I like the way Java’s Swing Anti-aliasing text works. I think it produces a far superior result. But that’s me. I’m not spending a dime on a product that forces me to deal with cleartype. I hate it, and don’t see how it improves LCD text viewing (nor did I really see what the big problem was viewing text on an LCD before cleartype).
Thanks vik. I’ll admit, I’ve disbaled ClearType for now. I couldn’t get with it (even after tuning it). I never heard of Java Swing Anti-aliasing so maybe I’ll give that a look.
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