A way around fonts looking so crappy in IE

[andyjamesnelson]

I'm just wondering if there is a way around fonts looking so crappy in IE?

Edging seems jagged and lacks the smoothness of type in OSX.

Is there a way around this?

[angelwatt]

That's really more of a Windows thing than IE. It's the difference between the OS using a aliased vs anti-aliased font styling.

[andyjamesnelson]

I thought so. Another reason Windows sucks. Somebody mentioned to me that maybe using em as the font measurements would help? Not sure I see the logic in this but this is web dev so there is no logic :P

[angelwatt]

I thought so. Another reason Windows sucks. Somebody mentioned to me that maybe using em as the font measurements would help? Not sure I see the logic in this but this is web dev so there is no logic :P

I mainly use em and I've never noticed it helping anything. But really you shouldn't worry about it. Windows users are use to text looking that way, and they'd thinking your rendering looks blurry. It me a little while to get use to Mac's rendering, but now when I look at Windows I cringe, even though I never noticed it before.

[andyjamesnelson]

Fair enough. I guess if there used to it then fine :P

[Makosuke]

I found this article useful when trying to understand the differences in font rendering:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000884.html

...but the bottom line (as explained by angelwatt) is that while Windows and the MacOS (+Safari on Windows) do it differently, neither is "wrong". So far as my experience goes, whichever you're more used to looks better.

Meaning, of course, that I think Windows font rendering looks horrible. But since Windows users are used to it it's actually better to leave it as-is.

[mogzieee]

This is just a Windows problem.

If you want to be really picky, get your fonts just right in Photoshop (or other software), then screenshot/save as and insert it into your webpage.

Apple does this when they want to use the font Myriad Pro.