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How can I make Non anti-aliased text appear in IE 5.2

C

Classic

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 9, 2001
211
0
So, here's some strangeness....

My fiancé is putting together her online portfolio using Flash 5. She has published all her files with aliased text, as she doesn't want it to be anti-aliased. It's real small and tight, and she is going for that pixel crisp text look.

Everything was going smashingly well, and then IE 5.2 came out...

There are certain parts on her site where she has text as gif images created in photoshop, and others as dynamic text created in Flash. Prior to IE 5.2 being released, this wasn't a big deal, as both the text, and the text-image were crisp, and aliased.

Now, in IE 5.2, her Flash generated text is anti-aliased, and her images remain aliased, even though she specifically made sure that when she published her files from flash, the text was set to be aliased.

Even stranger is that Omniweb 4.1 respects the aliased text in the swf files and doesn't anti-alias them. Chimera also disregards the request for aliased text.

So, is there a solution out there?

Another weird thing that happens is that the leading between her text created in Flash changes because of the text smoothing in IE 5.2

Please help!!

Thanks
 
Thanks but.....

Thanks but I'm really looking for a global solution, not just a fix for my particular browser.

Any other ideas?
 
Re: Thanks but.....

Originally posted by Classic
Thanks but I'm really looking for a global solution, not just a fix for my particular browser.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
You can use TinkerTool, which is one of the best freeware resource editing apps.

They have an option under the font smoothing tab where you can disable≤font size or, just disable it altogether. Beware, if you disable it the system doesn't look as pretty (but if your like me you don't care :)).

There is a very noticable difference in window refresh/opening speeds since the CPU doesn't have to work as hard to anti-alias all the text. You can also use shadowkiller to kill the shadow that renders "under" every window. This coupled w/the system-wide non-anti-aliasing will yield great speed (unless you have a QS DP rig, then leave it all on :)).
 
Is she sure that she want's to keep that look? If people have to change settings on different computers just to view her stuff properly, then people probably aren't going to do it. Cater to the masses.

-Pete
 
Cater to the masses indeed...

PTrauber, you are quite correct, "Cater to the Masses." However, we shouldn't exclude the few. In fact, the masses have been catered to in this particular case. The only time there is any discrepancy is for those few users who are running OS X, and who are on top of it enough to have an updated their IE to 5.2

Clearly, the masses on this forum are running IE 5.2 on OS X, but not in the public.

So, in order to cater to us few who are running IE 5.2, I was hoping that maybe somebody out there has written a sniffer with some javascript that would automatically disable the quartz smoothing while viewing those particular pages.

If not, it'll most likely get written off as the 5% market, of which only 50% of the users have updated their software, won't see the pages correctly. So, all in all, it's not a big deal. More like a bummer that the best OS gets cut out from optimal viewing...

Maybe future Flash Players will be interpreted correctly by IE.

In the meantime, she is investigating fonts at http://www.fontsforflash.com that are specifically designed without curves and anti-aliasing. Hopefully she will find one that is to her satisfaction.
 
Re: Anti-Aliasing

Originally posted by billiam0878
I appologize for my ignorance, but what exactly is "anti-aliasing?"
Click to expand...

To put it basically, anti-aliasing is what makes the text smooth. If you have 10.1.5 you should have noticed the difference on the text.

To go into more detail, it is not restricted to just text but can be applied to anything that is displayed. It uses a process of removing some pixels and adding others with the new pixels being a lighter shade of the ones next to it. This removes that hard edge you get with items displayed on a computer due to the use of square pixels to show non-horizonal or vertical items.

Original line to be displayed by the computer
grid2.gif


How computer displays the line WITHOUT anti-alising
grid3.gif


How computer displays the line WITH anti-alising
grid4.gif
 
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