how do you completely disable ClearType in Windows 7?

Snowdog said:
Interesting. We are using the same calibrated monitors and I have 20:15 corrected vision, and I am also extremely visually picky. I assume you are using the default sharpness of 26.2%?? Turning it up I see color fringing, but at default I don't.

As an experiment, I tried going without CT again. It didn't take long before I turned it back on. I actually do prefer a couple of fonts (minority) with CT off.

But most Fonts appear bolder and more readable to me with CT ON. The CT OFF fonts look weaker thinner and harder to read at a glance.

Italic fonts in particular benefit from CT on. See italics at the top and the bottom of this comparison image. The small italics at the bottom are much harder to read on the CT OFF side.

I shouldn't have to point this out, but left is CT OFF, right is CT ON. CT ON clearly wins for me:

CT OFF --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CT ON

merge.png


Do CT haters all find the left side better? :confused:

(note: this might not be the ideal CT tuning for all monitors)
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Yeah I can't stand the left side either. Not sure how someone could find all the jagged text more "readable". CT haters must have very crappy monitors or very crappy eyesight.
 
The only issue I have with ClearType (which isn't really a ClearType issue) is the lack of accuracy in Windows' kerning. Look at the word "Impressive", for instance, and note how the last 's' and the 'i' bleed together to some degree. In fact, the second half of the word is something of a jumbled mess of characters due to the poor kerning, whereas the first half of the word appears well-kerned and quite readable.

This isn't reason enough to disable ClearType of course, but it's something I'm hoping Microsoft intends to address at some point: for as hard as Gates pushed for better text rendering in Windows, Microsoft still hasn't come through on this one yet.
 
Snowknight26 said:
IE9 and FF4's behavior is identical in that respect.
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Not really. In FF4, you can turn off HW Acceleration and the fonts return to being just like they were in FF3. They follow the system preference and look just like they did in FF3.

IE9 removed the ability to turn off IE's font smoothing that was switchable in IE8.
 
^ Color me ignorant, but doesn't letter spacing depend on how the font is defined? In other words, could it not be the fault of the kerning?

edit: nvm, the 'i' and 'v' are closer together than the 's' and 'i' and the latter still looks to bleed just as much.

:confused:
 
phide said:
This isn't reason enough to disable ClearType of course, but it's something I'm hoping Microsoft intends to address at some point: for as hard as Gates pushed for better text rendering in Windows, Microsoft still hasn't come through on this one yet.
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Most things involve a tradeoff. Microsofts new DirectWrite fonts seen in IE 9 and and FF4 with HW acceleration on, address this.

But they are no longer LCD optimized and don't look as sharp as the old CT LCD optimized fonts (IMO). The reason being is the old CT fonts precisely build each element snapped to a grid reflecting the LCD optimal sharpness/AA mix, but that gives them placement issues. The new fonts render more precisely to location ignoring the optimal grid layout and thus render softer edges.

I much prefer CT to the new DirectWrite rendering.
 
Snowdog said:
Not really. In FF4, you can turn off HW Acceleration and the fonts return to being just like they were in FF3. They follow the system preference and look just like they did in FF3.

IE9 removed the ability to turn off IE's font smoothing that was switchable in IE8.
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Yes really. Disabling a feature has no bearing on how it behaves when it's functioning.

And no,, the ability wasn't removed. You can change from IE9 standards mode to IE8 or below and voila, old rendering mode (and a slew of other features disabled). But doing that, and similarly disabling hardware acceleration in FF4, obviously isn't a real solution.
 
I am talking about turning off this feature, which no longer exists in IE9...

http://www.techpinas.com/2009/03/fix-blurry-text-on-internet-explorer-8.html

Any setting I try always has some font smoothing CT/HW/blur etc... No completely smoothing free fonts anymore in IE9.

This includes turning off CT in the OS, turning off font smoothing in the OS, switching IE9 to IE7/IE8 mode, there is always fonts smoothing of some kind in IE9.
 
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Snowdog said:
Browsers can have their own settings. IE9 for example has smoothing with no setting to turn it off like in IE8. FF should more or less follow the OS settings.
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ic, its so weird for me. on 32-bit windows i had no problems at all with ct. since i went to 64-bit last week it wont behave.
 
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