ClearType anything but

8 September 2003

I’m the kinda guy who really likes nicely anti-aliased text (if there is a kinda guy for that sort of thing). I love the nice smooth, crisp text that the Quartz system brings to Macs running OS X. I’m in awe of the new customizable anti-aliasing settings in Fireworks MX 2004 (you can set your own custom levels – very cool). I like to use fonts and text sizes that smooth nicely for headings on web pages, where the user’s system has options for that. I like it smooooth baby, yeah.

For these reasons, I’m keep trying very hard to love Microsoft’s ClearType. However, the fact remains that it makes my whole screen look slightly out of focus. And not it a good way. It makes the back of my eyes hurt. Actually hurt. I don’t know why this should be, why anti-aliasing technology from one capable manufacturer (Apple) be a joy to behold, and another similar technology from another capable manufacturer (Microsoft) make my eyes physically hurt. It’s not just on this one computer, either. Any yes, I’ve tried to get used to it, but it makes me feel ill.

What am I doing wrong? Help!

About Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan has been hacking on the web since around 1996 following an unfortunate incident with a margarine tub. Since then he’s spread himself between both front- and back-end development projects, and now is Director and Senior Web Developer at edgeofmyseat.com in Maidenhead, UK (GEO: 51.5217, -0.7177). Prior to this, Drew was a Web Developer for Yahoo!, and before that primarily worked as a technical lead within design and branding agencies for clients such as Nissan, Goodyear Dunlop, Siemens/Bosch, Cadburys, ICI Dulux and Virgin.net. Somewhere along the way, Drew managed to get himself embroiled with Dreamweaver and was made an early Macromedia Evangelist for that product. This lead to book deals, public appearances, fame, glory, and his eventual downfall.

Picking himself up again, Drew is now a strong advocate for best practises, and stood as Group Lead for The Web Standards Project 2006-08. He has had articles published by A List Apart, Adobe, and O’Reilly Media’s XML.com, mostly due to mistaken identity. Drew is a proponent of the lower-case semantic web, and is currently expending energies in the direction of the microformats movement, with particular interests in making parsers an off-the-shelf commodity and developing simple UI conventions. He writes here at all in the head and, with a little help from his friends, at 24 ways.

Comments

§ zlog: I used to think the same but I have gotten used to it.

I thought it looked like they had smudged everything at first but now I find my computer hard to use with out ClearType on.

I’m working on getting a Mac so I will soon be able to rant about how much better it is ;)

On an Apple related note have you seen the new 40Gig iPod and the ’new’ 1.25GHz iMacs?
§ Jesse: I think sometimes the Quartz system drives my eyes buggy.. good thing is that i don’t stare at my computer for more than 8 hours.. bad thing is that sometimes I want too :( Looks much better on a LCD or the actual Apple monitors. Win XP looks decent - but that is on Virtual PC.. so maybe its Quartz’ed.

..and I am waiting/praying for a 15inch TiBook upgrade.. mine is slow, 3 years old, and reliable.. but I want fast!
§ Woody: I really love cleartype.

You made need to change you settings:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/cleartypeactivate.htm
§ Drew: Hmm .. I just spent about 3 minutes trying to get that page to work .. in Firebird. Duuuh.

As it happens, it didn’t really work in IE either :-(
§ Jesper: I find Quartz’ text blurred in small sizes and smudged out in bigger sizes. ClearType makes 7px type readable.
§ Jason: I too love Quartz and have XP inflicted upon me at the office. The one thing I hated was the differences in type.

I just tried the page http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm

to turn on ClearType. It only worked in IE6 (nothing happened in Firebird) and I had to allow ActiveX to be executed. Worked like a charmed and it actually looks quite nice: I feel better already.
§ Jesse: After taking closer look at my XP install on Virtual PC I noticed there is no ClearType - which may be why I like it a little and web pages look a little plain in some cases.

I can enable it though.. so i hear.
§ chick: What is your screen resolution? I too love anti-aliased text and found ClearType to be a huge upgrade. The only problem is, it looks like garbage at 1024x768. I like my res set at 1280x1024, so it works for me, but if I was forced to use 1024x768, I’d turn ClearType off.
Just a thought.
§ tomjleeds: I run at 1024x768, mainly because in XP you can only have one resolution for the whole PC, which is a bit of a bugger, and the other users of it prefer 800x600, so we met in the middle. I use ClearType, and the default settings are fine for me. It hurt at first I suppose, but it’s fine now - I’ve been using it for months.
§ jixor: You need to be sure your not using a crap monitor and have your refresh rate nice and high.
§ jixor: In fact don’t get an LCD unless your going to get the best, otherwise when you see something like a sony G420 you’ll wish you didn’t want to save desk space so much ;)
§ Drew: I have a pretty nice iiyama monitor. Big, crisp and clear.

All in the <head>