All fonts (content and UI) blurry and fuzzy
-
Hi, I have the problem that not only the UI parts (context menu etc.) but also all content is blurred and fuzzy, which makes reading very cumbersome and actually even painful on the eyes. I assume that this is not a general problem (nobody would use Vivaldi longer than a couple of minutes then), so I wanted to ask you for possible solutions. I already disabled DirectWrite, but this didn't really change much. Opera 12.17 [attachment=2180]Screenshot2015-12-1312.13.03.png[/attachment] Vivaldi 1.0.344.24 [attachment=2181]Screenshot2015-12-1312.13.37.png[/attachment] The smaller the letters, the more obvious it is, e.g. the word "Page" in the Bug wizard thread. EDIT: ok, this kind of image presentation is not really helpful, have to find another way to show the unscaled pics... Attachments: [img]https://forum.vivaldi.net/uploads/attachments/33557/Screenshot2015-12-1312.13.03.png[/img],[img]https://forum.vivaldi.net/uploads/attachments/33557/Screenshot2015-12-1312.13.37.png[/img]
-
Could just make snapshot of small area (maybe zoomed in) rather than fullscreen?
Anyway, to start with:
What are the values in Tools/Settings/WebPages
[fonts] minimum size and character encoding?
Have you tried changing them? -
I first post the original screenshots:
You notice it especially at the small words, like "Page", or also at e.g. "Replies", though in reality it's worse than on the screenshots.
It looks a bit like a really old and broken printer whose ink is almost empty…WRT your questions: no minimum size set (and the size is in fact generally ok, I don't want/need it bigger),
and encoding is Western (Windows-1252), which is also correct. -
As far as I can tell, that's just how it is nowadays. Blink-based browsers seem to do some kind of "postprocessing" on fonts, no matter whether you're using DirectWrite or not. Looks like some kind of sharpening is applied and this is the result. All Blink-based browsers do this, as far as I can tell. Don't ask me why they do it. At least it's a bit less aggresive than it used to be a while back, if I remember correctly.
Generally, these days, I tend to use a short bit of user CSS code (applied via Stylish) to make fonts in my browsers a bit smoother and "fuller", since MacType no longer works correctly with current browsers (at least for me). Something like this:
HTML, body, div, dl, dt, dd, ul, ol, li, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, pre, code, form, fieldset, legend, input, button, textarea, p, blockquote, th, td, span { -webkit-text-stroke: 0.0px !important; text-shadow: 0.15px 0.15px 0.15px rgba(0,0,0, 0.15), -0.15px -0.15px 0.15px rgba(0,0,0, 0.15) !important; }
The specific values are tweaked to my tastes and can be altered, of course. It's a crutch and does have some cons/downsides, but I can't imagine browsing the web without it now.
-
Wow, seriously, that's the way it's supposed to be?!?
I can hardly believe it, rendering with latest Vivaldi is way worse than IE6, Opera 7 or even Netscape was a decade ago :ohmy:
(just take 2 minutes and install a pre-15 Opera version alongside and compare the look of - well - any webpage with text…)Thank you for the CSS, it makes it slightly less ugly, but still no comparison to Opera 12.17 (or also IE11).
So I guess there's not much point in playing with various flags either, if this kind of rendering is not considered ugly and buggy but even desired, right?
-
It's the way Chromium renders them, and unfortunately it's not a trivial change the small Vivaldi team can afford their time.
-
@Gwen-Dragon:
You cant compare Opera 12 to Vivaldi, they have different font rendering.
Why not? "Because they're different" is not a reason to NOT compare something. If anything, it is one of the strongest reasons to DO compare it.
@Gwen-Dragon:
You can enable "Disable Directwrite" at chrome://flags/#disable-direct-write
but that may result in display problems of some installed fonts (it is a Chromium issue with DirectWrite). I found f.ex. such problems with 'Helvetica Neue' or 'Arial Black'.He mentioned he has DirectWrite disabled already. Which, BTW, SHOULD give you pretty much the same results as Opera 12 (as it does if you disable DirectWrite in Firefox, for example) - if it wasn't for the fact that Blink is modifying the look of the glyphs independent on which font rendering path you use. Some would probably call it a feature. I call it a serious bug and I really wish Blink would stop doing that.
Also, it's not like DirectWrite is perfect - it can distort some fonts pretty badly as well.
-
First, thanks for the hints.
The reason I compare Vivaldi to Opera is that Opera (Presto) has been my main browser (almost exclusive) for more or less my entire online life.
So it is the reference for me, against which I compare all the rest.
I'm realistic enough to accept that Opera 12.17 has a kind of limited lifetime, so I'm looking for alternatives and was more or less in the process of transitioning (e.g. already moved mail/feeds to Thunderbird).I also understand that Vivaldi is not in the position to totally rewrite the Chromium/Blink rendering engine, but I can still hardly believe that anybody implements (and uses) this kind of font rendering willingly and on purpose! :blink:
And I don't talk about aestetics but just about readability, which is great on the one (Presto Opera, IE) and very bad and even literally painful on the other side.It seems that I have to live with that though, and somehow make my eyes accept it as well, as it won't change (soon)
The combination of 'disable directwrite' and a modified CSS makes it a bit more bearable, but still it's worse than it was years ago (in so many ways a frustrating thought).How naive of me that I thought the lack of a 'go to top' mouse gesture was among the greatest hurdles for me
-
If you like/are willing to experiment, you might want to try using MacType, which is basically FreeType 2 font rendering for Windows. It has issues as it was always just a crutch and has been basically abandoned for two years now, but it still kinda works if you disable DirectWrite in Vivaldi. The font sharpening issue still applies (so the CSS shadow stuff might still be needed, even if tweaked), but the underlying font rendering is different than the one you normally see without DirectWrite. And you can tweak it quite a lot.
The "official" download is dead, but somebody set up alternative:
https://eddon.systems/Download/MacTypeInstaller_2013_1231_0.exe
Just don't expect miracles, it's still sidestepping the real issue instead of solving it.
FYI, here's a screenshot of my MacType config running together with a modified version of that CSS shadow hack.
-