Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox

[Aelius]

Below is a screenshot comparison (please open to a new tab for best viewing) between Vivaldi (left) and Firefox (right). Below that is a 700% zoomed screenshot showing two words from the same page.

Notice how relatively faint Vivaldi's text is, and how hard it is to see the difference in color between the visited link and the unvisited links.

Notice in the zoomed text how much more vibrant the text rendering is in Firefox - the yellow, brown, and blue stripes that make up the left side of the "h" are much punchier than Vivaldi's. Notice likewise the deeper colors in the "i" and "l" in the purple visited link text. This vibrancy is why Firefox is much clearer and easier to read.

I verified using both browser's inspection tools that the fonts are being rendered identically: Arial 14pt 400 weight, etc.

Perhaps this is a Chromium thing as opposed to Vivaldi per se. Either way, is there anything I can do to mitigate the faintness of Vivaldi's text? And before anyone suggests it: no, going into Vivaldi's settings and changing the font won't help, most websites use their own font anyway.

Thanks.

[solidsnake]

@Aelius That is a font rendering, not the font, they are same in both browsers. It is a chromium issue. I don't know if the Vivaldi can override the chromium font rendering with another method. Maybe some of the devs can shine some light on this.

There are some extensions claiming that can improve on this, but I haven't noticed anything differenTt.

Also there are some utilities for Windows that enhance the text rendering system-wide, making it look more like text on MacOs.

[DoctorG]

@Aelius Firefox uses different font rendering engine which create sharper look. Chromium, Vivaldi & Co uses Windows font rendering engine ClearType which is cause more blur.

[Thot]

@DoctorG said in Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox:

Chromium, Vivaldi & Co uses Windows font rendering engine ClearType which is cause more blur.

What’s with WebKit? Blink (which Vivaldi et al uses) is a fork of WebKit, said: Couldn’t then Vivaldi take the WebKit-Rendering-Part, if necessary, to get better font-rendering, if rendering is so worse? For my part, however, I see no disadvantage in the current rendering, nor any added value compared to FF.

[luetage]

@Aelius https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=534732

[Aelius]

@luetage said in Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox:

@Aelius https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=534732

Thanks. That's a pretty technical discussion though; I found it difficult to digest. Is there anything actionable to be taken away from it?

I did come across the Font Rendering Enhancer extension, and it's certainly a big improvement.

[DoctorG]

@Thot said in Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox:

Couldn’t then Vivaldi take

If that was really such easy fix, the Vivaldi devs would have done it.
Better font rendering is a existing feature request in Vivaldi bug tracker.

[luetage]

@Aelius tl;dr They’re not going back on their current implementation, because it provides certain technical advantages, but they might look into improving it in future.

[barbudo2005]

@Aelius

Use a excellent font like Lato (free) in all pages with this code:

*:not([class*="ico"]):not([class*="icon"]):not([class*="icons"]):not([class*="fa"]):not([class*="control"]):not([class*="button"]):not([role*="button"]):not([id*="button"]):not([class*="btn"]):not(button):not(i):not(span):not(a)

{font-family: Lato  !important;}

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato

Instead of the extension Font Rendering Enhancer I use this code:

*
{text-rendering: geometricPrecision !important;
-webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased !important;}

Zoomed 700%:

[solidsnake]

@barbudo2005 said in Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox:

Zoomed 700%:

To see the font rendering, you need to take a screenshot at 100% and then zoom the screenshot at 700% or similar.

Otherwise any font will be smooth at any zoom level, since fonts are vectors. (OK, besides few ancient bitmap fonts)

@Thot said in Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox:

Couldn’t then Vivaldi take the WebKit-Rendering-Part,

If you refer to webkit used on Mac, I guess it uses Macos native rendering, which is way far superior than one in Windows.

Maybe overriding the font rendering in chromium is not that complicated to do, but I'm sure that making better algorithm is.

[Thot]

@solidsnake said in Can't stand Vivaldi's font, used to Firefox:

but I'm sure that making better algorithm is.

Yes, I think so too, because WebKit may not be intended for all Operating Systems, at least not in the near or far future.

[derBen]

You can try this extension:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/font-rendering-enhancer/hmbmmdjlcdediglgfcdkhinjdelkiock/related?hl=en-GB

It also bothered me that the Chromium font rendering looks so thin.

[barbudo2005]

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