Aug 25, 2009
Font smoothing changes in 10.6
Typefaces can appear a bit darker in Safari under OS X 10.6. Toggling the LCD (subpixel anti-aliasing) option doesn’t seem to have any affect. This is noticable in Safari 4.0.3 on certain web pages where the font-weight is over 600. I assume this is related to the GPU-driven UI, so I’d be interested to see if this appears on your screen too.
UX designer,
developer and technologist.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Marc Klein
Hi David,
I was downtown yesterday and checked a couple of sites on many different new Apple machines using Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.6.1. I have viewed the sites by using the Apple Safari web browser with default factory settings.
I have noticed that font smoothing on some web pages appear really bold, ugly and hardly readable due to the font-weight increase caused by the built-in font smoothing under Mac OS X 10.6.
The option under Mac OS X 10.5 and previous versions to choose from different font smoothing styles such as e.g. “Standard – best for CRT” was much more welcome from a user perspective. The “Standard” option based on my own experiences delivers the best, crisp and detailed font smoothing result.
The “built-in” option as it is now under Mac OS X 10.6 is a “No Go” on my opinion. This is “Typo-mutilation”.
graphically & sincerely,
Marc Klein
Oct 25th, 2009
Marc Klein
Little typing error – I meant Kevin of course.
Nobody’s perfect ;o)
Oct 25th, 2009
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