i can see clearly now
Dec. 2nd, 2005 00:07![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhasometimes i am slow. i recall hearing some vague comments about windows screen font smoothing, but i never paid any attention. today, while checking out font managers, i came across what is called "cleartype font smoothing", turned it on, and let me tell you, I CAN SEE!
it has improved my screen quality amazingly. pages from certain sites (frex the guardian) which i previously needed to switch over to viewing with my own font, are now perfectly legible. everything is much more defined, sharper, with better anti-aliasing. smaller letters especially. it's beauteous.
it's meant first and foremost for LCD displays, but allegedly it also improves matters for many people with CRTs. if you want to try it (instructions for winXP):
right-click on your desktop, pick "properties", appearance, effects. second drop-down menu (for smoothing the edges of screen fonts), pick "cleartype", OK, OK, enjoy. there is some fine-tuning you can do by downloading a tuner from microsoft.
i only hope this doesn't mean a real performance hit.
it has improved my screen quality amazingly. pages from certain sites (frex the guardian) which i previously needed to switch over to viewing with my own font, are now perfectly legible. everything is much more defined, sharper, with better anti-aliasing. smaller letters especially. it's beauteous.
it's meant first and foremost for LCD displays, but allegedly it also improves matters for many people with CRTs. if you want to try it (instructions for winXP):
right-click on your desktop, pick "properties", appearance, effects. second drop-down menu (for smoothing the edges of screen fonts), pick "cleartype", OK, OK, enjoy. there is some fine-tuning you can do by downloading a tuner from microsoft.
i only hope this doesn't mean a real performance hit.
Never an oatmeal shortage!
on 2005-12-02 08:51 (UTC)This was particularly in my text editor, which uses courier in a medium-small font in white text on a warm dark gray-brown background. That became seriously headache-inducing and unreadable. Have you noticed whether that color combination works for you? (I suppose you would be noticing that, now that I think of it, given that your journal is set to that color combination!)
Personally, for me I find that anti-aliasing of _any_ sort greatly damages readability at small font sizes, for me. I like having the edges of my fonts crisp and sharp, even if they are stairstepped along pixel boundaries. (Maybe antialiasing at 300dpi or so would work.)
Re: Never an oatmeal shortage!
on 2005-12-02 14:46 (UTC)Just for giggles, I turned on ClearType to refresh my memory. Immediately wanted to vomit at everything on my screen, switched it back off. Personal preference. :)
By the way - if you do any screenshot work, you'll probably want to turn off the ClearType. It doesn't look especially good to other people in screenshots...
Re: Never an oatmeal shortage!
on 2005-12-03 06:57 (UTC)no subject
on 2005-12-02 08:58 (UTC)Thanx for sharing.
no subject
on 2005-12-02 13:41 (UTC)no subject
on 2005-12-02 15:20 (UTC)no subject
on 2005-12-04 21:24 (UTC)