Safari 3 font "smoothing" = font blurring
No doubt you've seen that today Apple launched the Safari 3 beta which includes support for Windows. And if you've installed it then no doubt you've seen the complete mess it makes on your screen when displaying text...
No, I'm not talking about the expected issues that come with beta software, I'm talking about Apple's great font "smoothing" algorithm that makes text look like it has been bolded, outlined and then bolded a bit more for good measure.
I previously thought this font "smoothing" was just a "feature" of Macs. I have a 17" iMac G5 at work which I use for testing purposes (and other forms of target practice), and after trying to use the lightest possible font smoothing the text was still insanely bold so I just figured it was part and parcel of using OS X.
But, Safari comes to Windows, and what have Apple done?
OH MY GOD, MY EYES, THEY BURN!~...
Here are two screenshots for comparison. The only text in these screenshots that should appear to be bold is the blue text used for the headings and links:
IE7 / FireFox 2 / Opera 9 with ClearType
Safari 3 beta "font smoothing" aka font blurring
Is it really necessary to make the text so fat? All the shapely characteristics that make each letter of a typeface easily distinguishable from the others have been blurred into the next dimension! Normal text isn't supposed to be bold, and bold text isn't supposed to be black!
Apple, don't bring this crappy font blurring algorithm to Windows when we already have ClearType doing an infinitely superior job...
I do have to say that the text is much bolder, even too bold, in your Safari screenshot, which is not too cool (although the choice of colour scheme hardly helps legibility).
The extra anti-aliasing ensures that the character keeps its original form, unlike ClearType, which takes a 'lowest common denominator' approach when re-interpreting characters for display.
Maybe the type weight will be different in the full release, maybe it won't (It's certainly not a problem on OS X)- but at least you're not looking at Microsoft's interpretation of what a font should look like.
The best thing Microsoft did was have some new fonts designed specifically for use with ClearType (i.e so the design of the font would hold true on-screen, even at small sizes) and use them by default in Office 2007 and Vista. Everything is crisp and perfectly readable, and it provides an excellent user experience.
Apple have just thrown readability to the wind and tried to take the moral high ground of "we try to display the fonts exactly as they were designed", which is infact useless to the end user who just wants to read the text on the page, not stare at the text and appreciate it's elements of design... Quite typical of Apple really :P
I suspect that Apple may have wanted to use the font smoothing techniques that Microsoft uses but MS patented them before Apple was able to. If Apple is claiming that they're doing it for "artistic" reasons I'd be willing to bet that it's their usual marketing BS spin doctoring, which the Mac fanbois will mindlessly swallow.
Another argument against Apple's font blurring is that if they're trying to keep the fonts true to their high resolution shapes, it really only makes sense to do that in graphics design programs; Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, PageMaker, etc. Not in the web browser, email programs, finder, etc. Microsoft clearly went the correct route in designing fonts for the low resolution device, the screen. Adobe knows it as well and has their own "web" fonts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonts_on_the_Mac
"Hinting is the process by which TrueType fonts are adjusted to the limited resolution of a screen or a relatively low resolution printer"
"Apple has started using subpixel rendering in recent versions of Mac OS X. Version 10.2 introduced subpixel rendering of type and Quartz vector graphics."
"The quality of the rendering compared to Microsoft's ClearType and FreeType is contested, and is largely a matter of reader preference. However, Apple's approach differs from that of ClearType and FreeType in that TrueType hinting instructions are discarded for all but the smallest type sizes. This results in more consistency of rendering on Mac OS at the expense of allowing type designers a level of fine tuning through hints."
There is also a really good followup on this by Jeff Atwood that I would recommend everyone read (and also follow the links that he makes reference to):
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000885.h...
I totally agree with you about the graphic design theory though - it is completely unecessary to try to display the fonts as they were designed throughout all areas of the system, and especially at small pixel sizes. The web is not print. And fonts displayed on-screen should be optimised for readability on-screen!
If you go back a few months, Joel Spolsky is talking about how he prefers ClearType over Quartz:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/11.htm...
If you go back a few YEARS, you'll find a decent article with screenshots included that shows how much better ClearType is at small sizes:
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/...
In the end, all I care about is readability - if I can't read the text then what good is it? I'm actually surprised there hasn't been a more in-depth study done on the on-screen readability of Quartz vs ClearType (if there has, please link me!). All I know is ClearType rocks my socks, and Apple need to pick up their game ;)