Font Smoothing in Firefox 3

So yea, I was put off of firefox 3 for a long time, and recently I figured I'd try it out again.

I was using it for a bit today, and there was just something I couldn't put my finger on that just looked different, and I finally figured it out. It's the way that it smooths fonts.

I'm guessing in windows, its called cleartype, and it was something i hated about it.

But yea, so I'll post some screenshots of what im talking about.

Heres Firefox2


Heres Firefox3


And heres safari as a comparasin


I read a bit online, and it seems almost like firefox3 doesn't listen to OSXs default font smoothing under a certain size. It's either that, or there was an option in the about:config that I could change, but that didn't seem to do anything either. Seems like its also just ff3, and not OSX, because safari renders fonts the same way as ff2. Also ff3 and ff2 font settings are exactly the same.

So yea, I know im late getting onto the ff3 bandwagon, and so far I've been happy with ff2, but it'd be nice to get some more stability, and a more updated browser. I can live with some of its other flaws, but if text is always gonna look like that, I cant use it.

And just as a p.s. I know font rendering is a highly personal thing. Some people will like ff3 over ff2, some people wont. Some people wont even notice the difference. So yea, any help would be appreciated.

 

Try using the latest build of Minefield (3.1b2pre), Firefox has left the rendering back to OS X rendering machine to handle

cheers ...

 

edit: scratch that, i was thinking about something else

 

Thanks for the tip. Looks a lot better. Hopefully the next update of FF3 will take from these builds and render fonts properly.

Though it sucks cause my FF2 theme for FF3 doesnt work in the beta : <

I'll live with it, or just stick to FF2. Thanks again.

 

Themes will catch up.

cheers ...