Quality of webfonts, esp. on Windows

jaimes
jaimes Posts: 18
in Font Technology
So, I've been trying out many different webfonts for years.
One thing that is often a let-down is checking the rendering on Windows. I guess that's because of the disparities in the quality of hinting.

Is there any site/resource that reviews the quality of hinting and webfonts specifically?

For example, I find that Heldane Text renders quite iffy on Windows at sizes of 19/20px. Same with Sanomat Sans Text at sizes of around 17px.

By the way I find this on monitors of 2K resolution, as well as 4K resolution, so I don't think it's attributable to low-res.
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Answers

  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,041
    edited August 7
    Windows has like three or four different rendering modes, depending on your OS version and which API the app uses.

    These days the great majority of Windows apps are getting DirectWrite rendering (sometimes called “Natural ClearType,” but calling this ClearType is highly misleading—DirectWrite has abandoned the use of LCD-specific color subpixels which was the defining characteristic of ClearType as most people know it).

    However, if for example you are using Adobe Creative Cloud apps, in those AFAIK you are generally getting Adobe’s CoolType rendering engine, which is an entirely different thing (and cross-platform).

    Some web browsers on Windows can also get different rendering.  :smile:

    So... what OS version and apps are we talking about?
  • jaimes
    jaimes Posts: 18
    Ooof, complicated!

    Well I'm testing on Windows 11, and I've tried many browsers: Edge, Firefox, Vivaldi, all in their latest versions.
  • jaimes
    jaimes Posts: 18
    Kind of unexpected, but I'm finding rendering usually best in Linux. Avoids the extra thickness from macOS, and doesn't seem as aggressive with hinting as Windows.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,041
    For extra fun, at all even vaguely normal sizes, Apple completely ignores the hinting info in the fonts.
  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 819
    Jaimes,
    I do not want to submarine this conversation, but I would be interested to know how this typeface behaves in your test scenarios.
  • jaimes
    jaimes Posts: 18
    Andreas, I had a look, and it seems it renders well on Windows.
    That said, it usually takes a while of quotidian use for me to notice the subtle inconsistencies in rendering.
  • jaimes
    jaimes Posts: 18
    edited 7:18AM
    Thomas Phinney said:
    For extra fun, at all even vaguely normal sizes, Apple completely ignores the hinting info in the fonts.

    I thought Apple always ignored the hinting. Now I'm curious, when does Apple not ignore the hinting info? Super small sizes, I assume?

    In my CSS I use the macOS hack:
    -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
    This brings the color in line with other platforms, but then the fonts can become a bit rickety, especially noticeable in light-text-over-dark background, or in light weights.
    I guess that hinting would have helped with that...

    Ah well, tradeoffs, tradeoffs.



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