Making Firefox's font exactly like Chrome's possible?

[ithehappy]

I have asked this probably everywhere I know, but everyone said that font is same in both Chrome and Firefox. Well needless to say I don't agree and quite honestly the difference is night and day!

I have also read that Firefox renders fonts correctly and Chrome does not. Maybe that's right, but I like Chrome's slim (less bold) font much better than Firefox's thick/bold font. For me for long readings Chrome's font is much more soothing to my eyes.

So the query, is there any way to make Firefox's font exactly like Chrome's? If you find both fonts exactly same then I am sorry to say there's no need to respond here

Thanks in advance.

 

[Fardringle]

The only time I have ever seen the fonts look different in Firefox and Chrome is when the web page doesn't specify a font to use so the browser uses its own default font (and the defaults aren't set the same in both browsers). For example, this page looks exactly the same in Firefox and Chrome.

 

[lxskllr]

The only time I have ever seen the fonts look different in Firefox and Chrome is when the web page doesn't specify a font to use so the browser uses its own default font (and the defaults aren't set the same in both browsers). For example, this page looks exactly the same in Firefox and Chrome.

It's definitely different. At default zoom, they're pretty close, but you can still see differences. When you zoom it in, Chromium stays thin, but Firefox gets thicker. Don't know how to change it. Might be a webkit thing.

 

[ithehappy]

It's definitely different. At default zoom, they're pretty close, but you can still see differences. When you zoom it in, Chromium stays thin, but Firefox gets thicker. Don't know how to change it. Might be a webkit thing.

Exactly! I literally have no idea how you are the first person who notice that! I mean how everyone keeps saying they are same, while the difference could be spotted extremely easily, even if someone is not looking for a difference! Anyway, that's going Off Topic.

So no way to change it then huh?

PS: Someone on Mozila's forum said to change the MS Clear Type settings, well I am not going to change that. Fonts on my Windows are exactly how I would like it to be, so there's no point in changing that, but still just to test I did change and tried different Clear Type settings, didn't make a damn difference.

 

[lxskllr]

So no way to change it then huh?

I'm unaware of any easy changes. What you could do is force a font on all sites, and pick one that's fairly slender. Ubuntu Light is a nice sans font that /may/ give the results you're looking for, and there's others you can try. Downside is your forced font will be everywhere, and you won't see a site's custom fonts.

 

[ithehappy]

Okay let me try the Ubuntu Light one.

PS: Okay the font is not bundled with Firefox, so I guess I will have to download it from somewhere, or what? I am not good at these things unfortunately

 

[lxskllr]

Okay let me try the Ubuntu Light one.

PS: Okay the font is not bundled with Firefox, so I guess I will have to download it from somewhere, or what? I am not good at these things unfortunately

This is from my machine...

https://mediacru.sh/hXHtsbtGYvHN

Here's a couple sources of libre fonts...

http://openfontlibrary.org/

https://www.google.com/fonts/

 

[ithehappy]

This is from my machine...

https://mediacru.sh/hXHtsbtGYvHN

Here's a couple sources of libre fonts...

http://openfontlibrary.org/

https://www.google.com/fonts/

Thanks mate. Installed Ubuntu Light. Its way better than the stock Firefox font, but still not meeting my expectations. I mean I am having to zoom in a lot now, lets see.

 

[lxskllr]

Thanks mate. Installed Ubuntu Light. Its way better than the stock Firefox font, but still not meeting my expectations. I mean I am having to zoom in a lot now, lets see.

Too fine? If you otherwise like the font, you could try some of the other variants. I suggested the light because it seemed you prefer thin glyphs. Here's a link to the full family...

http://font.ubuntu.com/

 

[ithehappy]

Too fine? If you otherwise like the font, you could try some of the other variants. I suggested the light because it seemed you prefer thin glyphs. Here's a link to the full family...

http://font.ubuntu.com/

The narrowness doesn't bother me actually, I rather like it, but it's the whole shape of the font. I mean it's totally different than stock Chrome font, so getting adjusted with it seems kinda difficult.

 

[ninaholic37]

It's definitely different. At default zoom, they're pretty close, but you can still see differences. When you zoom it in, Chromium stays thin, but Firefox gets thicker. Don't know how to change it. Might be a webkit thing.

Mine in Firefox looks clearer than both of those:

Do you agree ithehappy? I think the effect is called anti-aliasing or cleartype.

 

[TheRyuu]

I don't think it's possible to get them to be EXACTLY the same. Firefox appears to render font slightly thicker than Chrome if they both use the same rendering method (at the very least this applied to GDI rendering, which Chrome no longer uses (by default)). No matter how much you change what the rendering mode is or the cleartype settings, I believe it will always have this slight difference.

You can adjust the rendering method that Firefox uses by adjusting the "gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode" flag in about:config[1]. By default I believe Firefox will chose the type based on font size and the type of font being used (e.g. bigger sizes will get the better anti-aliasing because it works in both directions instead of only one (with GDI)). A setting of 2 forces GDI classic rendering and should be the closest you can get to Chrome if they both use GDI.

Chrome is getting away from GDI rendering for security reasons and has defaulted to directwrite rendering for a while now (at least on my Windows 8.1 machine). I don't believe this has a major impact on how fonts look in Chrome. IMO the default settings in both browsers should be reasonably similar.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652141