Some fonts on webpages look weird under Ubuntu 12.04 after recent reboot

[Leros]

I rebooted my Ubuntu 12.04 box last night (for the first time in a few months) so a bunch of updates were applied.

There are now random snippets of text on webpages that render differently. It's rather annoying. For example, the bold thread titles on vBulletin look weird, but the rest of forum looks fine. Also, the font in posts on this forum is larger than it used to be.
Example:
http://i.imgur.com/JQ6IW.png

Any ideas?

Edit: A direct comparison showing the old and new rendering: http://i.imgur.com/39Qw9.png

A more dramatic comparison of a Google search: http://i.imgur.com/MfDLw.png

 

[Jodell88]

Looks fine to me. Perhaps the font that you're used to using has changed?

 

[Leros]

Looks fine to me. Perhaps the font that you're used to using has changed?

I have another Ubuntu machine running 10.04 that I haven't rebooted in several months and everything looks better on it. Even my inbox in GMail looks out of whack on this 12.04 computer.

 

[theevilsharpie]

That looks normal to me.

Can you post a screenshot of how the AT forums look on your Ubuntu 10.04 box?

 

[lxskllr]

Your screenie looks fine to me. If I had to guess, I'd say your gfx drivers got updated, and your hinting settings were reset.

 

[Leros]

This is actually a screenshot from another Ubuntu 12.04 computer, but this is what these forums look like to me on every other device I use (and how it used to look on this computer as well).

http://i.imgur.com/3xYPw.png

 

[Jodell88]

This is actually a screenshot from another Ubuntu 12.04 computer, but this is what these forums look like to me on every other device I use (and how it used to look on this computer as well).

http://i.imgur.com/3xYPw.png

I do prefer this look rather than the previous one. I think they updated the font rendering packages (libxft, fontconfig, cairo).

 

[Leros]

Another screenshot showing a direct comparison. This is the Off Topic forum viewed at 1024x600 at 100% zoom in Chrome.

http://i.imgur.com/39Qw9.png

I can't stand the new look. Certain parts of most webpages look huge in comparison to how they used to. Anandtech is actually one of the more mild cases. The results of a Google search are now absolutely huge compared to how they used to look. The subjects in my gmail inbox are huge. It annoys me enough that I've stopped using my desktop to browse the internet. Is there anything I can do to revert this?

 

[lxskllr]

It really doesn't look that bad to me. Maybe I'm not picky enough. Play around with the font hinting, and see if changing that looks better to you.

 

[Leros]

Here is a comparison of a Google search. These two screenshots are the same size at the same zoom level in Chrome. Look at how much larger everything on the page is.

 

[Leros]

It really doesn't look that bad to me. Maybe I'm not picky enough. Play around with the font hinting, and see if changing that looks better to you.

I do a decent amount of web development and I'm used to the pages I work on looking fairly consistent across platforms. The only place they look dramatically different to me are on this one computer and its driving me insane.

I don't know anything about font hinting, what would you suggest changing?

 

[lxskllr]

I don't know anything about font hinting, what would you suggest changing?

Ya know, I'm not sure. I could have sworn I set it up on my mother's Ubuntu machine, but when I look in the vm on my system, I don't see a place to set it.

Here's a screenie of it on Xfce and Debian. I guess it doesn't do you much good, but maybe it'll help find/install something on your system.

 

[TheRyuu]

I have never gotten font to look the way I want it to on the linux desktop.

I've taken a liking to how Windows does it's font stuff (IMO it has the best font rendering, followed by OSX with linux coming in last).

So even by setting full hinting with subpixel rendering it doesn't look right on linux to me (stuff like this is personal preference regardless, so my personal preference in this case is to just use Windows on the desktop ).

You can try fiddling with the hinting/subpixel settings although I'm not sure why an update would change anything like that. But it does look like it went from full to slight hinting based on the screenshots.

 

[Jodell88]

I have never gotten font to look the way I want it to on the linux desktop.

I've taken a liking to how Windows does it's font stuff (IMO it has the best font rendering, followed by OSX with linux coming in last).

So even by setting full hinting with subpixel rendering it doesn't look right on linux to me (stuff like this is personal preference regardless, so my personal preference in this case is to just use Windows on the desktop ).

You can try fiddling with the hinting/subpixel settings although I'm not sure why an update would change anything like that. But it does look like it went from full to slight hinting based on the screenshots.

have you ever heard of the infinality patchset? You can get windows, apple, or linux if you wish.

 

[theevilsharpie]

This is actually a screenshot from another Ubuntu 12.04 computer, but this is what these forums look like to me on every other device I use (and how it used to look on this computer as well).

http://i.imgur.com/3xYPw.png

Your Ubuntu 12.04 box looks normal.

Your Ubuntu 10.04 box looks like you haven't installed any of the Microsoft TrueType fonts, and it's falling back to some other font.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Here is a comparison of a Google search. These two screenshots are the same size at the same zoom level in Chrome. Look at how much larger everything on the page is.

Actually, looking at this screenshot, it looks like the only difference is the size of the font, not the font itself.

The screenshot from your "screwed up" computer looks correct to me, so if you've customized the font settings on the screwed up PC, you may have updated something that reset it back to default. I'd compare the font settings of your computers side-by-side to ensure that they match.

Edit: You may also want to check the DPI that X is using, and ensure that it's what you expect.

 

[jimmybgood9]

It looks to me that on the "forum" example, the fonts are different on the "google" example the fonts are the same, but are different sizes. As mentioned above check your dpi setting.

The browser using different fonts could be different fonts on the system. That is, the font called for by the website is not available so the browser by configuration or availability made a different substitute. Or, on the other hand, the font called for by the website may only be available on one of the systems.

Fontconfig has numerous options for degree of hinting, subpixel smoothing and antialiasing -- Aargh

 

[Leros]

I installed gnome-tweak-tools to get a GUI for changing the font settings. Font hinting was set to slight. I changed it around, but it had no affect on the fonts in the browser.

 

[Leros]

I figured I'd come back to this thread with my results. I finally gave up and re-installed Ubuntu. After that, my fonts were back to normal.