What does "Smooth edges of screen fonts" really do?

[SonicIce]

2000
XP (standard, not cleartype)

I don't see any differance between turning the feature off and on. What does it actually do? I'm not talking about cleartype.

 

[zbalat]

On some pages that have a lot of fonts, some of the fonts may appear to have jagged edges. Turning this on is supposed to smooth those jagged edges.

I have never had this feature turned on nor have I ever had a jagged font issue with any web page.

 

[dawks]

Look at the letters on the start button (in xp) without font smoothing, and with. It makes a large difference.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: dawks
Look at the letters on the start button (in xp) without font smoothing, and with. It makes a large difference.

I'm really not seeing it. Could you take screenshots?

 

[xtknight]

I can't see the difference either (between none/standard).

 

[GeeFizzleDizzle]

You're not going to see a difference between having it unchecked and having it checked with the standard option selected.

Having it unchecked defaults it to standard, by checking the box it allows you to change from that default standard to using cleartype.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: GeeFizzleDizzle
You're not going to see a difference between having it unchecked and having it checked with the standard option selected.

Having it unchecked defaults it to standard, by checking the box it allows you to change from that default standard to using cleartype.

so what about 9x/2k?

 

[GeeFizzleDizzle]

Originally posted by: SonicIce

Originally posted by: GeeFizzleDizzle
You're not going to see a difference between having it unchecked and having it checked with the standard option selected.

Having it unchecked defaults it to standard, by checking the box it allows you to change from that default standard to using cleartype.

so what about 9x/2k?

Not sure, haven't used either in such a long time that I can't really remember what if any effect it has...theoretically it does exactly what it says and smooths the edges of the fonts to make them appear less jaggy but I can't remember how much, if any, effect it had in 9x or 2k.

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: SonicIce

Originally posted by: dawks
Look at the letters on the start button (in xp) without font smoothing, and with. It makes a large difference.

I'm really not seeing it. Could you take screenshots?

Sorry it took so long.. Heres two screenshots:

Font smoothing
Font smoothing zoomed

It should be noted cleartype is more tuned for LCD's. Its a custom form of AA.

Using the start button probably wasnt the best idea since the text has a drop shadow, but thats often the first place I notice a difference since its fairly large text.

Microsoft is spending millions.. on fonts and font enhancements for Vista and Office 2007. They are developing 6 (?) new fonts that are highly tuned for all the sizes people use (font smoothing becomes a big issue below 10pt size), and these will be the first that are actually tuned for font smoothing. In the past, the fonts were made, and font smoothing technologies were applied the same way to all fonts. The new ones in Vista are actually designed with smoothing in mind.

There was a good video about this stuff on Channel9 (channel9.msdn.com) a while back.

 

[corkyg]

It really only makes a difference with LCDs. It is with Cleartype or without Cleartype. The difference is in text.

 

[CSMR]

It's just anti-aliasing. I rember having this on my Acorn 13 years ago (RISC OS). Took a long time for Windows to catch up!