I like to pretend I’m a responsible computer owner. I update everything the moment it’s available, even if I should know better. If you’re the same, you’re probably seeing the same font nastiness I am on Firefox 18. And it’s not just me.
A few hours ago, Blogger sites hurt my eyes, but it looks like Google has made a few tweaks to fix issues in Firefox. Still, the bug fixed in Firefox 17.01 seems to have re-asserted itself in Firefox 18.
Fortunately, it is fixable, at least on Windows 8. Full details are here in this ghacks article. I’ve done my own experimentation; the solution mostly works, though a few sites still seem to render strangely (including the “text” tab of WordPress’ own blogging editor). Toggling gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.always_use_for_content to “true” just makes the problem worse on most sites, even if sites like Reddit look a little better, so my advice is, “Don’t touch!”
Update:
After downgrading to Firefox 17.0.1 for a couple of days, I upgraded to Firefox 18.0.1. By turning on hardware acceleration (Options > Advanced > General > check “Use hardware acceleration when available“), most sites looked a lot better, even if they’re still not perfect.
I had blurry fonts problem on Firefox 17, only downgrade to Firefox 16 helped.
I never experienced blurry fonts on Firefox 17 for some odd reason. I’ve just upgraded to Firefox 18.0.1, and the problem persisted on some sites until I turned hardware acceleration back on. For some reason, that seems to have cleared up the problem. Almost. I wish the Firefox folks would stop messing around with things that actually work!
I agree with Elizabeth Calimente. Why fix what is not broken? Same issue on Linux to.
I came across this the other day for Linux users. I tried tweaking the settings mentioned in Windows, but they didn’t work. FF18 update: Blurry text on some sites – Reddit. Basically, in about:config, tweak gfx.font_rendering.graphite.enabled = true and gfx.xrender.enabled = false.
This is the linux solution I just posted over the firefox support forum:
Go to about:config page and set de following preferences:
layers.acceleration.force-enabled > true
layers.acceleration.disabled > false
gfx.xrender.enabled > false
Very cool– thanks so much for posting this!