Safari v1.0 - Text Smoothing Nightmare!

[owaters]

What have Apple done to our beautiful text smoothing in Sarafi They ruined it. Now I have to put up with this kind of rubbish (see attached image).

How can this be sorted other than viewing all sites at a larger font size....which is pointless as I have plainly good vision!

Please post something if you want Apple to address this issue....quick!

 

[celeborn]

Same problem here. I had to increase the font size from 12 to 13 points to make text (including the small text on this forum) legible.

 

[dlloyd]

Hmm, would you take a picture of the forum? I don't have a problem, though I might have text set bigger...

 

[owaters]

Yep, it's not so bad on here, but you can see from the attached image that the text box text is not showing properly.

 

[hulkaros]

Boom!

 

[twister]

Have you edited your system prefs? System Preferences -> General -> Turn off text smoothing for font sizes 8 and smaller.

Everything looks good on my work machine. ( see attached pict )

 

[dlloyd]

Mine looks fine, just like twister's

 

[phatcactus]

The default text size on the majority of web browsers is 16px. Set it much lower and you're bound to run into rendering problems.

With 1.0, Safari's default has been set to 16.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2003_06.html#003552

 

[owaters]

Well, I like to notch my text size down one using the 'decrease font size' button when I use safari. If I do this then text doesn't render and is illegible!

 

[owaters]

Found a fix for those text smoothing problems at long last.

Open Safari's prefs in TextEdit (com.apple.Safari.plist)

And add the lines:

<key>WebKitMinimumFixedFontSize</key>
<integer>9</integer>
<key>WebKitMinimumFontSize</key>
<integer>9</integer>

Make sure it is all tabbed correctly for it to work!

 

[phatcactus]

Safari originally rendered text with a minimum size of 9px, but removed the limit in 1.0 because it causes certain pages to misrender.

Might anyone know what the difference is between MinimumFixedFontSize and MinimumFontSize? I'd imagine one should define the limit for text that has a size specifically assigned to it, so that font-size: 8px; would still render as 9px, and one should define the limit for text that is given a relative size like font-size: smaller; or font-size: 1ex;.

A possible solution to the misrenderings would be to define a limit for the relatively sized text, but not then specifically defined text (which is often used for spacers, I guess).

I am going to read this later and not understand a word of it...

 

[dlloyd]

You know about fixed width fonts?
I would imagine that MinimumFixedFontSize is the minimum size for these.

 

[toast]

Zeldman.com says this font change is to harmonize Safari with all other browsers, and that using em's and text-defined font sizes in coding will avoid problems. 8pt is considered xx-small.

 

[owaters]

I read about the mimimum size restriction being lifted because some sites didn't render properly, bit I never came across it!