Designing with Silverlight

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

moemeka — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:03:13 GMT

Geminiman:
The previously undisputed king of horrible looking interfaces, Java, can get fonts right: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081207-hands-on-building-rich-internet-apps-with-javafx-1-0.html

I looked at this. I dont see where it says that fonts are better here than in silverlight. None of the samples seem to be text centric either. Also JavaFX is seems to use the ENTIRE JVM. It's obviously just a rebranding of the antiquated Applet technology.

The white font one black background looks just about as bad as it doesn in silverlight even. Which sample were you referring to when you posted the link. I was not remotely impressed with what they has to offer. I'm not sure why anyone would use a technology that had no design tools from a company that is notorious for not delivering.

Re: Re: Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

vincentratier — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:02:24 GMT

This page should be a good starting point: Subpixel rendering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering)

Re: Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

jeetAbhi — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:55:11 GMT

hi i am very curious about the trick you are talking about..i tried but couldnt get through ..so do you mind if i ask you to ellaborate the trick a little?

Re: Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

vincentratier — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:37:15 GMT

In fact color anti-aliasing makes sense because of the way LCD monitors are built!

On the upper example, pixels are made of a Blue/Green/Red pattern, that's why the left part of the glyphs is red and the right part is blue, because the red part of the next pixel on the left is red and the left part of the next pixel on the right is blue!

So, if you do gray anti-aliasing you have to use the three colors of the adjascent pixels to produce gray which makes your text look bolder and ugly:

######### > #####

######### > #########

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

Geminiman — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:55:29 GMT

The point is that Microsoft has made every indication that they think that the current state of affairs is just fine and dandy and wonderful. They honestly think that their font rendering is good! (just check all of the blogs by MS people on it, it's sad)

The reason I'm anoyed is because Silverlight has so much potential and it's all being **** away because of some lame decision that the people have been complaining about for > a year at this point and MS isn't listening, instead they're making excuses and justifying themselves.

If they would come out, own it, and tell us how they're going to fix it and give us at least a plan for how they're going to fix the horrible rendering, then I'd be fine with it. But that's not what we're getting and that's the really anoying part.

Step up to the plate Microsoft. Do the right thing. Tell us how you're going to fix this fatal flaw, and give us a plan. Stop denying the problem. Then you're developers will be on your side and will wait, and if we know a fix is coming in a reasonable amount of time, then we'll even develop for Silverlight. Until then you're just alienating the people that made Microsoft Microsoft in the first place (Visual Basic won the OS wars for Microsoft!)

So how about we get someone from MS to respond with a plan in this forum, or do a blog article up and link to it here for us? That would be a really great step in the right direction.

Explain to us how you're going to fix it so that you dont' have to align fonts to .5 pixels to make it look marginally passible. Explain how we're going to be able to put fonts on a color other than white and have it look marginally passible. Explain how you're going to allow us to disable the font smoothing ourselves if we want to.

I'm not asking for the world. I don't care if you impliment cleartype entirely, although it would be nice. Just give us something that people don't look at and immediately say "YUK" and I'll be happy.

*off soapbox*

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

party42 — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:38:30 GMT

you dont think you're overreacting a bit here? you dont have to use Silverlight, use it at free will please. Please do switch to java if you please. dude, relax, they will fix it sooner or later. no need for flaming.

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

Geminiman — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:33:49 GMT

Now this is priceless!

The previously undisputed king of horrible looking interfaces, Java, can get fonts right: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081207-hands-on-building-rich-internet-apps-with-javafx-1-0.html

Why in god's name can't Silverlight? Are you embrassed yet MS? If not, note, JavaFX is on Version 1, not Version 2 and they got it right first try.

SAD is the word for this. Maybe even PATHETIC.

Adobe and Java are looking better all of the time as alternatives. I can't wait much longer for MS get this crap sorted out. It's time for a rushed service pack for Silverlight 2 that fixes this mess before you lose more customers.

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

Geminiman — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:34:40 GMT

Excellent Analysis! This verifies my anicdotal evidence completely!

Here, here! And Microsoft, Version 1 shouldn't have been released with this problem, and now you've got V2 with the same issue. You should be embarassed! This destroys an otherwise amazing product and makes it essentially unsable because customers always say "It looks horrible!" and they're always referring to the fonts, no matter how much everything else looks fantastic.

Please give us a usable Silverlight and we will go forth and build amazing apps. Until then, Silverlight is just a proof of concept that can't be used in the real world.

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

jseaver — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:14:58 GMT

Recently, I began working on a project where font quality was an issue. So, I thought I would look into it. I wrote a quick little Silverlight app that disabled UseLayoutRounding and printed a sample text string repeatedly at 0.1 pixel boundaries. Indeed, I found that the font quality improved somewhere around the 0.5 sub-pixel level discussed above. To demonstrate this, here are three separate renderings of the same phrase:

The uppermost rendering is from Internet Explorer using 10pt Verdana. The middle rendering is from Microsoft Word, also using 10pt Verdana. The bottom rendering is from Silverlight 2.0.31005 using the Portable User Interface font at size 13.333 beginning at a 0.5 pixel boundary.

The striking similiarities in the renderings, especially the aliasing, kerning style, etc. suggest that Portable User Interface is (at least) derived from Verdana as I have read elsewhere in the forums.

The font quality issue is not caused by poor rendering. It is caused by monochromatic rendering. Notice that the top two samples alias in color, while the Silverlight version at the bottom is in black and white.

In fact, regardless of the foreground color or background color, Silverlight always aliases in black and white. The best quality can only be achieved with a black font on a white background....the more the rendering scenario deviates from black on white, the worse the font appears. Whether this occurs deep in the rendering engine or when the font is rasterized, I do not know.

The same font with a white foreground and black background looks absolutely terrible.

This needs to be fixed. Would someone from Microsoft like to address this issue for us please?

Please don't say 'we are looking into it'....we always get that answer. If someone is really looking into it, then someone is responsible for it, and they have a pretty good idea about when it will be resolved. It doesn't matter if that is 1 month from now, or 6 months from now....we need to plan our projects, just give us a fairly solid date.

5 months since this thread was started and the fonts still look pretty bad...especially if you put Silverlight text anywhere near text rendered by the browser...

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

jeffferson — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:47:28 GMT

is MS really going to do anything about this? Otherwise adobe has nothing to worry about.

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

bruce.denham — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:45:17 GMT

I couldn't agree more. Just heard from Bill Reiss (see: http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/post/Silverlight-2-RC0-text-rendering-quot3bimprovedquot3b.aspx ) that MS does recognize the problem (thank goodness), and is reported to be working on a new text engine to fix this typographic fiasco. This info comes from Scott Guthrie himself (from another blog post). So I hope it means MS understands the problem and is giving it priority. We'll see.

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

DigitallyEnhanced — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:32:00 GMT

Fonts do look crap in Silverlight. I'm very keen to use it and it would be such a powerful tool for building decent web applications but I can't because the standard fonts look so different to how they are usually rendered on Windows. I'm amazed more people haven't raised this as an issue. How are we meant to get silverlight objects to blend in with an HTML page if the font is so different. Even if it was different in a good way that would be OK.

Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

trungnd — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:17:14 GMT

Here are demos and let’s compare Text in SilverLight and Flash, which one is better?
ilverLight: http://community.netikatech.com/demos/silverlight/toolstrips/
Flash: http://community.netikatech.com/demos/flash/toolstrips/
I also try to make some samples and adjust the text in SilverLight but they are the same (not better than Flash). The words are not clear and little cloudy.
I love SilverLight’s strength and hope Microsoft can improve the SilverLight better and better.
Bye

Re: Re: Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

codeblock — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:40:31 GMT

Geminiman:
Brutal and it makes it almost impossible for us to push silverlight development instead of flash.

And if you evaluate only the rendering factor to decide if you have to move from flash to Silverlight probably you are doing a bad mistake. I saw many applications (and many application I made) and all applications looks good and have nothing to envy to flash. So if you consider the code reusability, the better code structure, the real object model, the separation from programming and design, the hundreds of other thing better than flash you understand that there is no reason to continue using flash... IMHO.

bye

Re: Re: Re: Why do Fonts Look so Horrible in Silverlight?

codeblock — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:29:37 GMT

I show flash developers silverlight apps and they all laugh and how hideous it looks. Brutal and it makes it almost impossible for us to push silverlight development instead of flash.

I'm also a flash developer and I know that fonts show bad also in flash. This is why flash developers introduced pixel-fonts many years ago and this is why the same flash developers position text at entire coordinates to achieve the better fonts rendering. I think they have to stop laughing. (...and probably start crying :D )

bye.