Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

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LuftWafflePilot
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Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by LuftWafflePilot » 2022-06-24, 09:58

I noticed several random websites I check from time to time had their fonts messed up recently and started showing up blurred or something.
I don't remember when it started, but there definitely weren't any PM updates in that period.
I also doubt several random website would get updated at the same time, so I am really perplexed...
Screenshot 2022-06-24 115548.png
The menu text should appear in bold instead of this.
Has this happened to anyone else maybe? I really have no idea what to make of this. At least the webs still work, but they are not very readable at times.

I am on Win version of PM 31.1.0.

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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by vannilla » 2022-06-24, 10:57

I haven't checked the site in the image so I can't say for sure, but if the places you say have got their fonts blurry use the same asset provider (probably Google) then an update from this provider will inevitably cascade to every website making use of the service.
As you said it's improbable that many unrelated sites would get updated at the same time to exhibit the same behaviour, so "everyone uses the same service which pushed an update changing the font" is the most likely cause.

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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by LuftWafflePilot » 2022-06-24, 11:02

Ah right, I forgot about this website development cancer. World was a nice place when a website had all the code and data in its own place.

Why does it render correctly in Firefox though?

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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by back2themoon » 2022-06-24, 11:11

Those fonts look fine here. You didn't bother to post a link (https://www.kolokram.cz/) but it was easy to find. This could be video-driver and/or hardware acceleration related.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49

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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by vannilla » 2022-06-24, 11:56

I could check out the site now and I also see the blurry font.
Unsurprisingly it's actually Google's fonts, so an update to the font from them is still a probable cause.
In fact, it seems the site uses the Montserrat font, which also appears in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=28528

@back2themoon
Could you check your system in case you have the Montserrat font installed locally?
It's possible that Google has written their CSS rules to use the font provided by them only when it's not available locally (which is actually the way it should be coded, but when things break you get this situation.)

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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by back2themoon » 2022-06-24, 12:13

I do not have Montserrat installed. Either of these should solve the issue on this website: (I use both by default)

1. Set gfx.direct2d.disabled to true and restart Pale Moon
2. Enable the Fanboy's Anti-thirdparty Fonts filterlist*

Not sure of the technicalities, but hardware acceleration is somehow related here. I think.

*https://filterlists.com/lists/fanboys-a ... arty-fonts or https://fanboy.co.nz/filters.html

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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-06-24, 14:40

Google has always rendered fonts slightly heavier. If they have now tweaked their font delivery to compensate for their own heavy bias, it's quite possible that as a result, it now crosses the subpixel threshold for us making it poorly readable. There really isn't all that much that can be done about this except complain to Google and/or the websites affected that use these Google Fonts. We can hardly be expected to change our entire renderer for it. maybe a workaround can be made with usercontent.css in the meantime, but it'd be a crutch at most.\

EDIT: Looking at the font delivered it is extremely anaemic, even at 700 weight. Internally it is also called "Montserrat Thin" so it's possible that someone simply made a mistake which font is which @ Google.
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Re: Various webs had fonts blurred out recently

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-06-24, 14:58

A better solution instead of flat-out disabling direct2d for everything is to simply force GDI rendering for Montserrat.
  1. Open about:config
  2. Find the preference gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_for_families
  3. double-click to edit the value
  4. Add ",Montserrat" to the end of the font list in that preference. No spaces.
  5. Restart the browser for this change to take effect.
This will fix the incorrect font rendering by bypassing the super thin font properties in Google's font on all sites that use it.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

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