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Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

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Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#121

Post by DavidSJ »

aasasd wrote: post #119
DavidSJ wrote: post #114

Recently I came across https://512pixels.net/2014/04/aqua-past-future/ and was overcome with nostalgia for System 7. Maybe it’s just that a Mac IIsi running System 7 was my first computer when I was seven years old, but I think there’s a timeless beauty to the operating system that no later release has really captured. Some more images here: https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os Those folder and con…

You can run it in emulators. I was doing that on Android recently, to play Deja Vu. However, you probably cherish more your memory of the system than the actual thing, and emulators don't help with that.

I should probably do that.

Actually, my Mac IIsi still works last I checked, but that was about ten years ago!

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#122

Post by beowulfey »

jsolson wrote: post #50

I need to send this to the people who designed the website for one of my favorite local pizza places, Dino's ( https://www.dinostomatopie.com/ ) -- they did _really_ well, generally, but no matter how hard you try, some things come through: the fonts rendered as text are perfectly crisp at whatever absurd DPI this Chromebook has.

This is the greatest website I have ever seen. It even looks good on mobile. That’s a major achievement with their stylings.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#123

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

nodoodles wrote: post #72
toothbrush wrote: post #15

Hello! Co-founder here – wow, front page, that's flattering! We have indeed still got a bunch of visual glitches we couldn't iron out, including the one ~saagarjha has reported to WebKit! We had assumed it was our font being broken, but i'm keen to follow that one. Otherwise getting hinting right on all browsers in high-DPI has basically been impossible. Maybe we should simply recommend everyone use a Windows 98 User…

Great idea! One could embed windows 95 a la https://win95.ajf.me/ just to run IE within the page with all the right rendering. Or a subset of custom font rendering to a canvas :)

http://charlie.bz accomplishes that idea but without a lengthy download by using a VNC session into QEMU.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#124

Post by toyg »

zwaps wrote: post #111
toyg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no blurry fonts if you use the right screens for 2020 - i.e. HiDPI / "retina" etc. If your pixels are visible then yeah, nothing beats fonts designed for big pixels.

There are blurry fonts on 1080p screens, which are the default to this day and essentially required if you seek high refresh rates on a budget. Everyone without a retina screen is wrong, according to you. And yet, fonts used to look just fine on our terrible screens.

I didn’t say that - I said that if your screen is not retina-like, then you have to adjust operating systems that are now developed for retina-like screens.

I have not seen a blurry font on Mac since 2012 - with the exception of legacy programs that don’t use modern libraries, because (again) modern libraries and modern screens simply don’t give you blurry fonts. If you have some legacy tech in your stack, then you have to do some work to compensate.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#125

Post by MattBlissett »

afandian wrote: post #91

As a child of the $PAST in the UK, I lived in three overlapping Internet worlds. Acorn RISC OS 3, Mac OS 7.5 at home and increasing amounds of Windows 95/98. The Acorn ecosystem was way ahead until it suddenly wasn't. But my first webppage in about 1996 was made on an Acorn machine and, as far as I recall, the text was antialiased back then.

Here are some screenshots of RISC OS 3, including the anti-aliased fonts [1].

In 1992, on a 640x480 CRT, fonts rendered on RISC OS were excellent. Losing this when I switched to Windows around 1995 was a big step backwards.

NB if viewing on a HiDPI screen, the browser will blur the image at it scales it for the webpage. Instead, look at [2] and zoom the page to 50% -- that's exactly how I remember it, except half the size.

[1] https://telcontar.net/Misc/GUI/RISCOS/#text

[2] https://telcontar.net/Misc/GUI/RISCOS/Text--AA-sub-pixel.png

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#126

Post by ubercow13 »

jtvjan wrote: post #116
arrayjumper wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to report that I was able to download the zip file and run the executable on my Ubuntu box with Wine. It was quite surreal to see Netscape installer running on my 4k monitor. I was even able to open the browser and navigate to Google. Sadly https://www.dinostomatopie.com/ and http://www.dinostomatopie.com/ failed to open with a message saying "Netscape and this server cannot communicate securely because the…

What's the point of forcing HTTPS? It's a pizza place, not a bank.

It stops Comcast selling your topping preferences to other pizzerias

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#127

Post by purerandomness »

everdrive wrote: post #117
jsolson wrote: post #50

I need to send this to the people who designed the website for one of my favorite local pizza places, Dino's ( https://www.dinostomatopie.com/ ) -- they did _really_ well, generally, but no matter how hard you try, some things come through: the fonts rendered as text are perfectly crisp at whatever absurd DPI this Chromebook has.

This is better than 50% of websites out there today. I can find all the buttons, the functions of things are clear, and I know how to contact the owner. The menu is text instead of PDF, and the whole thing appears to run properly without javascript enabled.

* No scroll-jacking

* browser history actually works

* middle-click or ctrl+click on a link actually opens links in a new tab.

* No loading spinners, content is rendered immediately.

This site performs better than most SPAs.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#128

Post by kristopolous »

arrayjumper wrote: post #105
romwell wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, the download failed several times for me. When it finally worked, I was disappointed to see that I couldn't get it to run on Win 10 (64-bit). (It does appear to be a Windows executable, though)

I'm happy to report that I was able to download the zip file and run the executable on my Ubuntu box with Wine. It was quite surreal to see Netscape installer running on my 4k monitor. I was even able to open the browser and navigate to Google. Sadly https://www.dinostomatopie.com/ and http://www.dinostomatopie.com/ failed to open with a message saying "Netscape and this server cannot communicate securely because the…

You have to run the old browsers through a local proxy you configure yourself a lot of times these days if you're really interested in surfing the web with it.

I'm about to go to sleep but there's ones that forward https as http, convert webp and png to gif, strip JavaScript to prevent the browser from locking up, etc.

There's a real world use for this in crazy companies where people are forced on some old browser. This makes them not go down in glorious flames at every site.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#129

Post by leni536 »

a_lieb wrote: post #104
jsolson wrote: post #50

I need to send this to the people who designed the website for one of my favorite local pizza places, Dino's ( https://www.dinostomatopie.com/ ) -- they did _really_ well, generally, but no matter how hard you try, some things come through: the fonts rendered as text are perfectly crisp at whatever absurd DPI this Chromebook has.

This is glorious. The only way I could tell with any confidence it wasn't real was the clean, modern HTML and CSS (get with the program folks, this should be non-validating XHTML 1.1!) Nice easter egg from the source code: -->

topgun.mid actually exists.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#130

Post by leni536 »

vvillena wrote: post #106
edeion wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing that comes to my mind is: Are you joking? But I wonder to myself: what does he call blurry fonts. Anti-aliased fonts, of course. But I've never seen them as blurry and I guess most other people don't, otherwise we'd not like them better. Don't you think there could be a sight specificity? Do you have extremely sharp eyesight?

Windows does antialias in a special way. MacOS and Linux are usually configured to respect the font shapes, using subpixels as needed. Windows font rendering prefers to snap to the nearest pixel, increasing sharpness but not being as faithful to the letter shapes. Some people don't care, some people get used to both, but for some people going from Windows to anything else is difficult.

This is called hinting, it's configurable on Linux (don't know about MacOS).
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