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Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

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Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#171

Post by toyg »

hocuspocus wrote: post #140
toyg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah, the usual "you're using it wrong". Apple can tweak their font rendering and favor hi-DPI screens if they want, but there's no excuse for messing up with settings that worked well in the past. Is it that hard for mac OS to automatically adjust these settings? Apple sold their awfully shiny 27" Thunderbolt display until 2016 after all.

This is really weird. I've stuck to Apple as much as possible since 2012 precisely because their handling of text is consistently top-notch on good screens without having to do anything. But according to you and the other guy above, that's wrong, because the default experience should be "old tech first". It's a bit like saying that tablets and phones should have a serial port instead of USB-C because "not everyone can afford a better cable".

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#172

Post by signal11 »

kristopolous wrote: post #128
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…

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. T…

While this is useful for people with out of date browsers, a slightly more sophisticated use-case is where you render the entire web page remotely in a sandbox for certain classes of links, eg email links. This prevents a whole class of phishing attacks.

There are companies who will sell this to you but essentially it’s really headless Chrome running in the cloud somewhere.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#173

Post by apricot »

jerome-jh wrote: post #70

I hate antialiasing. I absolutely cannot stand blurry fonts. First thing I do on a Linux box is install the ambiguously licensed "mscorefonts" and disable antialiasing everywhere possible. That is explained in the font-howto that may be a bit outdated now. Verdana for the interface, Times New Roman, Courier New for monospace ... aaaaahhhhh!

Ah, a kindred spirit. I do pretty much the same thing, and also use Terminus 9 in the terminal, where I spend most of my time these days.

I might eventually adopt antialiased fonts when I get a monitor with high enough resolution. For now, on a 96-dpi monitor, it's sharp fonts all the way. I can tell the difference after a day's work. Sharp fonts are easier on my eyes.

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#174

Post by 8lall0 »

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.

And the Netscape download link still works :D

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#176

Post by sebazzz »

jerome-jh wrote: post #70

I hate antialiasing. I absolutely cannot stand blurry fonts. First thing I do on a Linux box is install the ambiguously licensed "mscorefonts" and disable antialiasing everywhere possible. That is explained in the font-howto that may be a bit outdated now. Verdana for the interface, Times New Roman, Courier New for monospace ... aaaaahhhhh!

I can remember years ago trying to get Pidgin (the MSN Messenger client for Linux) to compile _with_ anti-aliasing enabled. This was not default for TCL/TK based programs at the time. Horrible! :)

Re: Convincing-looking 90s fonts in modern browsers

#177

Post by nurettin »

Stratoscope wrote: post #40
plerpin wrote: post #8

LOL! Funny how doing something in 2020 takes ten times the resources for doing the same thing in 1995. Every pixel on these fonts is now a complex vector path.

> ten times the resources for doing the same thing Is it really ten times the resources, and really doing the same thing? My computer today uses much less power than what I had in the '90s, and cost less too. It has an internal 4K display and two external 4K displays. My '90s computer had a single 1280x1024 CRT where I always had to tweak the focus and alignment to get readable text. With no GPU, scrolling in an edit…

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