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Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

developer.chrome.com

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Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#51

Post by jayd16 »

nolok wrote: post #41
calebh wrote: post #29

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention about this issue. [1] The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. I'm surprised that none of the display manufacturers h…

> At the present moment OLED screens are the superior display technology Until the lighting condition move away from "99% perfect" and then it falls way below QLED.

Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#52

Post by wtallis »

jayd16 wrote: post #51
nolok wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the present moment OLED screens are the superior display technology Until the lighting condition move away from "99% perfect" and then it falls way below QLED.

Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?

On OLEDs, high levels of ambient light hitting the monitor tends to wash out blacks, making them appear dark gray, thereby subverting one of the most clear-cut advantages of OLED.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#53

Post by jgneff »

mrpippy wrote: post #45

My overriding feeling after reading this is: displaying text is a key job of a web browser. A browser that showed no text would be useless. And yet, after learning that Chromium's text looked wrong on Windows (by far the most important platform for Edge and Chrome), it took 4 years for the Chromium and/or Edge teams to fix it. 4 years of user research? 3 years to respect the user's ClearType Tuner values? Being a reg…

That's actually pretty fast. It took 10 years for Java[1] and 5 years for JavaFX[2] to fix some trivial but rather severe text rendering bugs. Most of that time was getting enough courage to fix them myself. :-)

Reporting text rendering bugs is frustratingly difficult!

[1] https://github.com/jgneff/openjdk-freetype

[2] https://github.com/javafxports/openjdk-jfx/issues/229

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#54

Post by gruez »

wtallis wrote: post #52
jayd16 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you just saying they're not as bright or is there something more there?

On OLEDs, high levels of ambient light hitting the monitor tends to wash out blacks, making them appear dark gray, thereby subverting one of the most clear-cut advantages of OLED.

And it's not an issue for other display technologies? Why not? Do the OLED cells have high reflectivity or something?

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#55

Post by gruez »

wtallis wrote: post #49
vlovich123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at the Steam Hardware Survey results, their statistics indicate an even worse situation, with over half of gaming users still stuck at 1920x1080. Are these the natural resolution of the monitor or just what people play games at? I suspect the latter because the most popular gards are more mid level / entry level cards. The 1650 is still at #4.

The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing. For most users, Steam starts when they log in to the computer. I think the unfortunate reality is that a very large number of gamers are still using 1920x1080 as their everyday ordinary screen resolution for their primary display, though a few percent at least are probably on laptops small enough that 1920x1080 is somewh…

>The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing

Who's installing steam on their non-gaming computer?

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#56

Post by wtallis »

mrpippy wrote: post #45

My overriding feeling after reading this is: displaying text is a key job of a web browser. A browser that showed no text would be useless. And yet, after learning that Chromium's text looked wrong on Windows (by far the most important platform for Edge and Chrome), it took 4 years for the Chromium and/or Edge teams to fix it. 4 years of user research? 3 years to respect the user's ClearType Tuner values? Being a reg…

To an unfortunately large degree, browsers and browser engines are simply not concerned with respecting the host platform's defaults and conventions. The browsers are here to replace (and reinvent) the host platforms, not integrate with them. Developers writing apps to run in a browser engine are more likely to care about their app looking the same across all devices and operating systems, even if their users may care more about the app following the same conventions as other apps on their platform of choice.

Edge getting this wrong is embarrassing for Microsoft, but is not at all surprising when you take into account how notoriously fractious Microsoft is and how unlikely it is that anyone in Microsoft could enforce a cohesive vision for UI standards to the extent of being able to make this a release blocker for Edge.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

gruez wrote: post #55
wtallis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing. For most users, Steam starts when they log in to the computer. I think the unfortunate reality is that a very large number of gamers are still using 1920x1080 as their everyday ordinary screen resolution for their primary display, though a few percent at least are probably on laptops small enough that 1920x1080 is somewh…

>The Steam Hardware Survey samples the system when Steam is launched, not while a game is playing Who's installing steam on their non-gaming computer?

I still have Steam installed on the laptop that was long ago replaced as my gaming computer but which is occasionally used for other purposes, because I have no particular reason to remove it.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#59

Post by wtallis »

gruez wrote: post #54
wtallis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On OLEDs, high levels of ambient light hitting the monitor tends to wash out blacks, making them appear dark gray, thereby subverting one of the most clear-cut advantages of OLED.

And it's not an issue for other display technologies? Why not? Do the OLED cells have high reflectivity or something?

I don't know the mechanism behind it, but I've done side by side comparisons and it's clear to the untrained eye that the impressive contrast ratio of OLEDs is easily weakened by ambient lighting conditions.

Re: Better text rendering in Chromium-based browsers on Windows

#60

Post by mananaysiempre »

BearOso wrote: post #46
calebh wrote: post #29

It would be great if we could also go ahead and fix subpixel anti-aliasing for OLED screens. People have been been trying for years to get Microsoft's attention about this issue. [1] The subpixel layout of OLED screens is different than the the traditional layout, so text ends up looking pretty bad. Patching ClearType would be the first step to fixing this issue. I'm surprised that none of the display manufacturers h…

It's not that easy. With the stripe layouts, all you have to do is increase the horizontal or vertical resolution when rasterizing, then map that to subpixels. There's no current methodology or algorithms to deal with triangular layouts, etc. And OLED's subpixel layouts have been moving around yearly with both LG and Samsung. Those two even have RGB stripe layouts forecast for the future.

Once upon a time I owned a LCD monitor with diagonal subpixels[1], and subpixel antialiasing absolutely didn’t work on that either. It’s just that it was very niche and I’m not sure if there were even any follow-up products that used the same arrangement.

[1] Samsung SyncMaster 173P (released 2004, bought IIRC 2006)

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