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Text looks so ugly! It's fine in IE

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  • Last reply by sprog

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Thisn is the sceond time I've installed Firefox and I have the same problem - text looks all spidery and aliassy compared to IE. It's the same on all websites (includig this one), and just so uneasy on the eye. What is the point of a browser that cannot even render text correctly, surely that's pretty basic? Other people reporting the same problem here have been offered insanely complex answers involving hardware accelerators and anti-alisaing tuner add-ons that no longer download (I have tried) but why should it be necessary, let alone so hard, to fix something so basic? How do Firefox users put up with such ugly, spidery text when IE displaye text so nicely? Is there a fix that is within the capabilities of a non-expert? Thx.

Thisn is the sceond time I've installed Firefox and I have the same problem - text looks all spidery and aliassy compared to IE. It's the same on all websites (includig this one), and just so uneasy on the eye. What is the point of a browser that cannot even render text correctly, surely that's pretty basic? Other people reporting the same problem here have been offered insanely complex answers involving hardware accelerators and anti-alisaing tuner add-ons that no longer download (I have tried) but why should it be necessary, let alone so hard, to fix something so basic? How do Firefox users put up with such ugly, spidery text when IE displaye text so nicely? Is there a fix that is within the capabilities of a non-expert? Thx.

Chosen solution

You can enable ClearType system wide for all programs to make other programs like Firefox use it.

XP: Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Effects: "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts"


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Chosen Solution

You can enable ClearType system wide for all programs to make other programs like Firefox use it.

XP: Control Panel > Display > Appearance > Effects: "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts"


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Hi, the anti-aliasing tuner does not work in XP, says Win 7/Vista in the spec and doesn't seem to install, but the Cleartype thing was the fix - brilliant, looks much better, many thanks!