Vista font mystery solved 25 April 2008

A few months ago I blogged about the way the Vista fonts displayed on my non-Vista machine. The edges were ragged and nearly transparent, and I had to squint at my screen to read them at smaller sizes. This created a dilemma for me as a web site designer: do I use something I can’t even see?

Today I asked the Wise-Women for their opinion on integrating Vista fonts into web sites, with that dilemma in mind, since I have a client whose site was made for Cambria. I mentioned how the Vista fonts didn’t display correctly on my machine, and resident web deity Al Sparber told me to enable the Cleartype option. I had disabled it, along with all of the other memory-sapping graphic display options, a few years ago at the suggestion of my dead friend (this was before he was dead, he doesn’t help me with my computer anymore, lazy b*****d).

Dayum! Thanks to Al’s advice I feel like I have a whole new machine now. All fonts - not just Vista and not just fonts in browsers - now look smooth and sharp, and the screen resolution is now practically 3D.

The dilemma still remains, though. If I didn’t know that the option had to be enabled, how will a client? In this client’s case, we can answer the dilemma through marketing know-how: her own clients are a high end corporate market using state of the art technology on Windows systems. They’ll have Cambria, and it’s highly likely they’ll have Cleartype enabled by default. Happy days!