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I just tried it. It's not the same, they're using Hinting to render better, but it's definitely not smooth.

my comparison http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/9537/textshadow.png

It's even worst at smaller font-size. My test font is relatively simple also, imagine the disaster the NYT font would be without a blank shadow.

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What browser is that in, and do you have anti-aliasing enabled in your OS? The 'original' text in your screenshot isn't anti-aliased at all, which I don't think should happen unless you have AA off on a system level.

You know what, it just dawned on me that at one point I had my IE7 ClearType disabled because I didn't like it's smoothing effect. I don't know if that setting is carried on to Chrome or not.

I'm on XP + Chrome.

AFAIK, ClearType settings apply system-wide. It should be pretty easy to tell though; if any non-image text in your browser is smoothed, it's on. If it's not, it's off.

What it sounds like the white drop shadow did in your case was simply force ClearType on for that text.

Thanks dude. I had initally turned off ClearType because smaller texts were too blurry or you could see a hint of red in some letters.

Found a tool that optimizes the contrast http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx

The difference is striking. This is a great tip, thank you for sharing.

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