IE9’s Stunning Text Rendering Quality | Hacker News Reader

IE9’s Stunning Text Rendering Quality

blogs.msdn.com

12 pointsbwag17 comments

Not having the source available screams rigged test to me.

Edit: If only because I remember what they tried to do with this chart - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/compare/d...

It looks like they were basing these comparisons on a Canvas based rendering of this PDF: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/529041/22860302-Yellowstone-NP.pdf

Which is a perfectly legitimate source - my issue is that the javascript they're using to render it onto the canvas isn't available for me (or anyone else) to test with.

It would be nice if he would link to the test page he is using, so that we could see what this looks like on non-windows platforms.

I was looking for it too - I've never seen Safari render anything that badly, and I'm not convinced until I see it in person

This article is actually espousing the fillText (Canvas) rendering quality and not standard HTML text rendering.

Here's a screenshot of the source PDF viewed in Preview.app on OSX with "Actual Size" zoom: http://cl.ly/1nr0

From the TFA ... All of the text is rendered with the canvas .fillText.

Of course you haven't seen anything that badly since there aren't many HTML5 apps around that render text on canvas. Duh!

Here, you can create your own test page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/drawing_text_using_a_canvas

Glad to see Microsoft getting on board with browser development and giving Mozilla, Google and Apple some competition.

I love Microsoft technology and when they put their minds to it, they do get it right I feel.

This is exactly why I love competition. Now if only there was a possibility for a truly windows alternative. As in runs all windows apps.

Competition = forces everyone to innovate, even Microsoft. I still have a prediction that in 3 years Microsoft will rise again.

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html - it's not fully there, but it's a start.

A few years down the road, displays may natively have higher PPI and this issue will become moot. See for example, http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/06/apple-retina...

The original title is downright dishonest. Who really cares about awesome canvas text-rendering, when most text will be outside of canvas?

What about real text or something other than just a canned webpage? Like, for example, the front page of the Times or something.

All of the text is rendered with the canvas .fillText command and there are no bitmap images…everything is either text or drawn to the canvas with vectors.

The NYT doesn't use the canvas element for it's front page - which is what this test is all about (even though it isn't very explicit about it).

Ah. My bad. Thank you.

What about raw text rendering and SVG rendering? I would like to see that as well

These all look terrible to me. I guess you get used to OSX fonts...

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