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Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

Even worse (or probably related) than the general contrast problem is the absolutely crazy suggestion to use

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

in your CSS (http://maxvoltar.com/archive/-webkit-font-smoothing)

I've yet to come across an instance where antialiased is better than using subpixel hinting.

In addition, I think it's crazy that the browser would allow a site designer to alter such a highly OS- or even machine-specific setting.

Heck - there's even special tuning wizards in most OSes to configure the subpixel hinting perfectly for a specific monitor.

Dear designer, turning that off for everybody just because you didn't manage to configure it correctly on your machine is egoistic and, IMHO, plain stupid as you make everyone suffer for a thing you should fix at your end.

/endrant

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I am mostly on your side. I wrote a rant a while back too: http://peterc.org/blog/2010/235-webkit-font-smoothing-antial...

However, since then I acknowledge there is an instance where it does make sense.. any text on black. In OS X, at least, the default rendering of type on a black background bleeds horribly, so I've swallowed my pride and started to use it in situations where it makes sense. It's particularly noticeable with Helvetica, I've found.

> In OS X, at least, the default rendering of type on a black background bleeds horribly

It depends on monitor's gamma!

My monitor with generic color profile exhibits the opposite: black-on-white is bleeding red badly, but white-on-black looks fine.

The issue is (mostly) fixable by using appropriate monitor color profile.

Yeah, well... you know... that's just, like, your opinion, man.

I think subpixel hinting looks terrible. I think letterforms are really interesting and beautiful and I actually want to see them when I use the web.

That said, I do agree that web sites shouldn't override the browser settings for body text. But turning off hinting of titles is probably reasonable.

There's a number of tech blogs linked here regularly which use anti-aliased html5 fonts that end up looking spidery/ghostly and really hard to read. I have to use Readable or text highlighting just to read them.

Campaigns like the OP that raise awareness are very much needed, there's no downside to them.

The downside is that the argument is not very effective.

Those designers believe that anti-aliased fonts look better and no tirade will convince them. It’s just ineffective to try and convince them that anti-aliased fonts should not be used. It’s the wrong argument.

Here is what the argument should be: Most users of the web (nearly everyone not using XP and everyone using Internet Explorer 7 and XP) have anti-aliasing turned on by default. There is no need to worry about them. Additionally, the property designers are using to turn anti-aliasing on doesn’t even work for many browsers. It’s mostly targeting users of Chrome or Safari and XP. That’s a really small subset of users and the benefit of enabling anti-aliasing for them is doubtful. Most other websites won’t be anti-aliased for them, the one that is will likely stick out and somehow look “wrong” to them – not because anti-aliasing is objectively worse but because they are just not used to it.

Who will be very angry is everyone who explicitly disabled anti-aliasing. That’s a small minority, for sure, but I don’t see how the benefits are worth that tradeoff in any way.

Yes, a thousand times yes. Even worse are those who use

    -webkit-text-stroke: 1px transparent;

which absolutely _kills_ scrolling performance.

>This is what we see by default. Some people like it, most don’t. (from maxvoltar, on the default webkit rendering (subpixel-antialiased))

Unsubstantiated claim is unsubstantiated. I, for one, find that I can read more quickly with OSX-style text rendering, and efficiency matters to me.

As to the "high contrast movement" OP, I find the lower contrast easier on my eyes. And I have friends who have to wear sunglasses to read books / computer screens because of the high contrast. It's a horse apiece.

As to the "high contrast movement" OP, I find the lower contrast easier on my eyes. And I have friends who have to wear sunglasses to read books / computer screens because of the high contrast. It's a horse apiece.

External monitors, at least, have contrast controls as well as brightness (I wonder why laptops don't).

The closest I've seen has been "Shades" for OSX - it just puts a colored transparent layer over everything (by default black) that makes the screen darker. Handy at night, when the lowest setting is still too bright, though it does make the not-blackness of on-screen black stand out.

You sure they're wearing sunglasses for the high contrast and not because of the white background?

Totally, absolutely agree. Apple's website actually forces antialiased text through that CSS rule. I wrote a userstyle to force it back to how it should look.

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