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Comment by oddthink | Hacker News Reader

They still have a way to go to hit "pretty." Sadly, it's a lot harder to measure than "fast" or "slim". I wish I had the language to describe why Safari's font rendering is so much better than Firefox's; it's "visually obvious", but I just don't have the vocabulary or expertise to analyze.

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There are many articles about Safari's font rendering, here is one: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html I think it's more accurate to say that it's different, whether or not it is better seems to be a matter of preference and priorities.

I think the parent is talking about the difference in rendering between Firefox and Safari on OS X, not between Windows and OS X.

Yes, that was strictly on OS X. I would think that Firefox and Safari would be rendering fonts in the same way, but Safari somehow looks better.

I last compared only a few days ago. When I get back home, I can try again and see if I can get more analytic about what the difference is, but, as I said, part of the problem with this kind of aesthetic/design judgement is that I don't have the vocabulary to analyze it.

Here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/eSZfc.png

The difference is more obvious in Cyrillic text on the bottom -- there's something wrong with hinting in Firefox.

And another one: http://i.imgur.com/op1bj.png

In Windows Safari, text still sees the anti-aliased rendering that its Mac brethren enjoy in all browsers. That's what the parent is referring to.

No, the issue has nothing to do with differences between Windows and OS X rendering. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3798667

I'm a bit confused; on what basis can you possibly make this assumption?

I said (or tried to say) above that I was strictly talking about Firefox and Safari on OS X, not on Windows. Upon re-reading, it came out a little funny.

They've also been going backwards, with their missing favicon icon.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/890741 http://techlogon.com/2011/11/16/website-icons-missing-after-... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=702730

If they don't get this fixed I don't have much hope for them making it pretty.

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