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I seem to have the same issue with Chrome on Windows.

Chrome[1] seems to not do any anti-aliasing, as opposed to Firefox[2].

What you're seeing is that Chrome is using the (terrible) old Windows GDI ClearType font rendering, whereas Firefox is using the (newer, less terrible) DirectWrite font rendering. This can be enabled in Chrome by visiting chrome://flags . Specifically, what you're mostly seeing here is that ClearType does not antialias in the Y dimension, which is why you see stairstepping. (Firefox will also use GDI font rendering if it is not using Direct2D acceleration, IIRC.)

Of course, a lot of people have complained that DirectWrite rendering is "fuzzy", so to each their own I guess.

I've been starting to use webfonts and this issue has been very annoying for me (as a Linux user, where pretty much all fonts look good).

There is a windows service app called gdi++ which replaces the default renderer. I use it but sadly it won't help others visiting your own site

If you want to avoid that, do you have to stick with standard system fonts for chrome windows? Is the issue google web fonts specifically?

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