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You're right, because Safari on OS X relies on the BSD/Unix/Next Security subsystems and obscurity to protect it. On Windows, it will be analyzed, prodded, poked and hacked to death. And I bet Vista will nullify a lot of those threats, so Apple can write a crappy browser without fear.

but why are fonts blurred?

They're not blurred, they just use a different rendering engine (the one in OS X).

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html

I just hope Apple enable ClearType there... It works much better (IMHO)... (The reason as there font rendering works "ok" in MacOS X are the fonts installed in the system designed for this system, but I don't think the result is quite up to the same final quality working on Windows).

...and yes, it's blurrier than CT... =] (may respect better some shapes, but I'd prefer easier reading)


...in other subject, the app still have some problems with 100% consuption on several sites, but it's MUCH better than 3.0.0 was! I hope they continue to improve like than, solve some plugins' performance problems and somehow add sessions to help saving your browsing with crashes and personal preferences.)

> The reason as there font rendering works "ok" in MacOS X are the fonts installed in the system designed for this system, but I don't think the result is quite up to the same final quality working on Windows

They work as OK (or as bad) in Mac OS X as they do in Safari for Windows. Windows renderer prefers sharpness by distorting fonts so as to make them stick to absolute pixel coordinates, at the expense of their original shape; Mac OS X (and Safari's) renderer prefers honoring the typeface original shape at the expense of having to antialias vertical and horizontal lines.

Fonts look the same in OS X as they look in Safari. I guess it is a matter of preference/getting used to.

Are all fonts on OS X that "blurry"? Seriously that looks terrible on my monitor. I tried out Safari last week and it worked fine but no matter what font smoothing setting I set in the preferences they looked too blurry.

I haven't really had a chance to use Safari on Windows, but I've never noticed fonts being blurry in OS X, let alone Safari. In fact, OS X's fonts look the cleanest out of any OS (Windows/Linux, etc..) - to me.

Now it's able to render HTML :o)

But this blurring of fonts is somewhat bewildering.

>but I've never noticed fonts being blurry in OS X

Different kind of technique. People used to Windows or X font rendering don't like the technique of MacOS X and vice versa.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/11.html

Most likely XP's Font Engine interpolates the result poorly.

The Fonts via OS X are very rich.

XP's font engine isn't used. That is the problem.

That's a pretty big assumption. Maybe OS X does it poorly, or the port of OS X's font smoothing technology doesn't work very well.

For me it looks blurred:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5632/untitled1mc7.gif

While this is ok when you try the browser every once in a while, I wouldn't work on a computer that has dirty fonts like that. Does Safari have cleaner fonts in OS X?

I hope they improve fonts rendering in the future.

For me it looks blurred

Fine, then they're blurred to you. But as Joel said in that blog post I linked you to, this "blurriness" (it's actually "fuzziness") is a trade-off which is made to please the print professionals who use the Mac.

The fonts in OSX are all like that, yes. I use OSX, Windows, and Linux. While I like OS X's fonts when using OS X, they look extremely crappy and out of place on my Vista box (when running Safari). I'm sure the same would be the case for Windows' fonts on OS X.

I hope they improve fonts rendering in the future.

OSX' font rendering will remain the way it is. Cleartype and Apple's method both serve a different purpose; in some cases, you want the fonts on your screen to look like how they are printed [OSX], and sometimes you want them to be best for readability [Cleartype].

Different ends, different means.

Cleartype and Apple's method both serve a different purpose; in some cases, you want the fonts on your screen to look like how they are printed [OSX], and sometimes you want them to be best for readability [Cleartype].

This is right. I do have a printer but I almost never use it; 99% of my computer usage is on screen. But this is a good thing to know that OS X is aimed at printing professionals. Their computers look good and I was thinking about buying an iMac in the end of the year. I think I'll buy a regular computer. Font rendering isn't the only problem. There's also software compatibility.

That's stupid. No one prints out web pages and read them. When you use a computer, you read on the screen and don't want blurry fonts.

If it's really that important, printing apps could enable blur while the rest of the system uses readable fonts. Should have been easy to implement.

If the want to do something better than Microsoft they should let the decision to the users.

Unfortunately you can't improve fonts rendering in Safari because it's got its own fonts rendering engine. It's blurry because graphic designers prefer it this way.

it is called antialiasing.

It uses a different rendering engine, but you can make them a bit sharper:
Go to Edit > Preferences, select the Appereance section and in Font smoothing select "Light".
Close the window (there is no Apply button, changes are applied immediately).

----

About 3.0.2: it finally works! Menu text shows up correctly, clicking in bookmarks doesn't crash it anymore, dragging tabs down to a separate window works, and there is no missing text on any webpage. I used it continuously for a couple of hours on XP and everything seemed to work as expected, except for the mind-blowing number of ads on every website! I don't think I could browse the web on a daily basis without adblock on Firefox or the adblocking plugins available for the OS X version of Safari:
http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/?c=Adblocking

It's absolutely awful. I know it's a beta, but it's ugly and just generally crap. I'm surprised Mac users put up with it.

Not to mention that fact that they've forced that hideous metal skin on Windows users isn't going to go down well. It might work with iTunes, but there's no need to use Safari. Firefox, Opera and IE 6/7 all look nicer and function better.

Edited 2007-06-24 00:13

Well, it's a beta, you are "beta testing"

Did you tell Apple? There's a menu item under the Help menu called "Report Bugs to Apple". It's probably the best way to get something done about it.

I WAS beta testing, I dont mind the odd weird crashes, odd fonts.
But when a serious company cannot get the the fundamentals right like saving simple settings like bookmarks and pages where I can even begin to start testing the browser, I gave up.

Well, I don't have the problem so maybe it's something to do with your particular setup which may or may not apply to others, either way your feedback to Apple would have been useful.

What custom settings are you losing????

That's a personal preference. My order of preference in the way fonts are displayed goes like this:

1) GNOME
2) OS X
3) Windows.

For some weird reason, I find the fonts in a default GNOME install beautiful. They are dark and readable. OS X is a very close 2nd. Cleartype just rubs me the wrong way.

Thankfully, there is choice. Choice is good

I'm surprised you put Windows #3.
Fonts displayed in Gnome are similar to fonts displayed in Windows with ClearType.

Not really. Safari renders fonts in a similar way to freetype.

BTW - In my experience Safari is much slower than FF and Opera, maybe just as slow as IE7. Their benchmarks lie.

"What's the problem with metal brushed theme?"

It's not so much the theme (though it looks hideously out of place on Windows) as it is the fact that Apple doesn't follow Microsoft guidelines for menus, active vs inactive window highlighting, etc...they use their own in house paradigms which if you use a Mac, no problem, but I always have to tell newbies where to change Apple application options is (Edit/Preferences on Mac vs Tools/Options on Windows). The guidelines exist for a reason.

"if that's the case then I should be hating Microsoft right now because their WMP 11 is a themed-app."

It's themed for Vista, and IMO it's no less different looking than WMP 10. One of MS's new guidelines is no menu items, or menu items that only appear when you hit Alt (which is configurable in both IE 7 and WMP 11).