Opera resolution quality is not as sharp/crystal clear as IE9 & Firefox 10.2

Opera resolution quality is not as sharp/crystal clear as IE9 & Firefox 10.2

I like Opera, but I have noticed a very noticeable difference in resolution quality when compared to IE 9 & Firefox 10.2 . This is nothing whatsoever to do with screen/resolution settings which are 100% correct (1920 x 1080, 23" wide-thin screen).

With IE9/Firefox. all text, forums, pictures etc are cystal clear, crisp, sharp & defined. With opera, it's far less defined, and text isn't quite as black - (think akin to the printing resolution difference between 150dpi & 1200 dpi). It's not unusable by any means, but I'd like the same quality.

Operating system Windows 7 (but same in XP), and 'cleartype' installed/set correctly.

Any idea as to what the problem is? (opera settings perhaps).

Thanks

Rich

This has been mentioned before.

What I did to make Fonts "stand out" a little more is to go to
Preferences,Advanced, Fonts, and then highlight a Font in the box like
"Webpage Normal Text" select Choose, then in the middle right is a box that says, "Weight" change it to BOLD and click OK

Do that for any font you want to change.

HTH

Appreciate response, but its the whole look thats the problem not just text

I just checked this site on both Opera and Internet Explorer and at first agreed with your original statement.

Then I moved the slider in the lower right corner a bit to get the same size as IE and then I couldn't tell the difference.

I don't know how to make that setting the default but that might solve your problem.

Cleartype *BLURS* text to make it appear softer... you appear to want the opposite effect.


Truthfully, you need screenies to get clear answers.

There should be absolutely no difference in how either browser displays a raster image (JPG, GIF, PNG). If you are really seeing a difference with images, maybe Opera isn't set to 100% zoom.

I was going to say that there should also not be a difference on how fonts are rendered between Opera and IE on Windows, but it appears I'm incorrect. For me, IE is the worse option. Opera is using the Cleartype AA as defined in my Windows display settings, but IE is using a different AA which is noticeably poorer. It's got me beat why IE would not use with Windows setting.

As Bastante has suggested, we need screenshots to give a definite answer.

Originally posted by Bastante:

Cleartype *BLURS* text to make it appear softer... you appear to want the opposite effect.

Just pointing out, Cleartype does not blur text any more than the other type of font antialiasing. It just takes advantage of the fact that the positions of the red, green and blue lights in a pixel on an LCD screen are located side by side horizontally to get access to three times the resolution for antialiasing.

Originally posted by expN:

It just takes advantage of the fact that the positions of the red, green and blue lights in a pixel on an LCD screen are located side by side horizontally to get access to three times the resolution for antialiasing.

Is that why it's red on the left and blue on the right? I had no idea is was because of the position of the sub-pixel colours on an LCD. That's so clever.

Originally posted by expN:

Originally posted by Bastante:

Cleartype *BLURS* text to make it appear softer... you appear to want the opposite effect.

Just pointing out, Cleartype does not blur text any more than the other type of font antialiasing. It just takes advantage of the fact that the positions of the red, green and blue lights in a pixel on an LCD screen are located side by side horizontally to get access to three times the resolution for antialiasing.

Except "Font Smoothing" "Blurs Text"... that is the design and intention. ClearType is a type of font smoothing and hence, it blurs text.

Also... what? A pixel is effectively "a pixel." Eitherway, if we could see the subpixels (remember, the effective DPI increases the further you are away from the monitor (ignoring effects of depth-of-field), yes we can photograph them... but it takes a trained eye to see them from a normal position), then cleartype would REDUCE the resolution, not increase it. With clear type on, you have (RGB) (R * *) ( * * * ) ( * * B ) ( RGB ) in contrast to (RGB) ( * * * ) ( * * * ) ( * * * ) (RGB).

It's just that Microsoft sabotaged standard font smoothing in Windows 7, introduced a malalignment bug, forced cleartype on several system fonts and hid the disabling of font smoothing under a system options menu. So when people disable cleartype they see the text become malaligned and watered down, hence assume that cleartype is awesome and leave it on... those that seek to disable it have to look elsewhere, and even after it is turned off, it remains on. You could just double the pixels used to render text and get all the hype of "font smoothing" with none of the blurry text... but then you couldn't act like you did something "smart".

Fortunately, Microsoft does not have the power to make upgrading to XP illegal... yet.


Meh, this is really off topic and ranty... but font smoothing is best turned off... and if you are blind, an increase in font size supplies far more "resolution" than font smoothing. (honestly, this was just a stunt for the transition from CRTs, it should have died ages ago).

Originally posted by Bastante:

Meh, this is really off topic and ranty...

It sure was, but I'll bite

but font smoothing is best turned off...

No it's not. We use AA on rendered graphics because jaggies distract from the image. Font smoothing makes fonts look "un-pixelated". It may not be necessary on a 300 DPI display, but on 96 DPI it's a genuine improvement.

and if you are blind, an increase in font size supplies far more "resolution" than font smoothing.

If you're blind you would not need to use font smoothing at all because your eyes would not see the jaggies. I had an client complain that her new LCD was blurry despite running at native resolution--I had to inform her that the monitor was pixel perfect and that the blurriness was her eye-sight. True story.

(honestly, this was just a stunt for the transition from CRTs, it should have died ages ago).

Utter trolling rubbish. Perhaps people have forgotten what CRTs looked like. Cleartype on a CRT looked aweful, but CRTs were not pixel sharp, so the effect made blurry fonts look blurrier. LCDs, as you said, are pixel perfect, so cleartype creates the illusion of additional resolution. It's not a stunt because it works. Macs have used AA on fonts long before MS, but the effect did not take advantage of LCD subpixels and looked simply awful.