HOWTO: Proper font smoothing in Firefox

[Mazza558]

For some reason, font smoothing isn't enabled in Firefox 3. Applying this tweak will force it to use the same smoothing as your gtk settings.

Step 1 - Open firefox settings page

- Open a new window or tab and paste this into the address bar...

about:config

Step 2 - Find and change the setting

- After clicking the "I'll be careful" button, type "gfx" into the Filter bar.

- The bottom option, called

gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting

is the one you want. Double-click to enable it, then restart Firefox.


Step 3 - Test it!

- Is your font quality better than before? Some fonts don't have any difference, whilst others (e.g ones downloaded yourself) do.

[kerry_s]

hmm, that's a "OS X" setting.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Gfx.use_te...othing_setting

[Mazza558]

hmm, that's a "OS X" setting.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Gfx.use_te...othing_setting

I could have sworn it made a difference for me...

[kerry_s]

I could have sworn it made a difference for me...

it might, it sounds like it just makes the browser respect system settings. linux and os x use different smoothing engines, but it might be close enough to give a little help.

any which way, i see no harm in leaving it on.

[kerry_s]

there is one you might want to try:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.di..._min_font_size

it's a quality over speed thing, so only you can decide what you prefer.

[chucky chuckaluck]

ouch! looks horrible for the font i use (urw palladio l), but it'll probably help some other fonts. good to know.

[SilverWave]

there is one you might want to try:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.di..._min_font_size

it's a quality over speed thing, so only you can decide what you prefer.

This setting is key by default(20) its almost never used.

As I wanted text to be optimized for display quality I set

browser.display.auto_quality_min_font_size = 0

Much Much better!

Possible values and their effects

A non-negative integer, specifying device pixels. Text rendered at this size or larger is optimized for display quality rather than display speed. Default is 20.
Caveats

• Text in chrome (the UI) is always rendered with the high-quality path.
• Web pages can override the effects of this preference by specifying the text-rendering CSS property.

Recommended settings

To use the highest quality display and legibility settings for all rendered text, set this preference to 0. Conversely, setting this preference to a very high number will cause Mozilla to use the fastest rendering methods for all text.

I don't think gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting makes any difference on Linux... but it would be useful if others could confirm.

[chele]

I set browser.display.auto_quality_min_font_size to 8. The default is to use fast but ugly fonts for anything below 20, which is pretty much everything.

[steveneddy]

I think it helped mine, too.