This is true. I've been using it for a while, but it's great to see it switched on by default. Hopefully more designers will be able to use web fonts without having to worry about how it looks in Chrome/Windows (probably the most popular browser/operating system combination.)
> It's nice for speed and the fact that you don't need to use a library any more, bit isn't more secure than JS Crypto was before.
It's a significant improvement in one area: the key storage API. If you use JavaScript crypto, your keys can be read by an attacker who can compromise that code in some way. WebCrypto can't stop that attacker from signing, encrypting or decrypting a message which the attacker has access to but it does prevent the key leaking out, which is often a far more catastrophic event.
This is great. Finally web fonts and icon fonts don't look terrible on Windows/Chrome. I'm using Chrome Canary to test, and you can really see the difference on Google Fonts and the Font Awesome homepage. GDI with ClearType only does anti-aliasing in the x-direction, so the tops of letters like G and Q look pretty blocky in Chrome stable. With DirectWrite they look perfect.
I've been using DirectWrite on Canary as well, and its a huge improvement. Some may even like Chrome's DirectWrite implementation over IE11's, which tends to produce really thick letters for some reason. Here's the same text rendered in IE11, Firefox and Chrome (on Windows 7) -- http://i.imgur.com/pOUJlHE.png
I was surprised to see that DirectWrite was introduced to Firefox version 4 back in 2010 [0] - though the release notes don't seem to mention it explicitly [1]
The support for the dialog element is great, but is it a bug that the scrolling example scrolls the entire page (and moves the dialog offscreen) when the inner scroll bar hits the bottom of the div? Or is that just a limitation of the polyfill?
That's because the font you're using is set to render without antialiasing – the old system just rendered everything larger and then scaled down (supersampling), while the new system actually uses real antialiasing and only when the flag is set.
Is it me, or is the text using DirectWrite (in 37) much worse than the text using the manual renderer (in 36)? The harshness of the renderer is one reason I prefer Chrome over IE.
Oh no, it's not you. I say that without DirectWrite font looks nice and smooth. With DirectWrite it's broken, it looks like some Win 3.11 font without anti aliasing. Just look at letter w - you can see pixels forming diagonal lines. And bottom row with grey letters is almost unreadable.
Edit: I was referring to screenshot shown in article, not to DirectWrite in general.
I'm sorry but I still don't share your opinion, even after looking at 1:1 screenshot. Just look at the 'crisp' letter w - for me it's not crisp, it's jagged. I can clearly see vertical line after vertical line (offset to the right), trying to make diagonal lines which constitute the letter. In contrast, "old" style w looks very smooth, much closer to what one would write by hand. Also look at the top of the curve in letter e - it is actually not a curve at all but a horizontal line which stands out.
Lately I've found myself using Firefox more and more. The last couple of weeks Chrome and Canary have been hanging a lot, especially when I want to download a file. Chrome will slow to a crawl, tabs will stop rendering and when I try to close it thinks it's still downloading something.
As someone who's been using Chrome since the first public release I wish it were a bit more stable (for me at least).
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 85.9 ms ] threadIt's a significant improvement in one area: the key storage API. If you use JavaScript crypto, your keys can be read by an attacker who can compromise that code in some way. WebCrypto can't stop that attacker from signing, encrypting or decrypting a message which the attacker has access to but it does prevent the key leaking out, which is often a far more catastrophic event.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19746944/canary.png
[0]:http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1775755
[1]:http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_r...
quote: "The default monospace font on Windows is now Consolas instead of Courier New."
Ah, your screenshot is v36, not v37.
Edit: I was referring to screenshot shown in article, not to DirectWrite in general.
Or is it the "Adjust ClearType text"
Make a screenshot of those and look at it on a different monitor, and things can look very ugly.
As someone who's been using Chrome since the first public release I wish it were a bit more stable (for me at least).