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Browser Differences in Google Web Font

I decided to use the Google Web Font "Signika": http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Signika

While I absolutely love how this font looks when rendered, some browsers or platforms do not offer this luxury to their users.

Here is what I noticed:

  • Arch Linux - the latest chrome - perfect
  • Arch Linux - The Latest Firefox - Perfect
  • 64-bit Win7 - last Chrome - bad (same as the image on the right, if I remember correctly)
  • 64-bit version of Win7 (virtual virtual machine) - latest Firefox - bad (see picture below)
  • Win7 64-bit (virtual virtual machine) - IE9 - Perfect ??? (see picture below)

The last 2 surprise me. Here's a comparison of rendering with IE9 on the left and Firefox on the right. Both are on the same computer (Win7 64-bit virtual virtual machine).

IE9 vs latest Firefox

On the left it looks like it is smoothed out - the pixels are not black or white, but also intermediate. The one on the right looks only using two colors.

When IE9 browser mode is set to IE8 or IE7, the fonts begin to look like Firefox on this machine (not smooth).

I'm trying to figure it out. What exactly is happening, and is there something you can do to make it look smooth? I searched for similar issues and tried the following suggested fixes / workarounds:

font-smooth: always; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

and

 text-shadow:0 0 1px transparent;

no effect. (Tried them on a 64-bit (virtual virtual machine) Win7 with the latest Firefox)

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

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Comment in an earlier post under webfonts related to this article . It explains that if you decide to use a host, you must convert it to webfonts using Postscript outlines.

Since you are using open source Google Webfont. You can try this technique before moving to adjust font smoothing using CSS.

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