Mimicing IE behavior probably makes sense for other browsers, with an option to disable it for those users that don’t like Cleartype rendering.

DirectWrite does a much better job of rendering small text (<8px) and large text appears less jaggy due to better vertical anti-aliasing.

It’s a shame, however, that so many webfonts look like crap when viewed on Windows-based browsers. The common effect is that they look much lighter in weight than when viewed on a Mac browser.

For instance, I recently found a lovely alternate font for OSX’ standard font, Hoefler Text. It looked lovely when replaced on OSX browsers, but when using it in an @font-face include on Windows browser, it just looked too light and sharp. This is a shame, because the alternate font was mostly for Windows browser user’s benefit when viewing the website in question. Because the alternate looked like crap, I just degraded to Palatino in the font-stack.

So, because of these font-rendering issues, that I haven’t quite figured out yet, in Windows, I’m back to using web-safe. How pointless is that?

It seems like an axis of anti-aliasing is missing, or something. I read something about hinting this morning, perhaps that is it.

Of course, I could be missing something obvious, but I’ve done a fair amount of playing around with these technologies and haven’t got something I’m totally happy with yet.

Actually there is indirectly. If we assume that the fonts provided to font hosting companies by foundries are the most up-to-date versions, Cleartype hinted, and generally the best available for rendering on screen, then it is these fonts which will be used to render text and not older poorly hinted versions.

Thus font hosting companies offer the possibility of ensuring that the best rendering fonts are used because they can always provide the latest version to browsers

[Agreed that this could help. - T]

“The solution is for sites to outsource targeted font serving like they do Google ads. Both are complicated distribution problems, with many variables that are frequently updated”

If I am correctly understanding you, you seem to be saying that there is something that “expert” font hosting companies can do about the way fonts render.
On what evidence? Frankly, this makes no sense at all. Font serving firms have no more power to make fonts look good in various browsers and platforms than does any competent web designer or developer. And if they were to employ some hack that, somehow, magically made a font look good, it would quickly become known and copied by all.

Ugly, beautiful – it’s all beside the point. The web grew like a weed when we were all squinting in the glare of CRT screens waiting and waiting for pages to download over dial-up connections. Ah, the days when every font looked like crap!
A few ragged edges isn’t going to stop anybody who wants to set themselves apart typographically.

The uglier it is, the better I like it, actually. And if the past is any guide, I’m in the majority. Font-linking promises a whole new wave of ghastly fonts that will probably bring another half a billion people online in just a few years.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must “retreat back into my cave” for the night, the sun is hanging low in the sky.

Rich

But most bloggers are tiptoeing around the increasing evidence that fonts that are *not* carefully hinted for Windows, look like crap when used below, say, 30 px.

And worse if the user left ClearType off in XP/IE!

An encrusted cynic might say that people who use XP don’t know what good type looks like, or don’t care, so let’s not worry about them. But the problem is that if a bunch of web fonts get out there without the right hints, the public could decide web fonts are a bad idea, and developers will retreat back into their caves.

One font does not fit all, and we’re are going to have find a way to target the right font to each browser/OS combination. (Mobile browsers will soon accept web fonts, too.) Even if Microsoft and everyone else embrace the new WOFF format, even if we abandon the hapless XP clients, we’ll have to deal for years with the trailing installed base of ClearType and EOT.

The solution is for sites to outsource targeted font serving like they do Google ads. Both are complicated distribution problems, with many variables that are frequently updated.

We have the chance to get this problem solved. If we don’t, web sites may have to wait another 15 years to get a choice of typefaces.

[That's... interesting, and potentially worrisome to the general principle. I had my info on that point from Microsoft fonts program manager Si Daniels. I tested it myself in Vista with IE8. In that combination, I verified that IE simply responds to the system setting. Mind you, it can sometimes get temporarily confused, which is usually addressed by reloading the page or restarting IE. - T]