Fuzzy Fonts

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 3:00 pm

I just donwloaded a new version (old one was from Nov/03) and I like the nice clean font of the top-level menu. However, the sub-menus' fonts are fuzzy. Any idea how I could tweak that?

See http://www.danen.org/ for what I mean.

Thx

Post by **John** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 3:27 pm

Hi Gerry -

I don't see any difference at all between the main and subs. They are both equally clear and sharp. The fact that you're using the same style for both would also seem to back that up. XP Pro/IE6.

BTW, status=; is not necessary, as it's an empty item.

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 3:31 pm

Hi Gerry,

I don't see any difference, but then I'm on a Mac.

Fonts can vary on many levels, the computer font, the font you selected and the size of the font.

So check the fonts you have on the menu and the sizes until you find something that works for you.

Regards,
maz

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 5:01 pm

John wrote:Hi Gerry -

I don't see any difference at all between the main and subs. They are both equally clear and sharp. The fact that you're using the same style for both would also seem to back that up. XP Pro/IE6.

Hi John,

Thanks for the quick reply.

It only seems to be a problem on my laptop XP PRO w/ IE6...
http://www.danen.org/fuzzyfonts.bmp has a cropped screenshot. Note that some of the divider lines are also missing.

That said, it works fine on two other Win2000/IE6 machines...

fredlongworthhighschool · Wed Aug 04, 2004 9:50 am

Is that not the 'cleartype' settings in display properties?

Right click desktop
Click "Properties"
Click "Appearance" tab
Click "effects" button
In the "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" -
tick and set to "standard"

That works fine on my laptop with 15" screen but I have to set it the opposite way on my PC with 20" TFT.

Post by **John** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:55 pm

I think Andy may have hit it (thank you). I use the same settings he does for the big machine (no laptop). Made a huge difference when I set it to ClearType there.

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 2:57 pm

fredlongworthhighschool wrote:Is that not the 'cleartype' settings in display properties?
That works fine on my laptop with 15" screen but I have to set it the opposite way on my PC with 20" TFT.

"standard" makes my fonts look worse, but has no effect on sub menus.

Post by **John** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:03 pm

Aw, shucks (and stuff!). Your screen shot certainly shows the problem, but I don't know what else to tell you. Given that all is well on other machines it seems to point the finger at the laptop.

Does a different font fail the same way?

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:28 pm

John wrote:Aw, shucks (and stuff!). Your screen shot certainly shows the problem, but I don't know what else to tell you. Given that all is well on other machines it seems to point the finger at the laptop.

Does a different font fail the same way?

Arial vs Verdana fails too. But you may be right with the laptop. It's a widescreen unit (1920x1200 resolution). Perhaps the video driver is doing something when stretching the image. Curious though why the top level menu looks fine, but the subs don't.

I'll do some more tinkering. If I find the solution, I'll post it here.

Post by **John** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:33 pm

Sorry I couldn't be more help, Gerry.

My desktop flat panel is a 1600x1200/20" unit. Sharp as a tack there, but maybe laptops aren't quite up to snuff yet. Still leaves the question of main/OK, sub/bad, though.

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 1:14 am

John wrote:Sorry I couldn't be more help, Gerry.

It's tough if you can't replicate it in your own environment and 7 or 8 hours time difference does not help either...

I was just going through the samples on your site, and noticed that the top level menus are fuzzy too. So are the tooltips. Could it be that the menu is ignoring the system settings for "clear text?" The download code on the samples is probably up to date, but are the samples themselves?

Grasping at straws...

Post by **John** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 3:43 pm

gdanen wrote:It's tough if you can't replicate it in your own environment and 7 or 8 hours time difference does not help either...

Not that much. Note that I am in Phoenix!

gdanen wrote:I was just going through the samples on your site, and noticed that the top level menus are fuzzy too. So are the tooltips. Could it be that the menu is ignoring the system settings for "clear text?" The download code on the samples is probably up to date, but are the samples themselves?

As expected, I'm not seeing that problem at all. Andy is up to his eyeballs, and even worse now that we're pounding on him for the new treemenu, so once in a while the samples lag a bit. However, he does his best to keep everything up to date.

Post by **Ruth** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 8:21 pm

One thing to note is that you do not have a shadow effect on the main menu, but you do on the submenus. I'd play with that effect and see if it's somehow doing something to the font look on your laptop.

Ruth

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 8:57 pm

Ruth wrote:One thing to note is that you do not have a shadow effect on the main menu, but you do on the submenus. I'd play with that effect and see if it's somehow doing something to the font look on your laptop.

Ruth, that did the trick. It seems to be the opacity & shadow parameters that cause problems for me.

Went with overfilter="Inset(duration=0.2)"; (I like inset better than fade) and now all is well.

Post by **John** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 9:02 pm

All right, Ruth

Nice catch.

gdanen · Post by **gdanen** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 10:46 pm

John wrote:All right, Ruth Nice catch.

John, if Andy ever plays with this section of the code and wants somebody to test it, let me know.

Also, I could have looked where you were from, instead of assuming you were in the UK. Sorry.