anti-aliased fonts?

[mediarite]

It appears that I'm getting anti-aliased text when placing a menu over a light background. What's odd is that it doesn't appear on all OS's or browsers. On my mac it's clean. On Windows XP it looks like the image below. On another Windows XP machine with the same browser, it's fine. I can't figure out why some see it and some don't.
Here's a screenshot:

You can see that the two items to the left of the highlighted one are fuzzy as if they've been anti-aliased to a dark color.
Any ideas?
I tried a search of the forums with no luck.
Thanks a lot for any help.

[Hergio]

What happens when you change up the colors of the background or the font?

[risedev]

Hi Gang, I should probably jump in here as I am the programmer for the menu that "mediarite" is looking at. Unfortunately, I do not see the "problem". Here is the menu definition:

with(MMmenuStyle=new mm_style()){
onbgcolor="#222222";
oncolor="#ffffff";
offbgcolor="transparent";
offcolor="#DDDDDD";
separatorcolor="transparent";
separatorsize=1;
separatorpadding=4;
padding=1;
fontweight="REGULAR";
fontsize="7pt";
fontstyle="normal";
fontfamily="Verdana";
subimagepadding="2";
overfilter="Fade(duration=0.2);Alpha(opacity=90)";
outfilter="randomdissolve(duration=0.3)";
}

Also, I just installed RC31 (I was using RC14), and no change.

Thanks for the help!

[Hergio]

Try commenting out the offbgcolor and separator color to see if it has something to do with the TRANSPARENT.

Also, for this upper part of the menu, I am assuming its not going to be appearing and disappearing (its the top level), so you can comment out the overfilter and outfilter. Create a new style with these filters for the menus below that menu so they utilize the effects.

[risedev]

If I comment out the offbgcolor:

//offbgcolor="transparent";

Then whenever you roll-over an option, it changed to the "on" colors properly, but does not restore the option. So after rolling over all of the options, you get each option with a black backgound.

I'm certain that the problem has something to do with the "transparent" issue. I really wish I could recreate the problem... It's a long debug cycle with developing locally - posting to the web for my client (mediarite) - to see if it's fixed, yada, yada, yada...

Perhaps you guys can see the problem as well, here is a sample page:
http://www.risedev.com/mediarite/FULL_T ... .asp?pk=25

[John]

Code: Select all

fontweight="REGULAR";

Should be...

Code: Select all

fontweight="normal";

I do not see the problem under Safari, FWIW.

[risedev]

Well, to "wrap up" this issue, here what we did:

We changed the offbgcolor to the "orange" of the "inner" pages of the site (instead of the black that it used to be). That "fixed" the anti-alias issue shown above.

However, it did *really* fix it because if we change the color back to black, the issue re-appears. But the client is happy with the orange, so we done with this issue for now.

For anyone interested in viewing the "problem" code, I have mocked-up a version at:
http://www.risedev.com/mediarite/FULL_T ... .asp?pk=25

the new "working version is:
http://www.risedev.com/mediarite/FULL_T ... .asp?pk=25

I don't know how long I'll keep these avalable, but for a couple of week anyway.

Let me know if there is any interest in persuing this problem. For now (as I mentioned), it's "fixed".

[Andy]

Hi,

Just out of interest, can you tell me what the setting for screen fonts is on your XP systems?

This can be found in Display Properties - Appearance - Effects - Then there is a combo box that says "use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts".

It will be either Standard or Clear Type

Can you please let me know what they are. I would like to get to the bottom of this problem.

Cheers
Andy

[risedev]

Hi Andy,

Mediarite would have to give you that answer, BUT - I can give you THIS final update... When I posted the "BAD" code for people to review, mediarite also when to view the BAD code, and it WORKED. The ONLY change to the menu definition was the change as suggested earlier from

fontweight="REGULAR";
to
fontweight="normal";

So that seems to be what caused the problem. Hopefully, mediarite can post his XP settings and I will repost the "BAD" code and see again if we can recreate the problem.

[mediarite]

Hi,

Just out of interest, can you tell me what the setting for screen fonts is on your XP systems?

This can be found in Display Properties - Appearance - Effects - Then there is a combo box that says "use the following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts".

It will be either Standard or Clear Type

Can you please let me know what they are. I would like to get to the bottom of this problem.

Cheers
Andy

Combo box IS checked and Clear Type is selected

[Hergio]

Perhaps the fontweight was in fact the problem. Andy, what does that set in the menu code? Are you passing that value straight to a style tag around something like <span style='font-weight:normal'>...if so then possible we can recreate this problem by putting "regular" as the value for font-weight for something in a normal page.

Nice work figuring that out, glad you seemed to have nipped the problem.

[John]

Nice work figuring that out, glad you seemed to have nipped the problem.

Thank you.

[Andy]

Setting the smoothing property to "Standard" (the default) will fix the problem.

My guess is that this is a bug with Windows, Internet Explorer and/or the special effects.

Removing the overfilter fixes the problem or at least the Alpha(opacity=90) part does

Cheers
Andy

[Hergio]

I am tellin ya Andy, you troubleshoot the crap outta things. Gotta love it! If anyone can get to the bottom of things, its you! You gotta have a copy of every OS and every browser (and version) ever created over there in your England shop to be able to figure out all this stuff and run everything on everything! Proud to be workin with/for ya buddy!