How do I turn on Anti-aliasing in Firefox?

April 1, 2007 10:24 PM

How can I enable anti-aliasing in Firefox?

I'm trying to get anti-aliasing to work with Firefox. The website texts do not reflect any changes even when I enable AA at all times through my video card settings.

The latest Internet Explorer seems to have AA automatically enabled. The fonts look great, but the browser sucks.

BTW, I'm running on Windows XP

posted by atmu to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Enable Cleartype. Video card AA settings have nothing to do with your desktop and general Windows UI.

Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects ->

Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts = ClearType
posted by mphuie at 11:09 PM on April 1, 2007

Then go here to tune it using Internet Explorer, and let it install the ActiveX control it needs. (You have to use IE, but the result of the tuning is global for all apps including Firefox.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:52 PM on April 1, 2007

Full Scene Anti-Aliasing (what your video card does to rendered 3D scenes) is a very cool approach to the way your video card renders lines in 3D. Because the line is initially rendered as a series of stair-steps, AA will actually resample the scene several times to make the stairs smaller. (Note: this is a pretty damn simplified explanation.)

ClearType is a different approach to a slightly different problem. LCDs generally operate at their "native resolution"—the physical, fixed number of pixels the display has. (CRTs, conversely, do not have a fixed number of pixels, but can still make use of ClearType to varying degrees of usefulness.) Because of this, the display knows exactly where each of the pixels is broken down into its component subpixels—red, green and blue. This represents an opportunity to allow only certain portions of the pixel to be illuminated, to more closely trace the outline of the character. You're essentially anti-aliasing the text that you see.

The reason your video card software's Anti-Aliasing settings don't affect your desktop is simple: Your video card doesn't render your XP desktop. Instead, your CPU sends essentially a rendered scene, or the basic rendering instructions straight away to your video card, which spits them out as it receives them. It applies none of its awesome GPU power to the desktop at all.

When you enter a game or similar 3D application, your video card takes over rendering the entire display, and bypasses your CPU almost entirely. (Vista's Aero desktop is also rendered by your GPU now, which is what allows the neat Flip-3D effects and for much better, more intelligently handling of video.)

I would suggest you turn back OFF the video card application's Anti-Aliasing settings. Generally, the games you play will take over and dictate what FSAA settings to use on its own, but sometimes, they can be confused/overridden by the blanket video card settings. This is a bad thing that will frequently result in NO AA processing, and jaggies galore.
posted by disillusioned at 11:58 PM on April 1, 2007

The reason your video card software's Anti-Aliasing settings don't affect your desktop is simple: Your video card doesn't render your XP desktop. Instead, your CPU sends essentially a rendered scene, or the basic rendering instructions straight away to your video card, which spits them out as it receives them. It applies none of its awesome GPU power to the desktop at all.

That's not true, many video cards also have 2d acceleration for things like rectangles and lines used in 2d GUIs, and have for decades. Font rendering may be done on the video card.
posted by delmoi at 6:31 AM on April 2, 2007

to help you get the most out of ClearType when you've turned it on, download this applet:

ClearType Setup Wizard

and run it. the results can be quite impressive when you've done it right, and really aggravating to the eye when you don't. The applet will become a Control Panel item after install, so you can always go in and tweak the settings if you find they're "off"
posted by I, Credulous at 10:16 AM on April 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

oh, this applet also means not having to install one more ActiveX control for you to worry about...
posted by I, Credulous at 10:18 AM on April 2, 2007