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Firefox 3.x

Started by melf, 2009.03.31, 21:27:22

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melf

Hi guys, are you using Firefox 3.x and in that case - are you satisfied?

I still stick to 2.x cause i can't get the fonts as good as in these 2.x- versions (with Innotek font engine). I think I do everything I shall - that is deactivate Innotek font engine (I rename firefox.exe to firefox3.exe), installing Workplace sans and tweaking the gfx values in "about:config".

Also tried the latest 3.08 version but I experience the same bad fonts.
/Mikael

ivan

Hi Melf,

Like you I stick with 2.x for two reasons.  The first is the same as yours, bad fonts and word spacing.  The second is the face 3.x flogs my hard disks every 30 seconds or so for no logical reason I can see.

Another thing I have against 3.x is their use of SQLITE to hide everything (places.sqlite in place of bookmarks.html etc.), with the sqlite files being, on average, 4 times larger than the old equivalents.



melf

Thanks for reply Ivan - I thought I may have missed something!
/Mikael

jep

Hello,

I ditched Firefox 2.x in favour of Firefox 3.1 B3 when it came out ( found out that FF 3.0 wasn't as good ) because of the problems with rendering with the font engine in FF 2.x ( actully the font engine ) that from time to time corrupt the screen.

As FF 3.1 use Cairo it work a lot better, show smoooOOOoth antialised fonts without funny spacing problems and is quite stable as well. The fact that FF3.0.x and FF3.1.x output PDF-files to the desktop aint a problem to me, I just print them with Lucide or GSView. They'll probably take care of that as we'll get cups.

The only glitches I've seen so far is that many tabs ( >15 on my computers ) in combination with huge images can cause it to not draw on the surface and that it ( FF 3.1 B3 ) can close without mentioning what problem has occured.

Can agree that it still use a lot of memory, but to me it's not that much of a problem as long as it work (compared to FF 2.x that would crash with drawing corruption).

They've done a great job!

//Jan-Erik

melf

#4
Hi Jep, I wish I could agree. I tried the 3.1b now , with about the same result. For me the fonts look somewhat "filthy" in 3.1b also. In fact it's especially visible here on the OS2World site.
/Mikael

RobertM

#5
In the FF3 series using Cairo, the fonts can seem a little blurrier in places, and diagonal strokes in the fonts can sometimes be mis-weighted. There are options in the preferences that can be changed (or added, as the case may be) to adjust that. I believe they are listed on the WarpZilla page.

Also of course, ensuring that you aren't using IFE at the same time helps. I simply rename the FF3 exe file (firefox.exe) to something relevant to the version (for instance, this copy is named firefox307.exe) that way I can still use IFE for FF2 and not use it for FF3. This was a suggestions I found by a couple others on this forum.

And finally, I dont have any kerning issues with FF2/IFE at all (when IFE is running and not crashed) - but that may be due to me using different video drivers and modes than others here. Once IFE crashes (or when), then I suddenly have horrendous kerning issues, as well as errors in where the cursor is showing (a character or two off).

Another difference (for me) may be the fact that I am running IFE 2.40 as the later version will not run on my current configuration (no desktop).

And a final thing, which does not help us, is that the default text in the forums (and elsewhere on this site) is grey - not black - which makes it appear a little blurrier on FF3. Black text, you will find, gets rendered a little bit nicer. Notice the difference in the lower case "o"s for instance.

Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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Pete

Hi Robert

Quote from: RobertM on 2009.04.03, 19:16:26

And a final thing, which does not help us, is that the default text in the forums (and elsewhere on this site) is grey - not black - which makes it appear a little blurrier on FF3. Black text, you will find, gets rendered a little bit nicer. Notice the difference in the lower case "o"s for instance.



Just thought I'd add some "lower case "o"s" in Black as well as "standard" gray - just to see how they compare.

ooooo

ooooo

I'm not using Firefox myself but understand that a lot of Firefox code gets into Seamonkey; currently using Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090221 SeaMonkey/2.0b1pre but no idea which Firefox variant this code is based on.

Like Firefox the IFE is not used for SeamonkeyV2 builds.

I think the only changes I made which affects the display of fonts in Seamonkey are:

Installation of Warpsans - this seems to be used in the interface if available and looks fairly good; improves the original look which seemed slightly over heavy.

Installation of Arial Unicode M$ - which I have set as Serif in Seamonkey font Preferences.

Let's see how this looks.

Pete



Pete

Hi All

Well, I think Robert has a point but only in that Black is a stronger colour than Grey. No blurring of grey text using this build of SM2.

How does it look to FF3 users?

Regards

Pete

djcaetano

Quote from: Pete on 2009.04.04, 14:55:22
Well, I think Robert has a point but only in that Black is a stronger colour than Grey. No blurring of grey text using this build of SM2.
How does it look to FF3 users?

  Using Minefield 3.1b3 without IFE and running SNAP on Matrox G550. No blurring at all (besides the cool font-antialiasing provided by Cairo).

RobertM

Quote from: Pete on 2009.04.04, 14:55:22
Hi All

Well, I think Robert has a point but only in that Black is a stronger colour than Grey. No blurring of grey text using this build of SM2.

How does it look to FF3 users?

Regards

Pete

Well, here's an interesting thing... on this machine, I am using FF3.1a2pre and 800x600 - and both look equally as clear. My other machine is set at 1600x1050 (and previously at 1280x1024).

I'm guessing tweaking the font antialiasing and hinting options in FF3/Cairo builds should make FF3 fonts look really nice on OS/2 in any resolution. I think that for the higher resolutions, it's just simply "over-antialiasing" the fonts a little too much - which of course will show up more with grey, or with a color font on most background colors.

Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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abwillis

One thing that should be done with FF3, make sure IFE is not being used.  Antialiasing is being done in the browser now so does not need IFE and potentially could cause issues.  With FF3 Cairo is being used for the rendering.  The way the text is being rendered in Cairo is using freetype and fontconfig.  With the interface being built to allow rendering text the antialiasing came along as a by-product. 

RobertM

Quote from: abwillis on 2009.04.04, 21:40:20
One thing that should be done with FF3, make sure IFE is not being used.  Antialiasing is being done in the browser now so does not need IFE and potentially could cause issues.  With FF3 Cairo is being used for the rendering.  The way the text is being rendered in Cairo is using freetype and fontconfig.  With the interface being built to allow rendering text the antialiasing came along as a by-product. 

Also of course, ensuring that you aren't using IFE at the same time helps. I simply rename the FF3 exe file (firefox.exe) to something relevant to the version (for instance, this copy is named firefox307.exe) that way I can still use IFE for FF2 and not use it for FF3. This was a suggestions I found by a couple others on this forum.


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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melf

My conclusion of what you write is that ff3.x with Cairo works very well... but I still got the "filthy" feeling as shown by the pictures above. Shall I do some configuration in freetype/2 via Free Type GUI? Or is there some other preferences except those mentioned in the readme.txt of ff3.x?
/Mikael

sebi1234

Like you I stick with 2.x for two reasons.  The first is the same as yours, bad fonts and word spacing.  The second is the face 3.x flogs my hard disks every 30 seconds or so for no logical reason I can see.

Another thing I have against 3.x is their use of SQLITE to hide everything (places.sqlite in place of bookmarks.html etc.), with the sqlite files being, on average, 4 times larger than the old equivalents.




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osw

Quote from: sebi1234 on 2009.05.28, 11:49:54
Like you I stick with 2.x for two reasons.  The first is the same as yours, bad fonts and word spacing.  The second is the face 3.x flogs my hard disks every 30 seconds or so for no logical reason I can see.

Another thing I have against 3.x is their use of SQLITE to hide everything (places.sqlite in place of bookmarks.html etc.), with the sqlite files being, on average, 4 times larger than the old equivalents.




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wow... i haven't notice it earlier... but this guy (sebi1234) is just re-posting other guys (mine also) posts.... hmm.... what's the point?

is it just my impression that recently many off topic and other way suspicious posts start to appear on os2world?
can it be stopped?