Fix your fonts and display text with ClearType

Posted on Friday, January 2, 2009

On a lot of windows systems, fonts can look very pixelated and display fonts poorly. I have had experiences as mentioned above, on my old XP laptop. All fonts looked the same and were very pixelated; even on websites. That is when I discovered ClearType.

What is ClearType?

ClearType is a type of technology developed by Microsoft that improves the display of text on LCD screens that can be found on a variety of devices. Examples of such devices are laptops, pocket PCs and flat panel monitors.

Though you may not know it ClearType comes built into Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. ClearType is automaticly turned on in the windows Vista operating system.

How Do I use it?

As mentioned above ClearType is already turned on in Windows Vista. To turn it on in xp you need to:

• Right click on the desktop and select ‘Properties’
• Select the ‘Appearance’ tab and press the ‘Effects…’ button
• Check the box for ‘Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts’, then select ‘ClearType’ in the dropdown list
• Close the Effects dialog by clicking ‘OK’ and click ‘Apply’ to complete the process

Tuning ClearType

You may want to tweak your ClearType settings. To do this Microsoft have provided a web Tuner (requires windows Internet Explorer) that allows you to change your settings from there website. Microsoft also provides ‘Power Toy‘;a piece of software that allows you to to tweak your settings. For more information on ClearType visit the ClearType website.

posted in Technology, The Web, Software | 5 comments