Prescott's Design Blog

Found this earlier today and thought, wow, this is actually really interesting. Props to Joel on Software for the article.

For those design geeks, especially the typographers and web designers, who wonder why oh why does type look different on Mac vs. Windows, here is an in-depth explanation. The interest in on-screen type rendering is renewed by Apple’s announcement to develop Safari for Windows, which they’ve just released as a public ßeta. Here’s an overview:

As you might expect, “The difference originates from Apple’s legacy in desktop publishing and graphic design.”

Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.
Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface.

•• Article Here »