Chrome 37 Font Issue - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

photon · 08-26-2014, 09:12 PM

Updated to Chrome 37 which enables DirectWrite for smoother/better fonts, and there's some kind of bug with the Verdana font with the underlines being too close to the letters.

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/i...tail?id=394662

Just in case anyone else updated and wondered why things looked weird.

photon · 08-26-2014, 09:40 PM

Maybe switch up the forum font?

http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen...ns+Pro#charset
http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans

Any other suggestions?

getbak · 08-26-2014, 10:17 PM

It looks like the underline problem is happening with a lot of fonts, so changing fonts might not make things better.

You could just get rid of text-decoration on the links and use colour cues instead. For example, Facebook and Twitter only underline links when you roll over them, so you don't notice the line being too close.

photon · 08-26-2014, 10:31 PM

I still like having the underline to know it's a link, maybe in the forum display it could go away but almost everywhere else it's necessary.

Verdana is a horrible font anyway

Drury18 · 08-26-2014, 10:47 PM

Is that what that is? I noticed that and the fact the font almost doubled in size after the update. My zoom is set to 100%, nothing changed there, but the font is noticeably bigger now and it changed immediately after I relaunched after the update.

photon · 08-26-2014, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by getbak

It looks like the underline problem is happening with a lot of fonts, so changing fonts might not make things better.

Actually yeah, I just made a small HTML file that uses Open Sans and if you get it small enough the underline still mashes into the words. If you look at it in Firefox or IE it looks fine.

Code:

<html>
  <head>
    <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:400italic,700italic,400,700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
    <style>
      body {
        font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
        font-size: 10pt;
      }
	  a:link, a:visited {
		color: black;
	  }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div>Making the Web Beautiful!</div><br/>
	<a href="#">This is a test.</a>
	<strong><a href="#">This is a test.</a></strong>
	<a href="#" style="font-size: 9pt;">This is a test.</a>
	<a href="#" style="font-weight: bold;font-size: 9pt;">This is a test.</a>
	<a href="#"style="font-size: 8pt;">This is a test.</a>
	<a href="#"style="font-weight: bold;font-size: 8pt;">This is a test.</a>
  </body>
</html>

photon · 08-26-2014, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drury18

Is that what that is? I noticed that and the fact the font almost doubled in size after the update. My zoom is set to 100%, nothing changed there, but the font is noticeably bigger now and it changed immediately after I relaunched after the update.

Yeah it can vary depending on different things, it's a crazy subject:

http://blog.mozilla.org/nattokirai/2...-in-firefox-6/

Another reason to switch away from Verdana.

getbak · 08-26-2014, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by photon

I still like having the underline to know it's a link, maybe in the forum display it could go away but almost everywhere else it's necessary.

Verdana is a horrible font anyway

Get with the times old man. The cool kids aren't underlining their links any more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by photon

Maybe switch up the forum font?

http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen...ns+Pro#charset
http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans

Any other suggestions?

If you're set on changing the default font, both of those are good. I also like PT Sans: https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Sans

The update also seems to have increased the letter spacing, and might have decreased the line-height, but that might just be a visual by-product of the other changes.

Can you change it from using points for the font size and either going to pixels, or even-better, ems? Points are pretty arbitrary and can vary from browser to browser because they're a print measurement. If this change affected the points to pixels ratio, it could have had unintended consequences.

photon · 08-26-2014, 11:47 PM

I should be able to change it to pixels or ems, though I don't know how many places I'd need to change things.

I just want it to stop looking so terrible lol.

Kind of a head start on the eventual theme change once we choose a new logo. I'm leaning towards something more flat and clean, these two are a couple of the ones I think would work well as a base (i.e. minimal changes required)

https://pixelexit.com/demo/?theme=Flat%20Awesome
http://demo.brivium.com/index.php?theme=Boron

photon · 08-26-2014, 11:55 PM

Lol they're in a mix already, randomly points or pixels. I changed it to pixels for the thread displays for now, I guess I should probably create a separate theme to work on rather than playing with the live site.

photon · 10-23-2014, 05:04 PM

Just FYI the latest Chrome fixed this seems.