OpenType Fonts in Firefox
March 13, 2007
After I noted that the Microsoft ClearType collection fonts were freely available with the PowerPoint 2007 viewer, I discovered that one font in particular, Constantia, was rendering quite badly in Firefox. I had earlier read Zeldman’s take on text rending in Firefox, and made the connection between the two after Richard Rutter left a comment directing me to his own comparison. I took a bit of time today to download the latest development build of Gran Paradiso, which will become Firefox 3.
As seen in the screenshots above, the new Cairo graphics library in Gran Paradiso does a much nicer job of handling OpenType fonts. Individual characters are rendered better, and kerning is much improved. It’s nice to see there’s a light at the end of that tunnel. Fortunately, word is that Firefox 3 should ship around the end of the year—likely before any critical mass of Mac users will have the new core group of OpenType fonts installed on their systems.
