Microsoft finally fixes Google Chrome font issues on Windows 10 and 11

No more headaches with Chromium. Version 124 of the browser should finally take Windows font rendering values ​​into account.

You may not realize it, but ensuring the readability of text on screen is no easy task. Within a few pixels, a character can quickly appear too thin or too blurry and become almost indecipherable. And this is typically what certain technologies and other tools seek to avoid thanks, among other things, to good antialiasing.

However, while most of our software and operating systems handle this aspect brilliantly, certain incompatibilities can cause some problems.

When Chrome and Windows can no longer communicate

If you use Google’s browser on Microsoft’s operating system, you may have already encountered lines of text that are abnormally difficult to read. In fact, all Chromium-based software suffers from this problem, except for one: Microsoft Edge. And, there is a good reason for this: the Redmond firm has been well aware of the problem for several years, and even managed to correct it in 2021, at least on its in-house browser.

So how did the American company go about it? To understand this, you have to look at the tools used for rendering fonts on Windows and Chromium. The operating system and the browser, in fact, use two different technologies, the first using ClearType, the second relying on the Skia graphics library.

On Chromium, the latter does not recover the contrast and gamma values ​​decided by Windows, which has the unfortunate tendency to result in a different rendering of the fonts which then become blurry or too fine. A problem mainly seen in people with specific display types, or using Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters.

A simple and permanent solution

So should we go for Edge? Not necessarily. On the one hand, Firefox and Safari do not have the same problem, and on the other hand, Microsoft has decided to take matters into its own hands to improve the situation on all browsers based on Chromium. Indeed, the firm has just applied some changes to the latter, something possible thanks to its open-source nature, allowing Skia to retrieve and apply the values ​​provided by ClearType.

The fix is ​​already rolling out to Chrome Canary, the beta version of Chrome, and is expected to reach all users with version 124 of the browser, scheduled for April 10. Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and all the others should quickly follow suit, and we hope this solution works for everyone and in the long term. Because, as a Microsoft representative reminds us: “ Full ClearType support is not possible in Chrome ”, which may suggest that Skia could still act up in the future.

Source : Windows Latest