Why does the google font look so bad in Chrome?

Question

All of the font sizes of the common free font "Open Sans" look great in firefox, but when I view the site in Chrome the edges are horribly pixelated and the letter spacing isnt even the same. Is there anything that I can do to fix this? I need to use google fonts, rather than @font-face.

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

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Your options are a bit limited, but one thing that can help specifically for Chrome for Windows is changing the the order of the embedding of the font files. This article has more detail on this tip.

Article on improving font smoothing in Chrome

Another factor may be the use of CSS transitions. I've seen instances where that seems to affect the font smoothing. It's worth experimenting to see if you get better results on the anti-aliasing without them.

Other answers on this subject on stackoverflow

edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

Community

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answered Aug 23 '13 at 03:32

jsuissa

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Hmm but how can I change the order of the svg / woff if I am using google fonts? – fender967 Aug 23 '13 at 03:39
Not a problem, just download the fonts from Google as they use the CC license and then you should self host and control the ordering. – jsuissa Aug 23 '13 at 03:58
You should just use font-face – BRAINBUZZ media Aug 25 '13 at 05:48

ewwink · Answer 2 · 2013-12-26T05:00:46.907

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I'm using text-shadow and it called with javascript to fix opera and chrome only

if(navigator.userAgent.match(/chrome|opera/i))
{
  document.body.style.textShadow='rgba(0,0,0,0.3) 0px 0px 1px';
}

demo: http://jsfiddle.net/cQS7w/3/

edited Dec 26 '13 at 05:00

answered Dec 26 '13 at 04:39

ewwink

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PottyBert · Answer 3 · 2014-02-17T17:18:59.863

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I've found that regenerating the font using a tool like fontsquirrel.com to create a kit you host yourself, solves most of chrome's font rendering issues.

I presume that the chrome font issue is to do with the way google optimizes the font vs the way font squirrel does it.

edited Feb 17 '14 at 17:18

answered Jan 31 '14 at 11:15

PottyBert

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Why does the google font look so bad in Chrome?

3 Answers3