In Internet Explorer 9 all fonts look like compressed

Question

After installing Internet Explorer 9 I discovered that on many websites fonts look like compressed. The same on my webstes. Just discovered that this is a doctype problem. For years I was using this doctype on my websites:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

Now the latest version of Internet Explorer with this doctype all fonts displays wrong.

I created 2 files:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<head>
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size: 11px;"><b>This is my test text. I am testing fonts.</b></span><br />
</body>
</html>

and

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<head>
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size: 11px;"><b>This is my test text. I am testing fonts.</b></span><br />
</body>
</html>

All fonts in the first file look distorted, compressed. Fonts in the second file are OK. I never use Internet Explorer because it's nothing more than a big and slow bug. But there are some people who use IE and now they see distorted websites. Is there any way how to solve this problem?

Here is an image to see the difference enter image description here

Can you please try to add the content in the STYLE element to a css-file and replace STYLE with a LINK element refering to it? — two7s_clash, Jul 08 '11 at 17:37
Sounds like this is because of the new subpixel fonts in IE9: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/11/03/sub-pixel-fonts-in-ie9.aspx — Martin, Jul 09 '11 at 10:35

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 09 '11 at 10:28

1

This is a temporary solution to display fonts correctly in Internet Explorer 9.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

answered Jul 09 '11 at 10:28

tfe

155
1
9

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 08 '11 at 17:43

0

I wouldn't use that font tag, use CSS instead and see if the problem still exists. Something like this:




body {
font-family: tahoma;
font-size: 11px;
}

answered Jul 08 '11 at 17:43

Josh

431
4
12

I just changed my examples and added an image. I use css file on my websites and there is the same problem. – tfe Jul 08 '11 at 17:45

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:01

0

When you say the fonts are distorted and compressed, do you mean that they are blurry? If so, I think the links on this question may be helpful: IE 9 does not use sub-pixel antialiasing under certain conditions

edited May 23 '17 at 12:01

Community

1
1

answered Jul 08 '11 at 17:44

ElonU Webdev

2,451
14
15

I just added an image to my question. – tfe Jul 08 '11 at 17:48

In Internet Explorer 9 all fonts look like compressed

3 Answers3