I'm working on a site for a client and they've asked for a fix for the font rendering in FF and Chrome not looking as good as it does in IE. Here's a screenshot:
Does the IE text on the left look nicer because it hooks into Windows Cleartype, and FF doesn't? I think there is nothing i can do about this, am I right?
I don't think there is anything to be done about this. While IE does use ClearType fonts by default (this can be turned off in Tools > Internet Options > Advanced (tab) > Multimedia (settings option) > "Always use ClearType for HTML" (checkbox) ), turning it off doesn't seem to change the fact that IE will render text slightly differently than FF, Chrome, Opera etc. Even if it did fix it, it's a client-side option so you'd still be out of luck.
So, yeah you're stuck with some difference in text rendering based on the browser.
HOWEVER, you can try google's web fonts:
http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select
They seem to look very similar cross-browser, though I see a slight difference between IE8 and FF5.
Plus, they look pretty cool and you don't need to install them on your system to use them.
There is no way to activate this from your website. Window's ClearType can only be activated in other programs via Windows' settings. It's not a browser feature, it's an OS feature.
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My client uses ie8 and the site I made for them works fine in all other browsers EXCEPT ie8. Most things are out of place and I can't figure out what styles are causing this to happen. I am now using ie conditional styling, but I don't know what to put in my stylesheet since I am not sure what attributes are not showing up.
Anyone know a software that compared your style css to what styles are actually being used?
Assuming that you're running the latest IE, run the developer tools (press F12 while viewing your webpage, or go to IE's Tools -> F12 Developer Tools menu), and select the Emulation tab, then change the document mode to IE8. You can then inspect the element that's causing the issue. Unfortunately you'll have to do trial by elimination in order to find out what styles are or aren't being used.
I know of no software that will automate this for you, but you can check for this yourself at 'http://caniuse.com/#cats=CSS'
This keeps very up-to-date data on browsers and their feature compatibility.
Have you tried pressing F12 to access developer tools? If you click on the DOM explorer tab, you can browse through the code.
Once you find the part of the code you are interested in, you can click on it and see the relevant css in the panel on the right.
I've posted a photo here: http://epic-xp.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/test.png
Please check out this snippet of my site.
http://jsfiddle.net/TmnPV/
The logo is made up of the 'circle1' and other div tags in the same html sections. It doesn't show up on jsfiddle either and it looks different on every browser.
On chrome = shows all
On firefox = no logo shows and bottom text under input field is larger
On safari = no logo shows
What can I do?
This is called, umm... , welcome to wild wild world of web. Every browser vendor parses html/css/javascript differently. Some are lenient, some are strict. (Chrome Vs. Opera). Some have different Box model, some have standard operational behavior, some tend to do their own thing.(Opera Vs. IE6)
Answer to different renderings : You have to hunt down each and every little quirk. One by one.
Welcome.
You'll need to adjust your styles for older browsers if you plan on doing alot of css3 transforms.
IE 6, 7, and 8 just don't have the ability to read those styles.
Even on Firefox, depending on the version, you'll run into various spacing issues since the rendering engine is different than Chrome (and Safari).
For using html5 and css3 in older IEs you can (sparingly) use polyfills, which duplicate the effect using javascript. You can see a list of available polyfills here:
https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-Browser-Polyfills
Quirksmode is a great resource for checking compatibility: http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html
I would highly recommend the Firebug add-on for Firefox to see where the extra spacing, etc is happening.
When you run into a specific issue with a specific browser that you can't figure out post a question here. It's much easier to help with one bug than just general browser problems.
That's mostly because you are using code to work with one browser. Different browser uses different code renderer. It's hard to make everything look the same, even tho Internet explorer is the worst, other browsers have different features. Opera has most of the HTML5 form features, that no other browser supports so far, but Chrome and Firefox supports the most of the HTML5 attributes. Hope this helps understand the reason why.
every one
like most of developer web developer i hate ie, buts many people still use it ,
my problem is the text on ie is really ugly , on other modern browser is clean and clear
any solution js or css to fix this without modifying the browser setup ?
thx
Text in newer versions of IE should support ClearType, however some animations in jQuery and JavaScript cause dodgy opacity issues with ClearType.
If you are talking about IE6 and Windows XP - could I suggest this:
http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2009/11/29/how-to-detect-font-smoothing-using-javascript/
This blog is about detecting whether the client is using ClearType.
I meet a problem that my page works well in firefox and chrome(almost the same look and feel) but very bad in IE. It's time consuming to adjust the differences. Is there any research has been done already to tell the differenceS, or any automation tool to examine the uncompatibilities?
BTW: which tool you guys are using when debugging in IE(like firebug for IE)?
Your best starting point is to always use some kind of "reset mechanism" like Eric Meyer's CSS Reset or framework like HTML5 Boilerplate, they help in reducing differences between browsers (not all, but most of it). If this is not possible (project is already in finishing phase, etc.) you can always ask questions here, check Position Is Everything for description of bugs, Quirks Mode, SitePoint reference and various other sites (Google is your friend :)). Hope this helps.
There is "debugging" tool for IE - IE Developer Toolbar - but it's usefulness can't compare to that of Firebug, Dragonfly and such. IE8+ does have better support for debugging, though… There are some articles that suggest using Visual Studio, but I haven't tried it. Mostly it's just trial and error with IE :).
ie7-js is a JavaScript file that automatically fixes many Internet Explorer bugs for all versions. Works like magic.
For fast and better results in IE you can use CSS Hacks for adjusting the HTML elements.
For IE we have IE Developer AddOn
you can download it here : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=95e06cbe-4940-4218-b75d-b8856fced535
Welcome to the tiresome world of IE.
IE8 has some version of developers tools, hit F12 on your keyboard and it will pop up. (not present in 6&7)
There are many documented bugs in IE, a simple Google Search would help you out better, but a lot cannot be accounted for until you have your site working in FF.
What most developers I know do is to make the site in FF, make small changes for Webkit browsers then go over to IE (not including 6) and debug.
In my experience there really is no way to tell what IE is going to mess up next, so you'll probably just have to deal with it as it happens.
So, there are 2 issues here:
why does it look different (on IE it is bolder, more anti-aliased)
how do I make the Mozilla rendering look like the IE one and what impact does this solution have (I am looking for minimal changes, so solutions such as - flash, silverlight or using images are out of the question)
IE looks different because it is using "Clear Type" for rendering the fonts, even if it is not enabled system-wide in Windows. This is not something that you as a web page server can control, but rather is up to the client machine and browser.
If you want Firefox to look similar on Windows, go to Display Settings -> Appearance -> Effects -> "Use the Following Method to Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts" and select "Clear Type". This should apply the same font smoothing effect to Firefox. But as I said, that's up to the end-user, not you the server of web pages.
This site gives a good comparison of font rendering on different browsers.
Not exactly a "minimal change" but certain fonts and sizes look better/more consistent than others. I couldn't say which combinations off the top of my head but I have noticed that some fonts render a lot more bold at 16px than at 15px for example. Experiment and you might find something you can live with. Alternatively try feeding a different font-weight to IE using conditional comments.
You can't unless you can convince Microsoft to use Mozilla's rendering engine, or the other way around. So unless you use your 'out of the question' solutions it ain't going to happen. Font rendering is out of the control of a web designer..
I know you mentioned Flash is out of the questions but have you considered sIFR.
It degrades nicely for non-flash browsers and look the same on supporting browsers.