Interestingly, the fonts on all web pages are ‘fuzzy’ when compared to Mozilla Firefox, Chrome or the Safari browser due to “Sub-pixel rendering”. Microsoft will not let you disable this in the browser or in Windows. Worse, to ‘tune’ the blurry Clear Type technology, it turns on Clear Type on the entire Windows system making everything fuzzy–and thoroughly angered me by literally causing me headaches having to read the blurred text while I searched for the means to turn off Clear Type, which Microsoft had cleverly hidden in the Performance Information and Tools control panel.
Microsoft may have intended the Clear Type software technology (deployed through a recent Service Pack) to improve the visibility of fonts on LCD displays, but the actual effect is the reverse, making things much worse, not better. So much worse, in fact, that I refuse to use Internet Explorer for anything until Microsoft releases an update to disable it in the browser as well.
Apparently, I’m not alone in despising “Clear Type”
Microsoft provides a means to tune Clear Type settings, but no clearly labeled means to disable it and the only means that exists, still doesn’t disable it in Internet Explorer. The option to disable Clear Type is hidden away under the Performance Options control panel, instead of under Fonts or Display, the logical locations of this setting.
If, after installing Internet Explorer 9, you accidentally turn on Clear Type, you can disable Clear Type in the Windows 7 desktop and applications other than Internet explorer by performing the following steps:
While that gets rid of the fuzzy font problem in Windows, it does not fix the fuzzy fonts in Internet Explorer. Apparently there is something called ‘subpixel rendering’ involved. Microsoft assumes you’re not running at your monitor’s native resolution and thus need special rendering on your text, which is not the case, usually. So, Microsoft has invented a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist.
I haven’t noticed any significant performance differences either way, even though Microsoft claims it is a faster browser. Rearranging the interface will probably result in slowing most people down because they can’t find the button or menu they’re used to having.