TheChrisD - Rant Central » Rants

Tuesday the 7th of October, 2008

In true WTF style

Posted at 2:30:42pm UTC
3 more rants down there!

I consider this to be a very WTF moment, with regards to web browsers and compatibility. Yes, I am still using the god-forbidden Internet Explorer 8 (beta, supposedly), but there is one thing I’ve noticed recently, and it’s regarding fonts. Yes, I am that sad.

So reading Keiron’s latest post, as his feed shows that there are new items. (Wonder if he’ll like the traffic?) I open it up and read, fine and dandy everything’s grand. So I go to Windows Live Mail and open it up there to mark it as read, and it suprises me how much different it looks. Now this is where is confuses me - I thought Windows Live Mail parses web pages using IE - heck, if I tell Mail to display pages in the normal “Internet” zone rather than “Restricted sites” on WordPress.com blogs, I even get the bar at the top of the screen since I’m logged into WP.com in IE. But it just looks so different. So I went to compare it with my other browsers and modes, and the results are… well, I don’t know how to put it.

Windows Live Mail, in restricted sites (so no Google ads)

Firefox 3.0.1, in Firefox mode

Google Chrome

Those three I consider “normal”, but here’s where things change and look “silly”.

Internet Explorer 8, normal

Internet Explorer 8, in Compatibility view (browser mode: IE8 Compatiblity, IE7 standards)

Firefox 3, using IE Tab

In Summary

How the heck do I change it so that IE displays it (and every other site for that matter), in the same way as Firefox, Chrome and even Windows Live Mail? Anyone?

Update (16th October, 14:19)

OK, a little searching around today eventually led me to see that Internet Explorer has this setting in Internet Options enabled: “Always use ClearType for HTML”. Turning that off, and restarting IE now has pages looking “right” again. Firefox is now officially thrown out the window.

Cats: Techy Stuff, Web Stuff
Tags: Firefox 3, Google Chrome, IE tab, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Keiron, Windows Live Mail, WordPress.com

3 More Rants

Keiron ranted:

Tuesday the 7th of October, 2008 at 2:54:09pm UTC

Traffic always appreciated Chris….

Interesting! Is it just the images that don’t show up or is there more differences?
TheChrisD ranted:

Wednesday the 8th of October, 2008 at 10:27:51am UTC

@Keiron: Sorry, Keiron. I saw your comment yesterday and was going to reply, but got caught up with Clubs and Socs stuff.

It’s not just the lack of pictures in IE8. If you look closely at the fonts, you’ll see it’s a lot more “blurry” in IE, but quite “sharp” in everything else. Which makes no sense, since Windows Live Mail uses Ie to display the web feeds…
Keiron ranted:

Thursday the 9th of October, 2008 at 10:00:54am UTC

That’s fine - interesting - it’s not something random in my stylesheets to my knowledge!

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