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Windows 7 renders Helvetica Neue in very ugly way
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Description

"Helvetica Neue" Windows 7

Windows 7 (Sp1) seems to have significant problems with rendering Helvetica Neue. Just take a look on the screenshot. Letters are very bold and unreadable. I use default ClearType settings, without any custom tuning. I've linked some general browser bug-reports in the file description (that I've quick googled): [[File:Screenshot_Wikipedia_07.04.14.png]]


Version: 1.23.0
Severity: normal
OS: Windows 7
Platform: PC
URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot_Wikipedia_07.04.14.png
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63512
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63720

attachment File_Screenshot_Wikipedia_07.04.14[1].png ignored as obsolete

Details

Reference
bz63662

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Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 3:23 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz63662.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

"Helvetica Neue" Windows 7 (x64) Firefox 28

Attached:

Screenshot_Wikipedia_07.04.14.png (785×1 px, 71 KB)

"Helvetica Neue" Windows 7 (x64) Chrome 32

Attached:

Chrome_Helvetica.png (812×1 px, 95 KB)

"Liberation Sans" Windows 7 Chrome (32)

For compare (on my system), it looks fine (also in FF) before bug 63512 was fixed

Attached:

Liberation_Sans_Chrome.png (812×1 px, 91 KB)

Thanks for the bug report and the screen shots. This doesn't happen for me using Firefox 28 and Chrome 32 on a Sauce Labs Win7 instance. You have some font substitution going on that is overriding the sans-serif body to select some unexpected font. It could be in your available fonts, your font settings, your browser settings... (Or, someone was fussing with site CSS while you took those snapshots.)

As I understand it, Windows doesn't have Helvetica Neue and it substitutes Arial for Helvetica. In Firefox, right-click on some sans-serif text and choose Inspect Element, and on the right side of the developer window click the Fonts tab, and Firefox will tell you what font it's using. Sauce Labs Win7 Firefox28 says Arial.

Based on that I'm marking this Worksforme. If you can provide additional information we may be able to figure out what's causing it in your case and determine how widespread it is.

I've done what you said:
(Yes, I already thought that it could be a special case with me.)

Helvetica 93 Black Extended
system

Used as: "Helvetica Neue"

and for italic text:

Helvetica Neue 37 Thin Condensed Oblique
system

Used as: "Helvetica Neue"

It look in IE9 the same, Chrome says only Rendered Fonts: Helvetica Neue (under Computed at the bottom).
I'm not sure where I got this font from (maybe Adobe, date is 15.08.2011).

swalling wrote:

(In reply to PRO from comment #5)

It look in IE9 the same, Chrome says only Rendered Fonts: Helvetica Neue
(under Computed at the bottom).
I'm not sure where I got this font from (maybe Adobe, date is 15.08.2011).

Yes, another application would have to have installed it if you did not directly. I have heard that very old versions of some Adobe products (like Reader, etc.) can install a version of these fonts that renders poorly. This should not be the case for newer versions.

Since it seems like you don't want any browser or website to display these fonts, I would recommend turning them off in your system fonts settings. There is guide how to do this via Control Panel at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/change-your-font-settings You can also restore all default font settings if you prefer.