home page has blurry font

[Oliver Gerlich]

Binary package hint: ubuntu-docs

The text on the default home page in Firefox (file:///usr/share/ubuntu-artwork/home/index.html) looks blurry to me, compared to other text on Ubuntu desktop (like panel and Firefox menu...).

It seems that the CSS file for that page specified Helvetica as font, while the desktop and all apps use Sans which seems to be mapped to Bitstream Vera Sans. The latter looks quite sharp on Linux, while Helvetica seems to be rendered not that well (use xmag to compare them).

This might be a matter of taste, and also it probably has to take into account the design of that page, but I think it would be better if the home page would use the same font as the desktop does, or use a font that is rendered as crisp as the desktop font.

[Rich Johnson (nixternal)]

Ubuntu docuMENTORs :) Do any of you see this in Hardy with Ubuntu? I can say that in Kubuntu everything is fine.

[Oliver Gerlich (ogerlich)]

Here's an image showing snippets of the Firefox start page, the Firefox GUI, and wiki.ubuntu.com .

[Rich Johnson (nixternal)]

It doesn't look blurry to me, but that is me. However, what I did notice after looking at the ubuntu.css file is this:

html {
    ...
    font-family: "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Lucida, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
    ...
}

These fonts would be fine if we were running Microsoft Windows, however they don't work with Ubuntu at all. Honestly it makes sense to go ahead and change the font-family to a font that is installed on Ubuntu, ie. Sans, which is what the desktop uses as its default non-fixed width font.

Phil or Matt: care to elaborate? I also see this with the Kubuntu start page fonts as well.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

We used the same fonts for this as those used on the Ubuntu website at the time (for consistency). Of course, if a particular font is not installed, it will fall back to the next available font.

The question arises of whether we should be using a sans-serif or sans font, I don't know what the accepted standard is about that. I have a feeling that Sans is preferable for on-screen documents.

[Dean Sas (dsas)]

Matthew East wrote:
> The question arises of whether we should be using a sans-serif or sans
> font, I don't know what the accepted standard is about that. I have a
> feeling that Sans is preferable for on-screen documents.

Your feeling is correct.

[Oliver Gerlich (ogerlich)]

Two things:

- I think the font on ubuntu.com looks less bad than the FF start page font. This is probably because the ubuntu.com font is smaller. If you magnify the ubuntu.com text, you will see faint halos along straight lines (like lower-case t); if you magnify the FF start page, you will see less faint halos instead; but if you magnify GUI fonts in Hardy, you will see no halos at all.

- ubuntu.com probably targets Windows/Mac users as well as Ubuntu users, while the Firefox start page definitely targets Ubuntu users. So it might be acceptable if ubuntu.com looks sub-optimal on Ubuntu systems if this means that it looks good on non-Ubuntu systems. But IMO for the FF start page should be made optimal for Ubuntu users, even if that involves a deviation from the ubuntu.com theme.

[Rich Johnson (nixternal)]

=== modified file 'kubuntu/firefox-startpage/kubuntu.css'
--- kubuntu/firefox-startpage/kubuntu.css 2007-03-14 05:07:22 +0000
+++ kubuntu/firefox-startpage/kubuntu.css 2008-03-14 17:40:23 +0000
@@ -30,7 +30,8 @@
 html {
        background-color: white;
        color: #000;
- font-family: "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Lucida, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
+/* font-family: "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Lucida, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; */
+ font-family: "Sans Serif", "Bitstream Vera Sans", "DejaVu Sans", FreeSans;
        font-size: 100.1%;
 }

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package kubuntu-docs - 8.04-2

---------------
kubuntu-docs (8.04-2) hardy; urgency=low

  * Latest checkout of docs from bzr
  * Added lintian overrides file (LP: #194843)
  * Fixed the firefox startpage fonts (LP: #195590)
  * Updated firefox startpage translations (LP: #203422)
  * Added link to log to allow page to link to kubuntu.org (LP: #108083)
  * Updated copyright dates (LP: #192202)
  * Fixed faulty strings in games.xml
    - (LP: #201781)
    - (LP: #201785)

 -- <email address hidden> (Richard A. Johnson) Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:14:36 -0500

[Philipp Kohlbecher (xt28)]

This might be the wrong place to complain about this, but the same thing bugs me about the default (online) homepage in hardy: http://start.ubuntu.com/8.04/
This page will be seen almost exclusively by Ubuntu users. So why does its stylesheet exclusively use Windows fonts?
(If anyone knows how to reach the webmasters, let me know.)

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

not an ubufox bug from what i can see.

[Brittany Dunlap (xdunlapx)]

If you have an LCD screen or monitor fonts everywhere tend to be fuzzy (at least on my box) until I choose hinting (full) and subpixel hinting (RGB) in User Interface Prefs (Xubuntu).

That fixed the blurriness for me. Perhaps it will for you, too. :-)

[Matthew East (mdke)]

I've pushed a fix to this to our maverick branch. It will appear in the next release.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-docs - 10.10.3

---------------
ubuntu-docs (10.10.3) maverick; urgency=low

  * Amend font-family for browser startpage (LP: #195590)
  * Add translations from Launchpad
 -- Matthew East <email address hidden> Sun, 19 Sep 2010 11:35:42 +0100